And people say NOTHING ever gets done in the GOP-Controlled House

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

Piffle! Piffle, sez I!

Congress Quietly Deletes a Key Disclosure of Free Trips Lawmakers Take

It's going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms.

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

"This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "There's no legitimate reason. There's no good reason for it."

Free trips paid for by private groups must still be reported separately to the House's Office of the Clerk and disclosed there. But they will now be absent from the chief document that reporters, watchdogs, and members of the public have used for decades to scrutinize lawmakers' finances.

See? They can get things done! I think we all owe that nice Mr. Boehner a big apology.

[atreides1]

1. I'm confused

Are there not Democrats on that committee as well...why didn't they blow the whistle on this end run that their GOP pals were pushing for?

Or maybe perhaps those Democrats were in on this from the beginning...and feel that they too should share in the largess provided by the neo-Nobility that is represented by such people like the Koch family?

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

3. The GOP has a majority on all committees

so they can basically do what they will.

But I agree that Democrats should have raised holy hell on this subject. It's another arrow in the quiver of "corrupt and out of touch Republicans" arrows to be used in the fall.

[Buns_of_Fire]

4. Their first allegiance is to other members of their club.

And it isn't gentlemanly to rat out the other members, lest you be shunned by your "Good Friends" and called nasty names in the cloakrooms.

[winter is coming]

2. Perhaps the President could "apologize" for it. n/t

[Crowquette]

5. Republicans hide from the light of day

For shame on Repubicans and their sneaky ways