Congressional Travel and Other Expenses by Incumbency and Party
This article will explore information from 2021 Q3 House Expenditure data. We will compare the travel expenses and expenses in the “other” category of Democratic and Republican delegations. The goal is to find any interesting patterns in the expenditures of either side of the political divide in the House of Representatives.
Texas House representatives are responsible for the greatest travel expenses compared to all the rest of the delegations’ travel expenses. California House representatives are responsible for the second greatest travel expenses in the United States. California representatives’ relatively high travel expenses are to be expected due to California having 52 House representatives, the most of any state in the US.
California’s expenses listed as ‘OTHER SERVICES’ are the greatest of all the delegations, more than second place Texas by $57,905. California’s high dollar amount of “other” expenses, like its travel expenses, can most likely be explained by the state’s large number of representatives.
The Democratic Party has one particularly extreme outlier present in both their travel expenditures and other expenditures. This sparks questions about what delegation and representative(s) are responsible for this outlier, what events were attended, and how long the representative has been in office. The interquartile range of the Republican Party’s travel expenditures in 2021 is greater than that of the Democratic Party’s by approximately $10,000, which shows the Republican Party generally spends more on travel than the Democratic Party. Could the geographic distance between Republican delegations and Washington D.C. be a reason for the difference in travel spending?
The interquartile range of the Republican Party’s “other” expenditures in 2021 is slightly less than that of the Democratic Party. The interquartile ranges (shown below) for each Party are similar, overall. For instance, the median is nearly the same.
On average, the Republican Party spends more on travel than the Democratic Party, as seen in the bar chart below.
There are no outliers for non-incumbent Democratic Party or Republic Party representatives’ travel expenses, while there are many outliers for incumbent Democratic Party and Republican Party representatives’ travel expenses. The interquartile range of non-incumbent Democratic Party representative travel spending is notably smaller than the interquartile range of non-incumbent Republican Party representative travel spending.
There are no outliers for non-incumbent Democratic Party representatives’ “other” expenses, while there are many outliers for non-incumbent Republican Party representatives’ “other” expenses. Unlike travel expenditures, the interquartile range of non-incumbent Democratic Party representative expenditures of the “other” category is notably larger than the interquartile range of non-incumbent Republican Party representative travel spending.
Guam spent the most of any delegation in Q3 2021, which explains the outliers found in the box plots corresponding with travel expenses above. The chart below visualizes delegations with representatives from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Conclusion
This data exploration has sparked additional questions. I’d like to know why Guam spent so much more than other delegations during this timeframe. I’d also like to explore more about the speculation of Republican representatives spending more on travel than Democrats due to distance from their home state to Washington D.C., and other possible reasons for this difference.
