Group blasts lawmakers for paid trip to India

Legislators say the House Ethics Committee approved the trip.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- American technology workers riled by a congressional delegation's $165,000 trip to India say it amounted to little more than a junket promoting offshore outsourcing.
Nine congressmen, mainly pro-labor Democrats from California, New York and Georgia, took the all-expenses-paid trip to India in January. Most took along spouses or legislative aides, and some individual tabs exceeded $10,000.
The Confederation of Indian Industries, a trade group that helps craft India's economic policies and fosters relationships between American and Indian companies, paid for hotels, meals and transportation. CII members include India's pro-outsourcing trade group National Association of Software and Services Companies, and consulting firms that have gained tens of thousands of jobs from U.S. corporations eager to send work to low-wage engineers in India, China and Russia.
During the seven-day trip, New Delhi-based CII organized meetings between high-level politicians from India and the United States. Discussion topics included India's alarming rise in HIV infection, its lack of military participation in Iraq and the increasingly touchy subjects of offshoring and trade.
Critical of trip
The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle-based group trying to unionize white-collar tech workers, complained about the trip and said it would publish details from the lawmakers' travel disclosures on the Internet this week.
"This is why everyday Americans grow cynical about how business is done," said WashTech organizer Marcus Courtney. "They're tired of seeing politicians say they're concerned, then turn around and hop a plane and take tens of thousands of dollars from a group that puts Americans' jobs at risk."
Members of the delegation denied allegations that the trip was a lavish junket. Several legislators -- including Reps. Joe Crowley and Steve Israel of New York, and Reps. Linda Sanchez and Barbara Lee of California -- are long-standing advocates of labor.
Defending the move
Chris McCannell, Crowley's chief of staff and one of three aides who accompanied legislators, emphasized that the U.S. House of Representatives' Ethics Committee approved the trip. Crowley, who voted for a recent appropriations bill that included a ban on offshoring government contracts, accepted the CII gift at the urging of New York City constituents, McCannell said. About 45,000 residents of South Asian descent live in his district.
Sanchez, formerly an executive secretary-treasurer for the AFL-CIO, acknowledged that they flew business class but said the trip was hardly posh. Sanchez and her husband's bill came to $17,339.
A three-hour climate-controlled bus ride from New Delhi to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, turned into a six-hour slog in near-freezing temperatures, Sanchez and others noted.
"Nobody was cooling us with palm fronds and peeling us grapes," Sanchez said.
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