(literally,travel)Luggage which exceeds the allowable size or weight (as for an airline flight or train trip), and for which an extrafee must therefore be paid.
Exiles and refugees . . . are likely to find the old ways and old language excess baggage, especially if their adopted homeland is the U.S., where the race is to the swift and the adaptable.
Every candidate for public office probably has some excess baggage to carry around that he'd rather not have. With Sen. John Kerry, it's undoubtedly his anti-Vietnam War activism.