Where does the Money Go that the House of Representatives Spends?

Money and capitol hill have always gone together. Seemingly, you can’t have one without the other. In 2021 alone the U.S. government spent 6.8 trillion dollars. Needless to say finances are the crux of any high functioning government. This also means the data is widely available and important to study. It leads to questions like, “where is the money going?”, “who is it going to?”, “is it being spent well?”. As taxpayers it’s important for us to know this, but oftentimes hard to decipher. I’ve conducted a data analysis around this, looking at a very small portion of a very large sum. Specifically, I’ve analyzed House of Representatives disbursement data. In 2021 the House of Representatives spent a total of 1,439,879,673 dollars. An incredibly small amount compared to the 6.8 trillion by the United States in total that year.

Upon first glance at the data it was clear there was a story to be told, all around money. The data has categories, purposes, and payees. With thousands of entries though, I needed a question to drive my research. I wanted to find out which categories and purposes most money was spent on and what entities were paid the most. The results I found were interesting and help to paint a better picture of where the money ends up.

Looking into categories was a natural place to start. Categories in this dataset are essentially generalized bins that certain expenses fall into. Some examples of categories are equipment, personnel compensation, supplies/materials, travel, etc. I identified the top eight categories that most money was spent on in 2021.

1. Equipment: 482,163,345.370
2. Personnel Compensation: 438,892,200.920
3. ‘Other’ Services: 241,807,085.190
4. Personnel Benefits: 160,949,955.100
5. Supplies and Materials: 49,043,077.530
6. Rent Communication Utilities: 41,873,337.250
7. Travel: 11,428,375.520
8. Printing and Reproduction: 7,462,380.280

I found these expenditures to be very interesting because the story they tell is quite obvious. There is a huge drop between number four, personnel benefits, and supplies and materials. This figures tell us that a large majority of the House’s spending goes to equipment and personnel compensation.

I wasn’t surprised to see that personnel compensation was high on the list. My initial thoughts were that this category would take the number one spot. I was somewhat surprised though that so much was spent on ‘equipment’. I’m not entirely sure what equipment the House of Representatives need. Or at least equipment totaling nearly half a billion dollars.

I felt that it was important to follow the money deeper than just categories. I decided to look at top expenditures for specific purposes. In the dataset purposes are essentially a more detailed breakdown on expenses within a category. I found that looking at purposes was more crucial than categories because expenses can be tracked more deeply. After analyzing this section of the dataset I discovered the top eight purposes money was going towards in 2021.

1. Office Totals: 359,969,918.25
2. Personnel Compensation Totals: 198,251,013.07
3. Official Expenses of Members Totals: 142,815,245.28
4. Personnel Benefits Totals: 78,380,392.77
5. Government Contributions Totals: 76,226,452.18
6. General Expenditures Totals: 41,282,670.18
7. Other Services Totals: 29,843,269.14
8. Salaries Officers and Employee Totals: 29,301,013.06

Similar to categories, a major drop off in spending is seen with purpose expenditures. This tells me that the House has a known set of items such as personnel compensation that requires a large budget share across the board. The story, while predictable, is clear. Some items or actions cost a significant amount more than others.

For the final portion of my analysis I wanted to identify where the money was being paid to. With over a billion dollars on the table I found it relevant to identify the service providers who were being paid. In my analysis I found that the top two entities being paid the most were unidentified. This was unideal and would have to be the subject of further research another time. The top five entities named though were as follows:

1. Citi Group (Citibank)
2. Leidos Digital Solutions Inc.
3. United States Postal Service
4. Novitex Government Solutions LLC
5. US Department of Labor

*Verizon wireless was nearly tied for the number five spot

In concluding my analysis, I walked away with a few major takeaways. The first is that finding where exactly the money is going is a difficult question to answer. While I was able to identify top categories and purposes, finding every expense is tricky. Over a billion dollars worth of expenditures creates a web of data and getting into the specifics felt unrealistic to me. I do however feel my analysis has helped to paint a picture of what expenses matter most to the House of Representatives.