It wasn't just congressmen. Greg Jarvis was one of them. He was an engineer with Hughes Aerospace. He was a payload specialist under the guise of helping launch a Hughes company satellite. But he was bumped off that flight (don't remember why) to another that was launching a non-Hughes satellite to "help" launch it. Then he was bumped again to the Challenger where he died along with Christa McAuliffe, another passenger that got caught up in the NASA hype.
NASA's biggest sin was in not telling these people how dangerous the shuttle was. When the astronauts got upset with the passenger program, it wasn't just because qualified astronauts were getting bumped (although, yes, it was a large factor) but also they were getting caught up in being wined and dined by NASA, wearing blue flight suits in flowery press conferences with pictures being taken and video cameras rolling, all the while NOT being told how dangerous it was. The space shuttles did not have an abort system. On one mission, the shuttle's underside tiles were so badly damaged that NASA could not explain how it and the astronauts survived. The astronauts chalked it up to divine intervention.
Most of the shuttle astronauts started out as test pilots and the others were post-doctorates who worked in the aerospace industry, they all were getting hundreds and hundreds of flight hours in the NASA T-38 jets and thousands of hours of shuttle training, so they knew the dangers. The passengers didn't. In Mike Mullane's book (Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut), he very well illustrates the total unimitigated fear that all shuttle astronauts had during launch. When they spent their time with family just before launch, it had all the tension of literally saying goodbye to their loved-one and not knowing if they're coming back. They got very little sleep the week the shuttle was launching. Several astronauts were on medical waivers because they were as fit as an 18 year old linebacker but before launch, they were freaking out their doctors because their blood pressure was spiking out. It was just as agonizing for the families, who had to go through it multiple times when the shuttle flight would abort. Mike was right, there should be a monument for the families on the roof of the Launch Control Center where they watched the launches (and many aborts).
Getting back to the passengers, it's the opinion of the astronauts that they were a serious hinderance, not help. One passenger, a college post-doctorate, was endlessly fascinated with the mechanism that opened the shuttle door out into space. The shuttle commander decided that he was to be watched constantly and not allowed near that door, which opened out into space and could be opened by anybody at any time. Another passenger was a college post-doc who discovered on Day 2 of the mission that his experiment didn't work. He became severely depressed and was having frequent fits of crying. He was also having serious problems with the onboard toilet facilities. Taking a #2 in space is very messy in the best of times. This guy's solution was to dehydrade himself and stop eating. So they had this guy that was depressed, frequently crying, dehydrated, malnourished, and constipated. The mission commander placed him on a quasi-suicide watch and ensured that he was never left alone. He also had a lot of problems with space sickness, so he was throwing up and later dry-heaving. He has the distinction of having the most miserable 11 days in space ever.
Oh jeez! Allowing this kind of thing is sounding like the worst idea ever. Imagine if that #2 guy had croaked up there.
I remember at the time (mid ‘80s) that we folks out in the public were given the (false) impression that the shuttle program missions were routine and safe, almost taken for granted (which was a similar mindset in the post Apollo 11 era).
I was watching here live at home (as a 6th grader) when the Challenger blew up, and that was quite the shock. One wonders had that mission gone off without a hitch, if the program might’ve gotten even more reckless, especially with respect to sending up unqualified individuals.