Republican leaders need more luxury jets for globe trotting vacations

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/07/republican-leaders-need-more-luxury-jets-for-globe-trotting-vaca/

Republican leaders need more luxury jets for globe trotting vacations
Peter Cohan
Aug 7th 2009 at 10:45A

After losing an effort to block $2 billion more for one of President Barack H. Obama's successful initiatives -- the "cash for clunkers" program -- The Wall Street Journal reports that two leading Republicans are using taxpayer money to take their colleagues on vacations around the world.

Fortunately, their demands are leading Congress to buy more luxury aircraft which at least will benefit two American companies -- $350 million for Boeing (BA) and $198 million for Gulfstream International (GIA). But with 6.5 million Americans out of work, does this send the right signal?


Those two Republicans are prominent in the House and Senate. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is leading five other lawmakers on a trip around the world; and Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) is taking a group of senators and their spouses to Europe for three weeks. These are just two of 11 separate taxpayer-funded August 2009 junkets for our Congress.

What is most interesting is where Congress is taking these luxury aircraft: Kuwait, Germany and Austria are the three most popular destinations. I cannot imagine why it is important for taxpayers to pay for these trips, and they do raise lots of questions, here are two:
Why can't Congress people travel on commercial aircraft and pay for that travel with their own money?
What possible constituent benefit can come from Congressional travel to these countries?

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[Historic NY]

1. So Democrat leaders should say NO..how hard is that.

[HillbillyBob]

2. How nice for them, my partner are scrimping to

repair our 11 year old pickup truck so it will pass state safety inspection one more time.It is safe to drive buy I was hit in the rear by a crazy driver doing 50 while I was sitting at a traffic light, we got the repair check from her insurance company that will cover the cost of the bumper, but bad gas killed the catalytic converter so to change that out the exhaust system has to be removed and reinstalled as its original OEM and welded on.
We are planing our first and only ever vacation to go to Vermont to get married.
We are working class guys who have never had a vacation since our working lives have been since runnyrayguns reforms killed unions.
We are like most everyone else, pay check to pay check, heaven forbid we miss a paycheck. I am on disability so my paycheck is retirement pay, but it's not much.
The R idiots are bitchin about health care for all, which by the way needs to include proper exercise and diet information and outlawing the crap that is sold as food in the grocery stores.
I personally don't buy much of that stuff, that has corn syrup or corn syrup solids, hydrolyzed/hydrogenated oils of any kind. If it has hydrolyzed or hydrogenated think of it this way you are putting plastic in your body. If we were not being mislead as to what is food we would not have the obesity and diabetic problems that are a good chunk of why our health care cost so much.
My father, grandfather and great grandfather are/were diabetic from being fed this crap since ww2. I was close to being diabetic and was obese, I have lost a bunch of weight by eliminiating this crap from my diet( I do cheat now and then and have stuff I should not have , but moderation in all things which we all seem to have a problem with) I am now normal weight, bp, cholesterol, blood sugar etc because we are careful and try to grow our own food, we also buy local too.
We have mostly moved out of the consumer society as much as we could.

Why is it that the rpigs can take world trips while we are trying to figure out how to reduce our outlay costs , and our load on the environment?

[DemoTex]

3. As an aviation writer, I flew both the G-V and the Boeing BBJ.

Now, I am in the Oregon wilderness and I don't even look up when an airplane flies over.

[obliviously]

4. What a couple of dumb asses! nt