The Ethics of Expenses

There was an interesting story on ABC News this past week about American Airlines charging their now infamous extra bag fee to soldiers on their way back to the war zones in Asia. Most of the other major carriers either have or will shortly be introducing such fees, and indications are that they will also charge soldiers for bringing an extra duffel bag with them. This is being portrayed as a huge corporation putting the screws to the brave troops, who are then facing a huge hardship in trying to pay the fees. But as usual, the truth is it’s not that simple. I thought it was worth a closer look…

In the first place, it’s important to understand that the troops aren’t actually paying these fees out of pocket; they submit expense vouchers to the Army, which pays them back for travel expenses, just like any other government employer – or most civilian ones, if it comes to that. There are official Army rules about that, of course, which determine how much baggage the Army is going to cover as part of your travel expenses, and the soldiers all know how much baggage allowance they have before they start to pack for the trip. But ranting about soldiers having the hardship of filling out expense reports doesn’t play as well as ranting about the airlines making them pony up for the extra bags, so that aspect of the story is generally being left out of the press accounts…

From the other side of the counter, the airlines are taking the position that they already offer service people the lowest possible fares and fees when the Army isn’t paying their way, and they try to make everything as simple as possible for soldiers flying on business, but they don’t see why they should be expected to subsidize the Department of Defense by waiving the fees altogether. It’s not a very effective emotional appeal, especially during a time when most consumers are already peeved at the airlines for raising fares and instituting all of these stupid new fees, but consider if the government employees who wanted to fly for a better fare than you can get were from the Department of Agriculture or Interstate Commerce – or if they were just rear-echelon types who will never get any closer to the war zones than Northern Virginia: would you still be worried about them getting their expenses reimbursed?

More to the point, perhaps, imagine if the government wanted your business to offer extra special deep discounts to their employees, in exchange for nothing but a fine patriotic flush. Not donate money, which would at least give you a tax break, but just not charge as much money, make less profit (or possibly none) and put your company and your family at risk, just so some of their employees could avoid the onerous task of filling out travel forms. How would you feel about this? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can tell you that I’d never stand for it – this is America, folks; not only is our government not supposed to take things without paying for them, but you know that if you give them an inch they’ll take a cubic mile. Next they’ll be expecting the airlines to allow ANY government employee to fly for free under ANY conditions because anything else would be unpatriotic…

It sounds like a pile of nationalist, jingoist crap, doesn’t it? Except when you consider that a large part of why we are currently mired in two ruinous land wars in Asia is the 9/11 attacks, and a large part of why those happened is that for decades leading up to the attacks the airlines fought tooth and nail against security upgrades that would have prevented the whole disaster, on the grounds that armored cockpit doors or competent security screeners were too expensive. And then, after the attacks, when people were avoiding air travel, the airline industry went running to Congress to bail them out. One could quite reasonably claim that the whole international mess is their own fault, and that the industry is now whining about having to do its part to clean things up…

Should our troops be spared the cruelty of extra paperwork? Or should the airlines go on charging government employees on the same basis as everyone else, just as they’ve always done? It’s worth thinking about…