At the heart of the debate is whether these trips should be financed with money from tax payers or private-interest groups. Advocates of the trips say they allow congressmen to see and learn first-hand how legislation could or does affect people, but critics say the trips, particularly the privately funded visits to luxury resorts or foreign countries, give special interest groups unfair access to lawmakers.

Some say simple and up-front transparency around the trips-whether they're public or private-is the first step to distinguishing between those that are frivolous and others that are fruitful.

"We want our elected officials to be informed," said Don Carrington, a vice president at the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based government watchdog group. "The silly junket, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder. Full and prompt disclosure is necessary so that people are free to evaluate these things."

Promptness has not been a hallmark of the North Carolina lawmakers who have taken privately funded trips this year.

Of the 13 privately funded trips North Carolina congress members have taken in 2005, 10 were filed with Congress after the mandated 30-day deadline, according to an analysis of congressional trips by Medill News Service in partnership with American Public Media's Marketplace program and PoliticalMoneyLine.

Rep. David Price, D-4th District, went on a spiritual retreat in January with the Faith and Politics Institute and participated in a civil-rights pilgrimage to Alabama with the same organization in early March, but didn't file trip reports until last month.

"Regarding the travel disclosure forms, they were filed after the 30-day deadline because Faith and Politics provided the information after the deadline," said spokeswoman Bridget Lowell in an e-mail.

Lowell also said Price "doesn't accept travel sponsored by an organization that takes specific positions on bills or that has a specific legislative agenda."

The congressional-travel analysis showed that North Carolina GOP Rep. Howard Coble, 6th District, last month amended reports from travel dating back to 2003, when he took back-to-back trips to Ireland and England. The new information shows different dates, sponsors, travel costs and travel purposes from the original filing.

"We think it was simply a clerical error in how we reported the trip," said Ed McDonald, Coble's chief of staff, adding that the congressman has submitted the report to the House Ethics Committee to examine it for other possible violations.

McDonald said Coble chooses trips based on how they will enhance his committee work.

"He thinks congressional travel sponsored by the taxpayers is what's been really abused over the years," McDonald said. "He'd prefer the privately funded trips."

Costs for government-funded trips, such as the Middle East congressional delegation trip that Price participated in this week, are already factored into federal agency budgets, said House Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield.

"It's not an additional expenditure made by the committee or an agency. It's within existing funds," he said, adding that congressmen usually travel on Air Force planes piloted by cadets who are completing their training hours and are given a per diem that covers reasonable food-and-lodging expenses.

Scofield said these trips, such as the one congressmen took to the region hit by the tsunami in December, help Congress decide how to spend federal dollars overseas.

"Obviously we consider these fairly important oversight functions of the Congress," he said.

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