According to the conservative organization Judicial Watch, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) continues to misuse Air Force planes and her staff isn’t afraid to bully the Pentagon into giving them what she wants. They say she has made “unprecedented demands” for certain aircraft and frequently cancelled trips on the last minute, causing both inconvenience and considerable unnecessary expense.
The Speaker of the House, as the second in line to the presidency after the Vice President, has been granted military transport since September 11, 2001 for security reasons. Shortly after taking office in 2007, Pelosi was criticized for a request to use a larger plane than her predecessor, Dennis Hastert, had used to fly back and forth from his home district in Illinois.
However, it was House Sergeant at Arms Bill Livingood, of his own accord, who asked the Pentagon if the new Speaker could use a larger plane that would be capable of flying all the way from Washington, DC to her home district in California without a stop for refueling. Although the Bush White House defended Livingood and Pelosi, Republicans blasted her for perceived greed.
Judicial Watch, not wanting to let a good controversy die, recently submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for emails between Pelosi’s staff and the Department of Defense (DoD) as well as internal DoD communications on Pelosi’s travel arrangements. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton says these documents taken together show that Pelosi “treats the Air Force like her personal airline.”
However, the evidence seems to be in the eye of the beholder. While Judicial Watch focused on certain lines in emails, such as a Pelosi aid responding to a requested aircraft not being available with "This is not good news, and we will have some very disappointed folks, as well as a very upset speaker," they ignore the fact that Pelosi averaged just one round-trip home per month while Hastert travelled home almost every weekend on military aircraft.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that all of Pelosi’s domestic trips were on smaller executive aircraft and not on an Air Force C-40, the equivalent of a Boeing 737, which she has frequently been accused of doing by critics. While she did use larger planes for trips by congressional delegations abroad, this has long been standard practice.
Finally, Judicial Watch accuses Pelosi of frequently cancelling trips at the last minute and cites an internal DoD email complaining about the explicit and hidden costs of these cancellations, "We have...folks prepping the jets and crews driving in (not a short drive for some), cooking meals and preflighting the jets etc." On this point, Judicial Watch does have some standing. It appears, however, that Pelosi learned from the early criticism and has only cancelled a trip on the last minute in recent months one time, when the House was in the midst of intense debate over the $700 billion bank bail-out bill.
While it is fair to question how congressional members and their leaders are using taxpayer funds, it seems that Judicial Watch and their conservative allies are trying too hard here to stir up a scandal that simply doesn’t exist. At worst, it seems Pelosi may be guilty of hiring aides whose email etiquette is lacking.
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