Dubrovnic Resort in CroatiaNearly 400 employees of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have racked up more than a $100,000 each in taxpayer-funded travel since 2005, government records show.

Some of those employees were undoubtedly pursuing critical missions – ensuring the safety of foreign-made drugs, working to slow the spread of HIV and other deadly diseases, or providing on-site support after the devastating earthquake in Haiti this year.

But an analysis of the Department of Health and Human Services’ computerized travel database, obtained by JunketSleuth through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that more than half of the trips by department employees fell into more mundane categories, such as meetings, conferences, training sessions and speeches.

JunketSleuth’s analysis of more than 450,000 Health and Human Services travel records dating back to early 2005 found that its employees went to all 50 states, four U.S. territories and 191 foreign countries.

The combined cost of all of the trips in the database was $530.1 million.

HHS employees made more than 1,000 trips to China, and hundreds to other international destinations, including Switzerland, South Africa, Kenya, Thailand, India, France, Germany, Italy and Brazil.

The records show dozens of trips to lesser-known countries such as Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Botswana. Even more obscure destinations included the Faroe Islands, Djbouti, The Maldives, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Reunion Island and Tuvalu.

JunketSleuth is still analyzing the data, to identify travel patterns and to find trips that might represent questionable uses of taxpayer dollars. We also have requested the paper records for some of the travelers, including their airline and hotel receipts, to get a better sense of how public money was spent.

JunketSleuth has obtained full or partial travel databases from more than 25 government agencies, and is in the process of cleaning and simplifying those records so that they can be presented in searchable form on this site.

THE AGENCY’S MISSION

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is charged with protecting public health and providing essential human services. It is one of the government’s largest agencies, accounting for almost a quarter of the federal budget.

The department is made up 10 major entities, including the Public Health Service (PHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which insures one of every four Americans.

Spokesman Bill Hall said HHS's mission extends to foreign countries through its grants programs, its role in ensuring the safety of food and drug imports, and its outreach efforts to prevent and track dangerous diseases that could threaten the United States.

The FDA now has offices in China, India and Mexico, where employees monitor the safety of food and drugs bound for the United States. The CDC works with foreign health agencies around the world to assist in disease prevention, and its health professionals also travel the world to monitor health threats.

 “A virus can travel around the world in days,” Hall said, adding that the recent threat by the H1N1 virus is a good example.

Hall cautioned that it’s easy to look at raw HHS travel data and see what appear to be abuses.

“You have to look at the facts behind the raw data to know the role HHS plays in world health,”
he said.

HHS had 71,680 employees in 2009, the most recent year for which figures were available. Its total operating budget for the 2010 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, was $860 billion.

REASONS FOR TRAVEL

JunketSleuth’s analysis found that the reason most often cited for HHS trips was “site visit.” That category accounted for more than 98,000 trips, or more than 20 percent of all trips in the database.

Conferences ranked second, with just over 65,000 trips, or 16 percent of the total. Speeches or other presentations accounted for more than 29,000 trips, or roughly 7 percent of all trips

Some 47,000 trips, or about 11 percent of the total, had only the word “meeting” listed for the purpose of the trip.

The database also included temporary assignments to Washington D.C., Atlanta and other key Health and Human Services cities. Some of those assignments lasted for weeks and ran into the tens of thousands of dollars.

The travel records show that HHS employees made 23 trips that included stops in the walled city of Dubrovnik, Croatia, a resort destination that features a 12th Century cathedral, a 14th Century Franciscan monastery and topless beaches along the Adriatic Sea. The total cost of those trips was roughly $175,000.

According to the agency’s database, 19 of those trips were for conferences, meetings or speeches. Records show that nine HHS employees traveled to Dubrovnik the same week in May 2008 for a public health conference.

The database shows that HHS employees took 138 trips that included stops in Jackson, Wyo. – another tourist destination that serves as a gateway to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Those trips cost $211,914.

The Jackson Hole area also is a popular spot for conferences. In late September, representatives from the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and other HHS agencies participated in a meeting on HIV and Liver Disease at the Jackson Lake Lodge. 

TOP ADMINISTRATORS

The HHS travel database includes 24 trips for current HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, with a total cost of just $20,582. Based on the destinations, it appears that the expenses for some of the trips include only a portion of the actual costs.

The database shows that former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt took 150 publicly funded trips, costing $227,354, all of which were listed under the category “speech or presentation.” Those travels included visits to Mali, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Switzerland, Pakistan, Indonesia, Panama, France, Singapore, Laos, Austria and Costa Rica.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2006 that Leavitt used one of the CDC’s leased jets – a Gulfstream III meant to be used in responding to emergencies – to travel the country promoting changes in Medicare drug-benefit program and other HHS initiatives.

The Journal-Constitution said the 19 trips cost taxpayers more than $700,000, expenses not included in the HHS travel database. The paper noted that, on two occasions, CDC officials responding to actual emergencies had to use another aircraft because Leavitt was using the jet.

Leavitt stepped down from his position in 2009.

Sen. Charles Grassley

Earlier this year, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Sebelius, expressing concern about rising foreign travel spending at the department.

Grassley cited an HHS memo showing that international travel expenses rose nearly 14 percent, to $63.2 million, from fiscal 2007 to fiscal 2008. He asked for updated figures that would show whether the upward trend had continued.

Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, noted that the global response to the H1N1 virus could have contributed to the rising travel costs. But he also called attention to disparities in the average cost per trip for employees of different HHS agencies.

For example, he pointed out that the average cost per international trip for the Food and Drug Administration was $6,992 in fiscal 2008, up 7.6 percent from the previous year. The average cost for the Centers for Disease Control was $6,187, an increase of roughly 2.1 percent.

However, the average cost per international trip for the National Institutes of Health was just $4,185 – 40 percent lower than the average cost for the FDA.

CHARTER FLIGHTS

Grassley noted in a letter to Sebelius in May that HHS spent roughly $878,000 to charter four separate aircraft to fly 76 employees to American Samoa last year, when a single jet could have transported all of them.

According to the letter, HHS spent $194,456 to charter a Gulfstream V business jet that carried 14 people from Portland, Ore., to American Samoa, shortly after that U.S. territory was hit by an earthquake and a related tsunami.

The agency spent $147,642 for a second jet, a Gulfstream IV, which carried seven people and left 15 minutes after the first one.

HHS paid $198,376 for the use of a third jet, a Gulfstream 550, which carried 12 people from Portland to American Samoa. Finally, it paid $337,950 to charter a Boeing 737 that had a seating capacity of 177 but carried just 43 passengers.

All four of the chartered aircraft took off from Portland within five hours of one another.

According to Grassley, Sebelius herself used a chartered jet to travel between events in Overland Park, Kan., and Omaha, Neb. The two cities are about 180 miles apart.

Grassley said that, rather than taking a three-hour car trip to Omaha, Sebelius rode from Overland Park to Topeka, Kan., where she boarded an Eclipse 500 jet that took her to Omaha. The cost to taxpayers was more than $8,000.

Grassley said in a third letter earlier this month that his staff had repeatedly tried to get written assurances that HHS had not used jets for short-range trips on other occasions, but that no such assurances had been given.

Nor, he said, had the department responded to a request for a list of all charter-aircraft trips by its personnel. (The cost of chartered aircraft does not seem to be included in the travel database that JunketSleuth obtained from HHS.)

"American taxpayers trust their government to treat hard-earned tax dollars carefully and spent it frugally," Grassley said. "Spending thousands of dollars to save such a small amount of time betrays this trust. I urge the Department to be more prudent in future travel spending, and trust you will take whatever actions necessary to reduce wasteful spending in the future."

Four of HHS’ top five travelers, in terms of dollars spent, were not high-ranking officials, but rather were key players in programs aimed at combating the global spread of smoking and HIV/AIDS.

Each of those travelers – Charles Warren, Naomi Bock, John Nkengasong and Samira Asma – had more than $350,000 in travel spending, the bulk of it international.

Julie L Gerberding, a doctor who headed the CDC from 2002 to 2009, was fifth on the spending list, with 125 trips that cost roughly $335,000. Her itineraries included visits to Beijing; Baghdad; Singapore; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Zanzibar, Tanzania; and Lima, Peru.

The database listed a 9-day trip to Beijing and Bangkok, Thailand, at a cost of $12,343, a six-day trip to Addis Ababa that cost $12,195 and a six-day trip to Kennebunkport, Maine, and Dalian, China that cost $10,912.

Gerberding left the federal government at the end of last year, and went to work for Merck & Co. as president of its vaccines division.

Next on the HHS travel list was Murray M. Lumpkin, a doctor who is the FDA’s deputy commissioner for international programs. Records show that he took 40 trips with a total cost of $328,116. His travels took him to nearly 20 foreign countries, including China, India, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Lumpkin's itineraries included a nine-day trip to Beijing, Taipei, Taiwan, and Singapore last year that cost $17,247; a three-day trip to London in 2008 that cost $10,562 and a four-day trip to Frankfurt, Germany in 2007 that cost $8,669.  

The database shows that Washington was the most common destination for domestic trips by HHS employees. Geneva, Switzerland, home of the World Health Organization, was the top destination for foreign trips.

Although most of the trips in the HHS database had average costs of less than $1,000 a day, JunketSleuth turned up a number of exceptions. For example, we found a 12-day trip to Kenya in 2007 that cost $27,022, a five-day trip to Bordeaux, France in 2008 that cost $12,266, and a five-day trip to Ankara, Turkey in 2009 that cost $12,390. 

JunketSleuth will continue to analyze and report on HHS’ travel spending. We also will add a travel database for another government agency next week. Stay tuned.

Reference links:

Grassley’s February 17, 2010 letter to Secretary Sebelius about this issue is available here.
Grassley’s May 5, 2010 letter to Secretary Sebelius about this issue is available here.
Grassley’s October 4, 2010 letter to Secretary Sebelius about this issue is available here.

– Russell Carollo contributed reporting and analysis for this article.