Washington Jewish Week - 01.19.2006

Washington Jewish Week

Reform, don't ban, travel for lawmakers

Editorial 

When it comes to Washington lobbying, most reasonable people can agree on a few things. Travel to Scottish golf resorts, skybox tickets to athletic events and meals at luxury restaurants do not help lawmakers do a better job of serving the electorate. 

In light of the still-emerging scandal surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff just the most recent and egregious instance of a pervasive culture of corruption in our nation's capital we see a pressing need for political cleanup. 

Proposed measures to curb lobbyist freebies without discernible educational value are vital for restoring trust in Congress and protecting citizens from bad government based too often on quid pro quo, not public interest. 

Yet we worry that congressional leaders, in their rush to reform, risk overreaching with a ban on all lobbyist-funded travel. 

Anyone with a heart for human rights be it in Sudan or the former Soviet Union knows that when lawmakers and their aides travel abroad, they can learn in depth about the plight of oppressed minorities and courageous dissidents. 

Indeed, it's hard to fathom how the Congress could have responded appropriately, as it did in the 1980s, to the plight of Soviet Jews without journeying to Russia to meet some of them. 

Over the years, a host of nonprofits from the American Israel Education Foundation, a supporting organization of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to the American Jewish Committee's Project Interchange, to our local Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington has taken leaders from all levels of government to visit Israel. Such missions offer a way for policy makers to learn about the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S.-Israeli ties in a way that no briefing book can teach. 

On a broader plane, comprehending the depths of global poverty takes seeing widespread hunger, slums and lack of sanitation at first hand. 

And grasping the needs for research, education and prevention in coping with the world's epidemics from the devastating HIV/AIDS plague to the slow-growing but worrisome bird flu outbreak can be aided immeasurably by observation on the ground. 

"There's got to be a balance between criticizing members who are perceived to be taking junkets and those who want to have a better understanding of what's happening around the world," says Mark Levin, executive director of NCSJ-Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia. 

Many such nonprofit advocacy groups in Washington have used trips abroad to educate and inform policy makers about problems hard to see clearly from Capitol Hill. 

Fixing Washington's free market in influence peddling, with attendant junkets, is a worthy goal. Meanwhile, let's remember that helping to lead the world sometimes takes seeing it. Keep travel that teaches while curbing the trips that trap.