The Other Congressional Spending: How the House Spent $1 Billion on Itself

The Other Congressional Spending: How the House Spent $1 Billion on Itself

What Congress Bought Itself With Your $1 Billion

http://www.aolnews.com/house-money/article/the-other-congressional-spending-how-the-house-spent-1-billion-on-itself/19522761


(July 21) -- Congress requires a lot of stuff to keep itself running. Like coffee. And plane tickets. And student loan payments.

That's the point underscored (and underscored again) by figures collated by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that uses technology to try to make government more transparent. In early June the organization released its latest massive data dump on the expenditures that House representatives make from their Members Representational Allowances, or MRAs. Separate from campaign accounts, which have to be filled through fundraising, these sums -- ranging from $1.3 million to $1.9 million in most cases -- come from taxpayers' dollars and are meant to cover a lawmaker's operating, rather than political, expenses. Paying for an attack ad with your MRA is a no-no, for instance.

Together, the Sunlight Foundation's three databases of this internal congressional spending -- prepared in coordination with the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call -- show what the House spent on itself in the last six months of 2009 and first three months of 2010. The files provide an unprecedented window on what legislators buy themselves with your money, and AOL News wanted to know what kinds of eye-opening details they might contain. After combing through the info, we found plenty, from the House's bill for bottled water purchases to what it coughed up for new drapes.

So here are the most noteworthy findings. In the coming weeks, we plan to break these numbers down even further, because, whoa, they're a treasure trove!

(Want to know more about where these numbers came from? You'll find that here.)
....The Grand Totals
$1,013,162,955
the report's tally of congressional spending between June 2009 and March 2010
$674
million
What the House spent in the last six months of 2009
•$339
million
What the House spent in the first three months of 2010
» Biggest spender: The second-highest-spending congressional office during the nine months we looked at was that of Democratic Rep. Jim Costa of California, who spent $1.3 million, with nearly a quarter of that being expenditures on staff. He was topped by fellow Democrat Pedro Pierluisi of Puerto Rico ($1.5 million), who cannot vote on legislation.
» Biggest expense: Benefits for retired federal employees took the largest slice of the pie, with the Federal Employees Retirement System showing some $80 million in expenditures.
Line items that left a dent
$114,925
Amount the Democratic Caucus paid for its staff to have a getaway for the weekend to set the caucus' 2009 legislative agenda at the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va.

•$362,939
Amount that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert received to run an office for outstanding affairs from his tenure. Hastert hasn't been the speaker since early 2007 (or even been in Congress since late 2007)
Payrolls and Benefits
The heftiest COST is paying for all those people. They need paychecks. They need insurance. And they need the government to cover those student loans. (Yup, Congress makes student loan payments for federal employees, essentially as a hiring incentive.)Who got paid how much
$552 million in payments for all workers on the payroll
$51.6
million
Paid to about 637 chiefs of staff or deputy chiefs of staff
•$4.4
million
Paid to about 1,045 interns and pages
Covering the benefits
$34.9M
Spent on health insurance
$854K
Spent on life insurance
•$12.6M
Spent on student loan repayments

View and share this info as a standalone file.Equipment and Supplies
IT'S GOOD TO BE IN THE BUSINESS OF SELLING PAPER CLIPS TO CONGRESS. Whether it's computers, office supplies or carpet, lots of companies are ready to leap in with both feet to satisfy government contracts.You need a computer to write all those bills on...
$18
million
Spent on computer hardware
•$5.3
million
Spent on computer software (the equivalent of 26,600 Windows 7 upgrades)
$6.5M
Paid to CDW -- an IT company that is one of the largest businesses the House deals with
$6M
Paid to Cisco -- a networking and server hardware company
•$2.5M
Paid to Dell -- which means there are a lot of black boxes floating around
» ... And we're a PC: A paltry $22,507 went directly to Apple. We're guessing that's probably enough to buy one of every item in its product line (but not enough for any apps).
...and lots (and lots) of ink to print them all out
$7.5 million spent on office supplies (like toner cartridges and pencils)
» Holding their own: Despite all the biggies in this category -- CDW, Staples, Office Depot, Boise Cascade (better known as OfficeMax) -- the No. 3 recipient of congressional cash might be the most interesting: Alliance Micro, a local firm that describes itself as "a service-disabled-veteran-owned small business" and caters to printer needs, which received $502,233.
The cost of a well-kept House
$565,373
Spent on carpet during the nine-month period
•$317,304
Spent on new drapes during the same stretch
» Finishing touches: The office decorating didn't end there -- another $2.5 million was spent on furniture.
View and share this info as a standalone file. Food and Beverages
All those warm bodies need nourishment to get through their meetings. And between catered spreads, individual meals and thirst-quenchers, there's a lot being spent to meet that need.Keeping staffers fed
$2.6 million spent on food and beverages for House reps and their staffers
$604K
Spent on bottled water -- in 19,000 individual line items, many for Nestle's Deer Park water-delivery subsidiary
$169K
Spent on CapitolHost -- the biggest congressional caterer, it describes itself as "your co-host for events from casual to elegant on Capitol Hill"
•$3,061
Spent on Chantilly Donuts -- Minority Whip James Clyburn's office bought $900 worth of doughnuts, and the Republican Conference ate the rest
Drinking it all in
$84,794
Spent on companies that specialize in coffee
•$9,450
Spent on Coca-Cola products, the equivalent of 7,000 20-ounce bottles
» Coke or Pepsi? It doesn't matter which party is buying it -- House Democrats and Republicans can agree on soft-drink brands, with Coke getting a line item while Pepsi does not. Democrats may drink it a little less, however: The Office of the Majority Whip spent around $4,543, while the Office of the Minority Leader spent $4,651. California Rep. Wally Herger, a Republican, also spent $256 on Coke for his own office.
For more on what Congress spent to keep itself well fed and hydrated, click here. Communication and Data
Communicating is a huge part of Congress' job. Be it through e-mail, Web, phone, mail or simply shuffling papers, it may be the most important thing our representatives do. And they do a lot of it -- aided in part by a perk most Americans don't get. (Hint: It's "franked mail," which doesn't require members of Congress to pay postage, at a cost to taxpayers of $22.6 million during the nine-month period.)Dialing up the dollars
$11.3M
Spent on telecom service from Verizon -- mostly its wireless service but also including subsidiaries like MCI and long-defunct WorldCom.
$4.4M
Spent on telecom service from AT&T, which doesn't separate its iPhone-centric wireless service from its legacy landline service in the data
•$454K
Spent on other notable phone companies -- Qwest, CenturyLink, Sprint, Nextel, Cincinnati Bell, nTelos, T-Mobile, Alltel and U.S. Cellular
» Congress loves Verizon: Verizon Wireless, which is known for servicing BlackBerrys popular with Congress, has the largest expense in the broad-ranging telecom listing, which also covers cable service, Internet service and numerous other loosely related things. Congress spent $7,693,508 on Verizon Wireless alone.
Staying abreast of the news
$11 million spent on newspapers and other resources
431
Number of line items for The Washington Post (wonder why)
287
Number of line items for The New York Times
•147
Number of line items for Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones
» Premium payments for specialized info: Congressional Quarterly, which publishes dozens of very specific publications just for Congress, earned $3.3 million from the House during the nine-month period. LexisNexis, which specializes in archival articles, netted around $735,000.
Logging on, racking up
$5.8 million spent on Web design, e-mail and hosting services
Shredding for confidentiality
$9,809
Spent on shredding services during the study period
•7.4M
Estimated number of sheets of paper shredded (based on the going rates of Shred-it*)
* The company, which is the leading shredder for congressional offices, charges $150 for every half-hour of on-site service, or $5 per box if you drop the paper off.
For more on what the House shells out to get its news fix, click here. Travel Reimbursements
Those flights back home mean the plane tickets really pile up. Especially if you're the delegate from Guam or Alaska's only congressman -- but they're hardly the only well-traveled lawmakers. Note: We've focused here on expenditures labeled travel reimbursements and commercial transportation, and have not included mileage, which is recorded separately.
$12.5M
Spent on travel for representatives and staff
21,760
Number of separate travel charges on the taxpayers' dime
•45
Average number of trip expenditures for each representative
» Frequent fliers: The top two travelers in the House? Democrats Chellie Pingree of Maine, who has 197 travel expenditures, and Ike Skelton of Missouri, who had 163 expenditures. Neither was close to being the top spender, however. One high-spending traveler was Republican Jerry Moran of Kansas, who had 145 expenditures and an $82,000 taxpayer bill.
» Traveling cheap: Around 158 representatives spent less than $20,000, but only 37 spent more than $50,000. And distance plays a a factor with travel, too: House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., for example, spent a grand total of $297. D.C. delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton doesn't have much of a need for travel, either; she spent just $57.
» Costliest route: Madeleine Bordallo, the delegate from Guam, put in for $127,368 on 33 separate travel reimbursements or charges. (She didn't take all the trips herself, as some were listed under staffers' names.) Her average reimbursement was $3,859; one reimbursement, possibly for multiple flights, cost $22,000. The flight to Guam we found on Expedia would take 27 hours and have two stops.
» Flying to Alaska: Also not inexpensive, or fun: Alaska Rep. Don Young rang up $125,510 in travel charges in 113 separate travel expenditures during the period. The average reimbursement for his trips was $1,110.
Note: We've focused here on expenditures labeled travel reimbursements and commercial transportation, and have not included mileage, which is recorded separately.

To view and share this info as a standalone file, click here.