There has been a lot of talk today about a WSJ article talking about the totally insane rise of overseas trips taken by members of Congress on the taxpayers dime. If you read Ed at Hot Air you can quickly see where the problem is:

Democrats ran on the Culture of Corruption charge in 2006 and gained control of both chambers of Congress on the promise to clean up Capitol Hill.  The Wall Street Journal finds instead that Democrats have used their power to spend taxpayer dollars on high-priced global travel.  Taxpayer-funded Congressional delegation travel has increased by 50% since the Democrats took charge:

Sounds like the Democrats are just wasting away all our money – doesn’t it? Even the WSJ alludes to this:

Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That’s a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

But that isn’t the worse part. Let’s look at the actual graph the WSJ supplied:Sire

Sure the Democrats have increased the spending by 50%, but what about the almost 600% it went up under Republican control? Ed doesn’t seem to mention that. He also seems to not notice any of the Republicans mentioned in the article, like:

Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, took a cruise on the River Seine with defense-industry executives and elected officials from Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

Or how about:

In October, Rep. Bud Cramer (R., Ala.) spent two weeks in Europe on government business. Reports show that Mr. Cramer spent $5,700 on hotels, meals and incidentals. Mr. Cramer wasn’t running for re-election and left office just two months later.

“Knowing that I was leaving with my 18 years of seniority, I wanted to conclude some issues that I was working on,” Mr. Cramer said. He now works for a lobbying firm in Washington.

This isn’t a partisan issue like Ed tries to make it out. All lawmakers are taking advantage here. But for the hatred of the Malkin crew that’s not the point. “Democrats are wasting money” – that’s what they want to highlight. Just ignore the facts, because if they were paying attention then they would see that the cost of these trips went up about 800% while the Republicans ran the show. That’s right – the Republican controlled Congress saw a rise in travel expenses of 800%. That doesn’t make that 50% under Democratic control seem so bad – does it?

UPDATE:

Thanks to OsborneInk for pointing out that Bud Cramer is actually a Democrat. It looks like the WSJ got that wrong. What I do find interesting is that the WSJ failed to mention all of Tom Delay’s little trips. Or how about Bob Ney? These two names were synonymous with abuse of tax payer funds when they were in office.