How does the US Government Spend All of Their Money?

Personally as someone living in the US I feel that around the same time every few years no matter where I go I can count on hearing people arguing about politics. Much of which revolves around spending. I had the opportunity to take a look at how the House of Representatives has been spending from 2011 to 2022.

The House of Representatives has a budget that is reviewed and approved by Congress each year. The spending of this budget is separated into different categories. I was interested because I have heard many times people discussing the “willy nilly” spending that they see in our government. To look into the spending I simply looked at the average spending for each category to see what exactly they were spending on.

Here is the bar chart that displays the average amount spent in each category from the years 2011 to 2022. Many of these categories are pretty easy to understand what may be included like travel or supplies and materials while others like Benefits to Former Personnel are a little harder to interpret. So I will take a look at what is included in a few of the top spending categories to understand what it is the House spends their money on.

Personnel Compensation

Personnel Compensation comes in as the third highest spending category from 2011 to 2022. What exactly does that entail? house.gov defines it as “Compensation directly related to duties performed for the government by federal civilian employees, military personnel and non-federal personnel. It includes regular salaries and wages, as well as other payments that become part of the employee’s basic pay. Also included are the salaries and wages paid to an employee while on annual, sick or other paid leave; lump sum payments to an employee upon separation; and other payments above the basic rate of pay, such as overtime compensation.” As I understand this it seems as this is essentially the payroll. It makes sense that this is one of the higher spending categories as the House has over 400 members.

Personnel Benefits

Personnel Benefits defined by house.gov is: “Benefits for currently employed federal civilian, military and non-federal personnel. This includes the government’s shares of an employee’s retirement, life insurance, health insurance benefits, accident compensation and Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) taxes. Also included are payments to finance the fiduciary insurance costs of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board and payments to the Civil Service Retirement Thrift Investment Board; expenditures for the Transit Benefit & Student Loan Reimbursement programs; benefits to former employees of the U.S. House of Representatives or their survivors; and gratuities and payments to the unemployment trust fund.” Again no surprise this comes in at number four considering the amount of members. This goes to show that you probably get excellent benefits as a member of the House considering the amount spent.

Benefits to Former Personnel

This category comes in at the number 1 spot as most spent from 2011 to 2022. After reading the description of the previous category this basically speaks for itself. These are the benefits that are being paid to former members. Former members of the House are granted a pension depending on how long they held office. Spending the most money on this does not sit great with me, while many positions outside of our government offer pension plans and it can be a great way to reward loyalty I do not think that should be the highest spending category for the House. This encourages people to stay in seat for longer to earn a higher pension. I think that is the wrong reason people should want to stay in such an important governmental position. This encourages people who may no longer be as passionate about their position or may even be “unfit” for the position to stay.

I think that it is reassuring to see that things like Travel or Equipment are not at the top of the list because those could likely be easily taken as personal use by those trying to argue about Government spending. I am not saying that people in the House are using the budget to travel and buy equipment to use personally but I could see that if they were both higher on the list how some may believe they are letting some personal spending get by. It makes sense that the compensation and benefits for current members is on the higher end of the spending as well seeing as it is their job and they’re entitled to be paid. Maybe their being paid too much but that is not what I wanted to know today. I also found it very interesting that the highest spending category is for those that are no longer in the House and that is what stood out the most to me. I think that shows the wrong motivation to stay as a member of the House, they should not be chasing a larger pension but want to be there to do right by the people in the US.

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