Official Travel

Official travel is not subject to the time limits imposed by the House gift rule (House Rule 25, clause 5).25  To receive reimbursement, however, a House traveler must follow the usually traveled routes.  A traveler who chooses an indirect route or stops along the way for nonofficial purposes will be personally responsible for any added expense.26

The Committee on House Administration’s regulations encourage the official use of travel awards acquired while on official business.  The Members’ Handbook states:

Free travel, mileage, discounts, upgrades, coupons, etc., awarded at the sole discretion of a company as a promotional award may be used at the discretion of the Member or the Member’s employee. The [Committee on House Administration] encourages the official use of these travel promotional awards wherever practicable.

The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 clarified one point regarding the use of official and campaign vehicles.27  The Bipartisan Task Force wished to approve the incidental use of these vehicles for nonofficial or nonpolitical purposes, respectively, to reflect the reality that a Member may attend numerous events in the course of a single day, some of which may be official in nature while others are political.28  It would be impractical under such circumstances to require the Member to keep switching cars as the Member travels from one function to the next.  Members should, however, maintain records of the mileage attributable to official, political, and personal trips to ensure that no account is subsidizing another and that any crossover use of a vehicle is indeed incidental.  Thus, with respect to nonofficial use of official vehicles, the Task Force recommended “that such incidental use should be during the course of and along the route of a day’s official itinerary, incidental to the day’s official business, de minimis in nature, frequency and time consumed, and otherwise not constitute a significant activity or event.”29  During the 109th Congress, the House Rules were amended to permit a Member to lease or purchase a motor vehicle with campaign funds and to use that vehicle on an unlimited basis for travel for both campaign and official House purposes.  See Chapter 4 on campaign activity for further guidance.

Example 7.  Member G has four official events to attend in his district one day.  He will be traveling between events in the car leased for the use of his congressional district office and paid for out of official expenses allowance.  As he drives from the second to the third event, he will pass by the dry cleaner.  He may stop to pick up his dry cleaning, as it would be a permissible incidental nonofficial use of the car.

The Committee on House Administration should be consulted before seeking reimbursement from official allowances for official mileage.  The Federal Election Commission should be consulted for guidance on reimbursement to the campaign for any personal mileage.