Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel said Thursday that GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay did nothing wrong by taking several trips abroad and having the costs picked up by lobbyists, and even praised the top Republican - after he was confronted with NewsMax's report detailing his own congressional junkets.
"Personally, Tom DeLay and I get along," Engel told WWRL Radio's Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter, before offering the GOP leader backhanded compliment:
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"Tom DeLay is a tough guy. You know something, I wish we had some of that toughness on the Democratic side."
Asked about his own junkets, which - as NewsMax reported on Wednesday, included stays in first-class hotels in San Juan, Las Vegas, Wyoming, Florida, New Orleans, London and Jerusalem - Engel was unapologetic.
"These people that talk about congressional trips - it's really silly," he insisted. "They're really saying that people in Congress shouldn't take trips at all."
The Bronx Democrat said that unless members of Congress are allowed to have their travel expenses picked up either by the taxpayers or private groups, only wealthy members who can afford to travel will be able to go on fact finding missions.
"I don't think it's good to only have multimillionaires in the United States Congress" able to travel, he told WWRL. "Some of us come from working families and we can't pay for these trips ourselves."
Asked to explain why he took wife, son and daughter on some of his fact-finding missions, Engel explained: "I'm a good father"
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