Paul, Rubio did not mix political and official trips

WASHINGTON — Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have apparently concluded that politics and Senate business don't mix.

Senators are allowed to mix political and official travel and bill taxpayers for a portion of the costs, but the two GOP senators have avoided doing so while building national profiles over the past several years.

Paste BN has reported in recent weeks that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas — who has announced that he will run for president — and former senator Hillary Clinton used taxpayer funds from their Senate offices to travel around the country on trips that had a political component. Such expenditures are legal, and The Washington Post opined that the senators' use of mixed-purpose trips was "like everyone else."

Rubio and Paul have avoided taxpayer-funded mixed-purpose trips in the run-up to the 2016 campaign season. Paul announced his presidential campaign Tuesday, and Rubio is likely to follow suit next week. Clinton is likely to announce her candidacy imminently.

Paul and Rubio combined have reported taking 340 taxpayer-funded trips since early 2011, according to Senate spending records compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit group advocating government transparency. Only four of these trips included locations outside the lawmakers' home state (though for Paul, his "home state" includes the Nashville, Cincinnati and Charleston, W.Va., airports).

"Our Senate office only funds travel for official Senate purposes," said Rubio spokeswoman Brooke Sammon, and Rubio "rarely has mixed travel."

In October 2011, Rubio's Senate office paid for him to travel from Washington to New York for an interview with journalist Bill O'Reilly for his Fox News program. Rubio used that interview to defend himself against charges that he has misrepresented his family history to suggest his parents fled Cuba and the reign of Fidel Castro. They actually left the country before Castro took power.

After the interview, Rubio continued on to Miami; taxpayers paid $617 for the full trip, plus $300 for a staff member's New York travel.

Paul's office did not comment for this article. In May 2013, the senator traveled to Iowa for several political events, including a speech at the annual Iowa Republican Lincoln dinner. His Senate office reports a travel itinerary that includes Cedar Rapids, Nashville and his hometown of Bowling Green, Ky., but the total taxpayer cost was only $322, suggesting that the office expenses were only for the Kentucky/Nashville portions.

Cruz's and Clinton's offices noted that taxpayers paid only for the official portions of their trips, not the political portions, as Senate rules allow.

Bill Allison, senior fellow at Sunlight, said the data show "there are some candidates who don't mind combining campaign and official business" while others "are at least conscious that they should be separate things." Allison points out that when senators take privately funded trips, there is generally some public statement of the purpose of the travel, but the same is not true of trips paid for out of their office accounts. "With taxpayer supported travel, there is no justification that they are required to provide."