Lawmakers push trade with Taiwan

Seven lawmakers fresh from an all-expense-paid trip to Taiwan, courtesy of the Taiwanese government, helped push through a resolution this week calling for Congress and the president to promote trade with the island.

None of the lawmakers filed a disclosure about the recent trip. The State Ethics Commission declined to comment on the lawmakers' actions, but Pamela Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, said that privately paid legislative trips raise ethical concerns because the benefactor is generally looking for something in return.

A spokesman for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Boston said the government invites dozens of public officials from Massachusetts and other states to the island each year to foster friendship and trade and has been doing so for many years.

Eleven lawmakers traveled to Taiwan for the six-day trip. The Taiwanese official declined to say how much the trip cost the government. Seven of the lawmakers signed on as cosponsors of the resolution Several other sponsors of the resolution had been to Taiwan in previous years.

The trip was hardly a vacation, he added. "We met day and night. There was literally no free time."

Other lawmakers who went on the trip this year and cosponsored the resolution are: Senator Gale Candaras and Representatives Ruth Balser, Thomas Golden, and Jay Kaufman.(Source: Andrea Estes, The Boston Globe, Apr 5, 2007).