07 January 2001
Boondoggle

Gentle Readers,

The composition of Congress has been much on our minds this last several months. It made me think of gentler days up on The Hill, and we thought it was bare-knuckles way back when. Not so much any more. We who worked the political side of Department business traveled with Blue and Red staff and members, and even had a pretty good time while conducting the Nation’s business. Like I said, not to much any more.
– Vic (November 2018)

The term “Boondoggle” is derived from the Middle English “boon,” or pleasant flavor, and “doggle,” or pack of slavering wolves.

I am leaving on a boondoggle tomorrow. This is a boondoggle of the Congressional variety, arguably one of the spectacular of the breed. The term is normally used disparagingly by co-workers.

“Oh,” they will say. “You are off on a boondoggle.” The clear connotation is that you are shirking work, frittering away the taxpayers money, and generally tip-toeing the line of propriety. I’ll grant you there is some basis to that thesis.

I will not deny that you get free headsets on the jet.

But I was on a boondoggle one time that got a Nobel Laureate released from house arrest and normalized relations with Vietnam, too. So you have to take things in context.

A Congressional Boondoggle works like this: a Member, Senator or Staffer decides they need to go somewhere to investigate some issue. Working conditions at the Louis Viton luggage plant in Paris, for example. Arms control issues in Geneva. Trade issues anywhere. They take the particu issue and a proposal for travel to the Chairman of their respective Committee.

The Chairman then signs out a letter to whatever Agency happens to have responsibility for the issue in the Executive Branch. The Agency hands the request over to its Congressional Liaison shop, which assigns a middling-senior specialist to arrange the trip.

That includes tickets, reservations, State Department clearances, the whole shooting match. It’s really quite elegant. Congress doesn’t have to cough up the money for the trip. It all comes out of the individual budgets of the Agencies or Departments. And you will love this: the Appropriations Committees, the ones who REALLY dole out the dough, insist on having a separate system to handle their needs. But I won’t go into that- it would seem to make this process cumbersome and duplicative.

There are a lot of moving parts to the grand democracy. A huge chunk of the resources that support Congress is buried elsewhere. For example, if all the military folks who are “detailed” to work on the Hill were directed to wear their uniforms one day, it would look like there had been a coup. But they wear plain clothes, for the most part, and of course their salaries are paid by the Defense Department. All the Agencies have people up on the Hill on detail. This keeps the staff off the Congressional books. It’s part of the same loopy but compelling argument that has people spending millions to get elected to jobs that pay $148,000 a year.

The are strap-hangers and horse-holders, too.

Which would be me, and people like me. There are three of us on this trip.
Any graduate of a high school civics class knows that the Government cannot lobby itself. That would be wrong.

But it is entirely appropriate to provide timely information to decision-makers to ensure that the fact-finding trips indeed find the right facts. There is nothing quite so unsettling as knowing there is a Congressional Delegation out there somewhere, talking to other disgruntled bureaucrats. Drastic changes to the budget can result, and the time spent trying to correct impressions warrants having someone along to provide damage control on-the-spot.

Perceptions are everything. And in this town, if you have to explain something in the Washington Post, you have already lost.

Boondoggles travel Business Class, but only on flights outside the Continental United States so it isn’t quite so visible. It’s all legit, and it is right there in the Government Travel Regulations. Shouldn’t even feel guilty about it. I mean, for tomorrow’s adventure, we leave Dulles at ten in the morning and get into Tokyo the following afternoon, and are expected to listen attentively to some folks from the Embassy on arrival.

Industry recognizes the importance of a little extra comfort in long distance travel, but let’s face it: it’s a guilty pleasure. If we were paying for it ourselves, we’d be in the back with all the other main-cabin trash. And since we are actually providing timely information, or at least have the potential to do so, it is important to be right there with the members of the delegation.

Guilty pleasures aside, this is an actual working trip. We hit Tokyo and for twenty-five hours on the ground. We then slog back out past Tokyo Disney World to the fortress airport and jet off for Shanghai. We get in late, hit the hotel and rise relaxed and refreshed for meetings beginning at eight. We are back on the way to the airport by two that afternoon, and God willing, in Seoul Korea that night.

This is what is known in the trade as a “bag-dragger.” The senior member of the Delegation is known as a bear for work, and not afraid to request formal briefings in the evening if that is what he desires.

He likes to regularly run the traps overseas, feeling it is his duty. Last time it was Saudi and Bahrain. Africa was the trip before that. With all the interest in the looming China Threat and the unsettling prospect of Korean unification, it is time for him to re-visit Northeast Asia. Something might be up.
The itinerary winds it’s way through Hawaii (“Let’s see: It’s January in Northern China. Then Waikiki. Do I have galoshes and flip-flops in the bag?”). Onward, northeast then through the Pacific Northwest before finally running out of steam in Alaska. Never in a hotel more than one night, so it is pointless to unpack. We return to Dulles International around midnight on Day Eleven.

The places sound glamorous in the planning phase, but now that I am looking at packing lightly for tropics and arctic, and realizing I am actually going to be spending a week and a half my time looking at the back of somebody’s seat. I am having an attack of last-minute travel anxiety. But at least the headsets are free and the bar is open and complementary on overseas flights. Has to be; somebody might have a question. (“Another Magnum!” shouted the Senator. “And keep them coming!”).

I have finished packing. The muk-luks and sunscreen are stowed away in the luggage and I am ready for the taxi to Dulles. In the coming weeks, we will be talking to many people about significant issues involving your taxpayer dollars, you can be sure.

You man sleep well in the complete confidence that I will be available to provide timely information to whoever might need it. And if you need a favor, or help in beating back a pack of slavering Congressional wolves, this is just the boondoggle to do it.

Copyright 2001 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com