On tonights Australian TV program Foreign Correspondent (at the time of posting the transcript was not been ) the UP journalist Martin Walker made the observation that “less than one in five members of Congress have a passport”.
Could this really be correct?
Does this mean that 80% of US legislators have not been outside the US apart from trips to Canada and Mexico? (I also guess members who served tours of duty in the military didn’t need to have passports)
Don’t members of the House and Congress go on study trips to see whether there is intelligent life outside of the US and or would that be considered subversive behaviour best left to the CIA?
Should other countries offer members tourist visa to come and see that 1) we exist, 2) don’t have two heads, 3) if you cut us we bleed, 4) some of us can talk good English and 5) most of us have the same basic aspirations as Americans?
As a dammned higgnorant furriner I’m just flabbergasted at this level of engagement with the rest of the world from both Houses and sides in US politics. Maybe the steel tariff fiasco was actually a case of “It could have been much worse”?
1 in 5 sounds low, but not improbable. If a member of Congress was called upon to go on a boondoggle, er, fact-finding mission to some far-away locale, there are measures in place to get a passport in a relative hurry (2 weeks as opposed to the normal 6).
Er, is there some kind of rule that members of U.S. Congress are required to leave the U.S. at some point in their careers?
As a matter of fact, when they do go, you wouldn’t believe the degree of whingeing and whining that emanates from the Esteemed Electorate. Accusations of “junketing!” are heard, from California to the New York island. “A waste of taxpayer money” is the kindest thing that’s said. So, many legislators, not wishing to rattle the bars of the Electoral Tiger’s cage too much, simply stay home, especially in an election year.
So, tell us how they do these things Down Under, bub. Maybe before you start pushing the “ah, those xenophobic Yanks” button, you could get back to me with a statistical breakdown of how many members of the Australian Parliament have passports, and how many of them routinely leave the Land of Oz to see how the rest of the world does things.
You are probably better off without their visits, given the caliber of some of our politicos.
At BC made up for a lot of that, with his famous trips - delegations consisting of hundreds, and once over a thousand I think. That should be good for some cultural exchange, what?
Also, I’m not sure how many of those congress persons are just holding expired passports, (I think they expire after eight years?) and may have been abroad prior to their unfortunate election to office. Perhaps some have studied abroad, which could also explain some of the Marxists views in Congress. (On second thoaght, we have plenty of Marxists teaching in our own Universities…)
Just a quick note; the data concerned isn’t public access but I made a call to a very helpful person in the Parliamentary Relations Office who said they would try to extract the data for me. I presume that a “personal reference” cite will suffice?
OK, the Parliamentary Relations Office haven’t got back to me yet so I did the long way.
According to my reading of their biographies on the Parliament of Australia site, 69 of the 150 members of the House of Representatives and 59 of the 76 Senators have been in a parliamentary delegation or attended a conference overseas in the last 5-6 years. That’s 56%.
Add those who may have travelled outside for personal/non parliamentary reasons (e.g. Pat Farmer, the distance runner, Helen Coonan, previously an attorney in New York, George Campbell who attended any number of International Labour Union forums etc) and the number who hold passports/travel might reach 2/3rds.
I’d prefer if it was higher but that’s a healthy base.
So there you go ducky, not definitive but a reasonable inference as to the proportion of Australian pollies who are seeing how the rest of the world does things.
wooly, you are from australia, which, like canada (where I’m from), is still part of the commonwealth, and I bet you’ll find many visits by mps are to other commonwealth nations.
Canadian mps often visit commonwealth countries for a variety of reasons esp. summits and the like, I’d also assume australia has a similar policy.
America not being aligned in such a manner with other nations would not have the need for such visits, as well as the fact that the paliamentary system used by can, aust, etc differs from the us system in that parliamentary cabinet members (the most likely to travel abroad on official business) are house members, whereas in the us the cabinet is appointed by the president, and is not composed of members of congress.
As for non-official visits, it seems to me that americans in general seem to be less interested/educated about the rest of the world than many outside america, so its no surprize that their elected officials, who are also americans, would be much different.
I’d wager a guess that this is partly a result of america being an exporter of culture… its a lot easier for the small to see the giant than the other way around.
–Strange thing: canadians need a passport to visit commonwealth countries -(including the uk, where all commonwealth citizens can vote, and our head of state lives), but do not need one to travel to the states - a non commonwealth country.[/highjack]
For the sake of argument, U.S. passports expire after ten years, so it’s certainly possible that some simply have been too busy fighting off scandals and kissing babies door to door.
Eh. Who am I kidding? It seems most Americans are too self-absorbed to worry about the rest of world unless there’s a war on.
