Which Courtesy title spends most in the House of Representatives?
Your congressman is spending more money than your congresswomen, but not on average. At least that is true for members elected to the House of Representatives. House of Representatives disbursement data tells the story of how elected officials spent their money during the third quarter of 2021 and the data shows that our elected congresswomen are not spending as much compared to their male counterparts but may spend more if they use different courtesy titles. This op-ed will go into detail about the analysis and explain multiple reasons for why there is a discrepancy.
Misses are the greatest spenders on average. Let’s first take a look at the average spending amount based on how folks identify themselves with a courtesy title. Mr. will take into account congressmen and Ms. Mrs. and Miss all account for congresswomen. As you can see from the first graph, the average spending across all courtesy titles and caucuses are about the same. The only outlier in terms of average spending would be congresswomen who use the courtesy title miss. Those who use Miss spend on average 75,000 more dollars quarterly than their fellow congressperson. That is a large amount considering that all other congresspeople’s spending differ by a maximum of $25,000.
Next let’s take a look at total spending for those same courtesy titles. This analysis will show us the bigger picture of who actually spends the money. Even though misses spend the most money on average, they make up less than 1% of the population in the House of Representatives. If we take a look at the graph, it shows us that when all the spending for this quarter is totaled, congressmen who use the courtesy title Mr. are the greatest spenders by far. They spend on average 5 million more dollars each quarter than all the other courtesy titles combined. If we look even closer, we can see that the Mr.’s in the republican party spend more money than the democrats, but the opposite is shown for the other courtesy titles. The democrat congresswomen spend more per quarter than the republican congresswomen. If we compare the total number of democrat congress women and republican congresswomen, we can see that there are almost twice as many democrat females. If republicans elected more females, they would better represent their party when spending.
Let’s now take a look at total spending across the 50 states to see the spending distribution for each elected official. Each point on this plot represents an individual candidate for their state. It is an interactive graph which lets us mouse over points to see the name of the candidate and how much they spent. This gives us an idea of who are spending the most for each party and state. For both maximum spending and minimum spending, we see republican congressmen.
Lastly, let’s take a look at the breakdown of courtesy title spending for each party. These graphs show us how each courtesy title stacks up next to each other in comparison to the other party. This will show if either caucus or courtesy title spends more in relation to each other. The first graph shows both parties and total spending for the quarter. We can see that the Mr.’s take the cake with over $100 million spent with all other titles barely totaling $40 million. Republican Mr.’s are the main culprits with almost half a million spent on a few instances.
Next, we see the democrat breakdown. With the Mr.’s totaling below $45 million, they come in well below the republicans. The big difference here is the amount of spending which we can see from the congresswomen. From the total $40 million spend by all congresswomen, $30 million seems to come from the democratic party. Even though democrats make up 2/3rds of the House of Representatives, they account for 3/4th of the total congresswoman spending. This is because democrat congresswomen spend more money on average than their republican counterparts.
Last but not least, we can compare the republican courtesy title data. As we can see there is a huge difference in the total spending for both congressmen and women. Republican congressmen spend more and republican congresswomen spend less than their democratic counterparts. This is because there are so many more republican congressmen than there are women. Even though we found out that the republican congresswomen spend more on average, the total number of congressmen completely outweighs the comparison.
After finishing this journey, it is quite clear that there is more to be discovered when it comes to total spending for the House of Representatives. When it is broken down by courtesy title, the picture becomes clearer. Key takeaways are that those who identify as Miss are going to spend the most. Those who identify with Mr. will spend more if they are part of the republican party, and less if identify as anything else. The republican party needs more female representatives to balance out their spending habits.
