Ron Paul, as a congressman, does a lot of flying around. And according to Roll Call, he does a lot of getting reimbursed as well:
Roll Call identified eight flights for which the Texas Republican, a GOP presidential candidate and leading champion of smaller government, was reimbursed twice for the same trip. Roll Call also found dozens more instances of duplicate payments for travel from 1999 to 2009, totaling thousands of dollars’ worth of excess payments, but the evidence in those cases is not as complete.
…
For example, on March 24, 2003, Paul purchased a round-trip flight from Washington, D.C., to Houston for $651.50. Several weeks later, filings with the FEC show, the Committee to Re-Elect Ron Paul paid $651.50 for the Continental Airlines ticket. Congressional expenditure records show Paul also was reimbursed $651.50 by taxpayers for the same flight.
Paul filed articles of dissolution for Ron Paul & Associates Inc. in 2001 with the Texas secretary of state, but the company’s corporate credit card was used for years afterward, the records show.
Well then. I don’t know if this was erroneous or intentional, and because I don’t know the exact nature of the trips I don’t know if they should be paid for by the campaign or the House. But I do know they should not be paid for by both.
This is exactly the kind of thing you don’t want to see from someone whose career is based on cutting government spending.
Leave a Reply