An Analysis of the House Operational Spending Over the Last Decade
Congress is responsible for allocating our tax dollars, and many times over the years Americans haven’t agreed with the outrageous spending that happens on Capitol Hill. With that I’d like to take a look at the last decade of House disbursements data and analyze overall spending and categories of spending. According to the disbursements data the House of Representatives alone spent over $1.6 billion in 2022 creating a 10 year record. Initially it’s surprising to see the sheer amount of money being spent on operations, but it should start to make sense as we dive deeper into the distribution of spending.
The 2019 pandemic created a difficult economy and during the same time inflation reached a 40 year record. This could be the reason house expenditures have risen almost 30% since 2011. During this time Americans similarly faced increasing expenses, with grocery prices rising and wages barely keeping up. As a result of increased prices employers were forced to increase wages, and according to American Progress, “since the start of the pandemic, wage growth for a typical worker has been higher than inflation.” Taking into account the rise of prices and cost of living since the pandemic, let’s take a look at the distribution of spending in the House of Representatives.
Peering into the expenditures of the house you can see most funds are allocated in hiring staff and providing benefits, indicated by the Personnel Benefits and Compensation. With the pandemic increasing costs it’s understandable that wages for staff would increase from 2019. From 2011, according to the house disbursements data, the personnel compensation and benefits categories are up nearly 25%. This is great given the house staffers average age is 31 according to this article. Taking a look at some other categories, we can try to make some assumptions about the priorities and goals of the house.
*Personnel Compensation and Benefits removed
Another surprising but telling statistic can be seen in the categories related to “Rent, Communication, and Utilities,” which has seen a 5% decrease since 2011. According to Commercial Edge, “The average U.S. office listing rate stood at $37.35 per square foot, falling 1.8% year-over-year.” Although the cost of living for housing real estate has only risen since 2011, commercial real estate has had a steady downward trend, explaining the reduced rent costs. Additionally, costs for communication have decreased significantly with the advent of technology, showing that the house has adopted technologies to communicate with the public.
Similarly, the notable decrease in “Transportation of Things” expenses suggests the house is reducing costs and potentially relying less on travel and transportation of people and equipment. With the pandemic forcing Americans to work remotely, the cost of moving around can be reduced using Zoom. Additionally the use of email and file sharing platforms, the house may be able to rely less on transporting documents between the chambers and their offices.
In spite of the decrease in Equipment, Rent Communication Utilities, and Transportation of Things expenses and the potential causes of that, there has been a 62% increase in Printing and Reproduction expenses. According to Gov Track News, US congress bills are extremely long citing “There are 2,371 pages or 1,753,168 words in 107 new statutes so far this Congress.* The lowest was 2,313 pages or 1,525,952 words.” With the need for hard copies this could be the reason Printing expenses have increased 6 fold.
Finally, travel expenses have generally stayed the same since 2011, only increasing 1%. Travel expenses are the most controversial expense that senators and representatives have and can easily abuse this fund. It is comforting to know our tax dollars aren’t being spent on lavish vacations and wasteful trips. That cannot be said about the presidency however.
Thankfully the House spending is public domain and can fall under public scrutiny, which is why there are no outrageous expenses seen. Although House spending topped $1.6 billion in 2022, generally the expenses seen can be explained by many factors including inflation, the pandemic, better practices, and more efficient logistics. Additionally it’s nice to see the house spends a majority of its funds on hiring and supporting the job market. Overall I was not surprised by House spending, and would be interested to see more recent data.
