Traveling foul: the Democrats' national pastime.

JUST days after the GOP announced a "lobbying reform" package meant to mitigate political damage from the Jack Abramoff scandal, the Democrats held a grandstanding press conference at the Library of Congress to announce their own lobbying-reform ideas. Even as Democrats accused the Republicans of not going far enough, their own plan came up short in one widely debated area. While the Republican plan would ban all privately funded travel for congressmen and congressional staff--those "fact-finding missions" to any destination where the facts can be gathered lazily near a golf course or a beach--the Democrats' plan would leave a loophole open for nonprofits to sponsor trips. According to the New York Times, "Congressional aides said that House Democratic leaders were ready to jettison travel completely but ran into resistance from Senate Democrats who wanted to retain the ability to go on trips sponsored by educational foundations."

An "educational foundation" can be anything from the Aspen Institute, a think tank that pays for legislators to travel to its roundtable events, to the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, a lobbyist-linked nonprofit at the center of the Abramoff scandal--so leaving the door open for these groups wouldn't change the existing rules in any meaningful way. A congressional aide close to the drafting of the GOP reform package put it this way: "The more exceptions you create, the more people will find a way to get around the rules. It's better just to end it so that people have clear guidelines."

But ending it would take away one of the Democrats' favorite perks--the privately funded junket--and leading Democrats are unable to outflank the GOP on this issue because they can't convince their fellow members to give it up. A survey of the record shows that when it comes to free trips, Democrats have more to hide, and more to lose, than Republicans.

The Democrats' problems with privately funded travel are extensively documented on the blog NoAgenda.org. Matt Margolis of BlogsforBush.com created the website to show people that the Democrats aren't really interested in cleaning up Washington and have plenty of ethical issues of their own. NoAgenda.org is an online reference with links to news articles and government reports on the ethics violations of Democrats--including violations involving privately funded travel. For instance, in April 2005, amid high-profile reports that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay had taken a lobbyist-funded trip, Charles Hurt of the Washington Times reported that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones had taken a trip to Puerto Rico in 2001 that skirted the same ethical boundaries.

On the required disclosure forms, Rep. Jones listed a registered lobbying firm as the sponsor of the trip--a violation of House ethics rules. A spokeswoman for Jones, who sits on the House Ethics Committee, attributed the listing to "human error" and claimed that a nonprofit had paid for the trip. Pelosi and several other Democrats on the trip listed that nonprofit, Todo Puerto Rico con Vieques, as the sponsor. The discrepancy, according to the spokeswoman, occurred because the nonprofit had contracted with the lobbying firm to handle the trip's logistics.

If taken at face value, the "human error" excuse means the trip didn't violate ethics rules, but it exemplifies the kind of coordination between registered lobbying firms (which can't pay for travel) and nonprofits (which can) that Democrats have accused Republicans of masterminding. In May 2001, Pelosi took part in a press conference calling for the United States to discontinue its use of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for Navy training exercises--the goal Todo Puerto Rico con Vieques was founded to achieve. Two months later she was in tropical Puerto Rico with Jones on a "fact-finding mission." What "facts" she was looking for is unknown.

Pelosi had to explain herself again in July 2005. After Tom DeLay's trips came under increased press scrutiny, dozens of lawmakers scrambled to file reports on previously undisclosed junkets. In the midst of this, the Washington Post revealed that Pelosi had failed to report three privately funded trips taken during the previous seven years. The most expensive of the three (an $8,000 excursion to Taiwan for Pelosi and her husband) was paid for by the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce--an organization The Hill, a D.C. newspaper, described as one of two business groups "with close ties to the Taiwanese government [that] have sponsored more than $230,000 in congressional travel between 2000 and 2004 without registering as foreign agents as required by law." Records contained in a study of congressional travel undertaken by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the public-radio program Marketplace, and a documentary unit called American RadioWorks show that the organization spent $189,350 flying American politicians to Taiwan--and that 65 percent of the money was spent on Democrats.

It's not that the Democrats have some special fondness for Taiwan. It's that, according to the Medill study, Democrats take more trips than Republicans in general--over 800 more, since 2000. The study singled out former Democratic senator John Breaux as the "King of Travel." The pharmaceutical industry frequently sponsored three-day weekends in New York and Florida for Breaux in 2003, as he helped write a Medicare bill that added a $500 billion-plus prescription-drug benefit to the nation's health-care entitlements.

Just a day after the Democrats unveiled their reform package, the Boston Globe reported that Democratic congressman Michael E. Capuano had taken one of the most expensive trips of 2005--a $19,000 jaunt to Brazil paid for by an association of businesses with interests in the region. When the Globe confronted Capuano, he said, "My reaction was the same as yours: What the heck cost so much?" According to the Globe, Capuano--a member of the House Transportation Committee--"said he was surprised that his business-class airline seats were so expensive. 'I had no clue,' he said. 'I didn't pay for it.'"

The next day, Bloomberg News Service reported that four Democratic legislators took a trip to Jamaica in early January 2006 and stayed at the Ritz- Carlton, courtesy of Stanford Financial Group, a Caribbean banking interest. According to the Bloomberg report, Congressman Albert Wynn of Maryland "said that while 'clearly travel has been abused' by some lawmakers, if all privately financed trips are eliminated, members of Congress will either have to fly at taxpayers' expense or important regions such as the Caribbean won't get the attention they deserve."

Wynn's going to have a hard time convincing anyone that Democrats are fighting to save privately financed trips out of concern for the taxpayers; these are Democrats, after all. The real reasons Democrats take more trips than Republicans are unclear. One theory is that the Democrats, free of the responsibilities of governing, simply have more time on their hands. In any case, it's clear that the Democrats have grown accustomed to this particular perk. This is not to absolve the Republicans of their promiscuous use of corporate jets and other K Street favors. But Republicans have been willing to go further than the Democrats on the travel issue in their reform package, and as one looks at the record one starts to see why.

Banning private travel is certainly a step in the right direction, as is any measure that reduces the coziness between lobbyists and lawmakers. But in the end, a travel ban addresses the symptoms of the problem and not the cause. As long as legislators can earmark funds for pork projects (like bridges to nowhere and herring museums) and can tinker with the tax code (creating winners and losers in the market), lobbyists will have tremendous incentives to influence Congress, and they will always find ways to do it. Here again, the Democrats stand as obstacles to progress rather than partners in reform: The Democrats love earmarks, and Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that Democrats give up their pork in order to fund Hurricane Katrina relief went nowhere. Rare too is the Democrat who supports the kind of fundamental tax reform--such as a flat tax or a national sales tax--that would eliminate the opportunities for congressional meddling.

If Republicans wait for the Democrats to step up with real compromises that help change the relationship between K Street and Capitol Hill, they are going to be waiting a long time. Republicans have to get serious about limiting the size and scope of the federal government--the real reason businesses spend so much time and money in Washington--and they will probably have to do it without the support of Democrats. Banning privately funded travel is a good start, but without budget reform it's just a red herring bound for its own taxpayer-funded museum.

Mr. Spruiell writes the media blog for National Review Online.