How Much Money are Political Parties Spending on Food?

Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash

The House of Representatives has various amounts of budgets when it comes to spending. I had access to some house data that showed information on representatives and what they were spending their money on in the year 2021. I was simply curious about how much each representative spent on food! Food is obviously necessary for many particular reasons like health and survival, but I wanted to see if representatives were prioritizing the purchase of food over other vital purposes like Health Advisors or even more grand purposes like Chief of Staff. I also want to look at which party has spent the most money on food and who are the biggest spenders in their respective party. I also wanted to do this analysis in order to really measure and hold the representatives accountable in regard to proper spending allocation.

Also, amounts could be skewed because more representatives could have more budget allocation therefore more money to spend on food. Now, I don’t think the spending is going to be an astronomical amount because there can only be two different justifications for food spending. One of the options is for personal usage while the other option is to cater for events the representative host. Plus, each party spends millions of dollars across various purposes/categories.

First, let’s look at the total amount of money that is being spent on food from each political party.

“AMOUNT” in USD, “party” separated by political party.

We can see that the Republican party spends a good chunk more than the Democrats. About $23759 more than Democrats to be exact.

Their different lifestyle habits can explain this. There’s also the case that someone in the republican party is just spending a lot of money on food, therefore, skewing their total spending.

So let’s dig a bit deeper and see which representatives are spending the most under this food and beverage category. Looking at the top ten spenders in this category, it’s a 50/50 split between Republicans and Democrats. Within the top three, however, two of the three top spenders are Republicans. Let’s look at the graphical comparison of these top ten spenders.

“OFFICE” refers to the U.S. Representatives. Each Representative is color coded to signify their party.

The largest spender in food and beverage is John Carter a U.S. Representative from Texas. He has amassed over $3146.07 in this category. Which will definitely skew the spending a little bit considering the fact that the highest-spending Democrat, Al Green has spent only $2801.06.

Here is another visualization that truly measures the summary statistics such as the mean and outliers, lots and lots of outliers.

“caucus” in this sense is still referring to the political parties. “AMOUNT” is still measured in USD.

So we see that Republicans are more inclined to spend money on food and beverage on average and that there are outliers that skew the total spending of that party.

Distinguished outlets such as Forbes state that Republicans just naturally have higher spending habits than Democrats and that is proven in a gradual rise in annual spending.

So a very big cause of this higher spending is simply because Republicans spend more. Now we can see that this is the case based on some outside studies and research:

It isn’t a surprise that their views are gonna be different from the other counterparty, but a press release from Harvard suggests that “Most Republicans think the U.S. healthcare system is the best in the world while Democrats disagree.” Even the Washington Post claims that “Health care is only a major priority for Republicans insofar as they can redistribute less money.” This 2nd claim makes the health care system seem like it is losing its quality, with a loss in quality that can lead to an increase in unhealthy habits or even higher frequency of eating. But this claim could be a stretch considering the fact that this amount being spent on food may be very insignificant.

When you look at the other specific things these representatives are purchasing, you can see that this money being spent isn’t as insurmountable as we thought. The purpose that is number one priority amongst both parties is hiring a quality Chief of Staff. Republicans have spent around 7.91 Million dollars collectively to hire multiple Chiefs of Staff, and Democrats have spent around 7.23 Million dollars collectively as well. We can see that total food expenditures across both parties are around 0.1% of their total expenditures for all types of purposes.

It is fun to see how much is being spent and that the money is being allocated properly.