Early last year, two little-known nonprofit groups paid for Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) and his 12-year-old daughter to travel to South Korea and Malaysia. Their last stop was the Berjaya Beach & Spa Resort on the Malaysian island of Langkawi, where they bunked at an oceanfront chalet staffed with a personal butler, got massages and rode water scooters on Burau Bay.
Doolittle's junket, which cost $29,400, was among the most expensive privately sponsored trips by members of Congress in recent years. The two groups that split the bills were not ordinary nonprofits. They were fronts for vigorous lobbying campaigns bankrolled by foreign entities and were operated by a Washington lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group, according to public records and people who worked with the firm.
For five years beginning in 2001, the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council and the U.S.-Malaysia Exchange Association treated 12 members of Congress and 31 Capitol Hill staffers and their relatives to nearly $500,000 in trips that included stops at U.S. and overseas resorts, records show.
[...]
Once a major lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group closed down early this year. Its owner, Edwin A. Buckham, former chief of staff to now-departed House majority leader Tom DeLay, is under investigation in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, according to lawyers and witnesses with knowledge of the probe. Authorities are also reviewing Buckham's use in the 1990s of another nonprofit, the U.S. Family Network, the sources said.The Korean and Malaysian nonprofits were created in 2001. Their combined budgets of more than $2.5 million, as well as their checkbooks and operations, were controlled by Alexander Strategy, according to people affiliated with the firm at the time. Records show that Alexander Strategy took in $620,000 in fees for its work on the Malaysia account. A Hanwha subsidiary in the United States, Universal Bearings Inc., paid the lobbyists $940,000 for the Korea work.
The nonprofit groups, on the strength of Buckham's GOP connections, sponsored trips for Republican House members DeLay; Doolittle; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ander Crenshaw and Tom Feeney of Florida; John Carter of Texas; Scott Garrett of New Jersey; and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
[...]
Doolittle spokeswoman Laura Blackann said last week that the congressman believed that his trip to Asia, in February 2005, was proper and that it had nothing to do with the earmarks. He said he paid out of his own pocket for some of the activities on Langkawi, such as the massages and watercraft rentals.
Other members of Congress said they did not know the source of funding for the nonprofits. Said Mike DeCesare, spokesman for McDermott, "Obviously if Congressman McDermott knew, he wouldn't have taken the trip."
There all saying they didn't know?! The question that's not asked is, who did they think was paying for it. Are we supposed to believe that a member of Congress is offered an overseas trip and the member nor anyone on their staff thinks to ask who is actually paying for the trip? Come on. A lobbying firm doesn't' drop almost $30,000 on one member of Congress and not expect something in return. It's time for a change in TX-31, and Mary Beth Harrell is the candidate to get it done.
