Yesterday the Senate Rules and Administration Committee held a hearing on lobbying reform. Apparently Rick Santorum had a memory lapse when he brought up the subject of third-party travel (travel paid for by lobbyists or other organizations). Here is an excerpt from the Lexis-Nexis transcript:
SANTORUM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to talk about one particular area that has not come up in detail in the discussion so far, and that's the issue of travel -- because I know those of us who have been working on this, we've been getting a lot of pushback from members with respect to third-party travel.
And I just want to -- for full disclosure, I'm at the bottom of the third-party travel in the United States Senate. The only traveling I do is to and from my state and driving my kids all over the place. (emphasis ours)
The problem with that statement is that Rick seems to be forgetting about his trips to
Rome,
Florida,
Ohio, and
Rome again. And, of course, his
fundraising trip to Florida aboard Walmart's private jet, which he was only required to reimburse at the rate of a first-class ticket.
Why do you think Rick's memory has been failing him so badly over the last few months?
