Senate on junkets: Ban 'em and take 'em

by Mark Silva

A couple of weeks after the Senate approved a measure limiting "luxury" spending for corporate travel by recipients of federal bailout dollars, two dozen senators of both parties left town for political meetings on the Florida coast.

" Hotel-industry leaders are seizing on those trips as ammunition in a campaign to get lawmakers and the Obama administration to tone down the rhetoric against business travel, which they say is adding to their economic difficulties,'' Bloomberg News reports.

""It's just the hypocrisy," said Frank Fahrenkopf, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and now president of the Washington-based American Gaming Association, one of the groups urging politicians to moderate the criticism. "We've got to have Washington stop beating up on us."

Bloomberg's Lorraine Woellert reports that on March 11, "hotel executives including Jonathan M. Tisch, chairman of New York-based Loews Corp., which operates a chain of 18 hotels in North America, Bill Marriott, chairman of Bethesda, Maryland-based Marriott International Inc., the biggest U.S. lodging chain, and Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, a unit of Burbank, California-based Walt Disney Co. that operates its theme parks, met with President Barack Obama and three Democratic senators to express their concern.''

"We've seen companies cancel meetings last minute, leaving 100 percent on the table just to avoid criticism and ridicule," said Frits van Paasschen, president and chief executive of White Plains, New York-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., the third-largest U.S. lodging company, who attended the White House meeting. "We've also seen meeting planners move meetings from resort locations to city locations, at a greater cost to their companies, again, for optics' sake.''

Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat and chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sponsored the amendment to the $787 billion stimulus package that requires companies that received funds from the Troubled Assets Recovery Plan to curb "excessive or luxury expenditures," including spending on events and private jets.

Over the weekend of Feb. 27, Bloomberg reports," two weeks after the Senate passed the measure, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party fundraising arms for Senate candidates, each held their annual winter meetings in Florida. About a dozen Democrats, including Dodd, 64, gathered at the Marriott-operated Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, Fla. Donors who gave at least $15,000 were invited and offered a "coastal view" room at the group rate of $469, according to the Democrats' invitation.

At least 11 Republican senators held a similar retreat at The Breakers resort in Palm Beach. Rooms could be had for $475 a night. For another $292, participants could play in a golf tournament. The invitation urged guests to make reservations for the resort's spa "indulgences."

Dodd spokeswoman Kate Szostak didn't return phone calls and emails seeking comment. Afshin Mohamadi, a spokesman for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, didn't return a call seeking comment. Democratic committee spokesman Eric Schultz said the group doesn't comment on its fundraising.

Brian Walsh, spokesman for the Republican Senate Committee, which is led by Sen; John Cornyn of Texas, said the spending for the congressional meetings in no way resembles the actions of financial institutions that accepted billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts and then spent money on sales meetings and conventions.

"This was not paid for by taxpayers or the government," Walsh said. "It's private donations from contributors,"