Analyzing & Exploring Disbursements in the United States Government
Congress and the members United States Government are entrusted with massive budgets. However, they are provided with considerable discretion in their allocation decisions. Historically, there have been multiple instances misappropriation, personal misuse, and flat out frivolous spending by government officials. The following analysis will delve deep into the allocation of these budgets and ideally shed light on how our country’s leaders are spending the people’s money. Is their spending justified? Or, could budgets be better allocated more effectively?
Data
This analysis is comprised of raw data going back to Q1 2011. However, for simplification in some cases, the five year period spanning from 2018–2022 was examined. The actual data being analyzed originates from ProPublica, which has standardized spending and disbursement data from the U.S. House of Representatives into applicable CSV files. Additionally, a separate dataset comprising party information (Republican, Democrat, or Independent) was used to compare disbursement by party.
General Spending
To begin with, it’s important take a bird’s eye look at general spending by category. For this, the time period of 2018–2022 (5 years) was used.
As seen in the bar chart above — even with a logarithmic scale — personnel compensation immediately stands out as the predominant category for disbursements. Between 2018–2022, this category amassed a total expenditure of approximately $2.34B. This category likely comprises salaries, wages, and various other forms of compensation for staff members. Many conclusions can be drawn from this: does this signify the high level of importance and value that our government places on human capital, or does this potentially allude to unethical and excessively high salaries for members of Congress?
Following personnel compensation are the categories encompassing rent, communication, utilities, and printing and reproduction. These two categories equate to $232M and $117M, respectively. They relate to office operations, highlighting the importance of infrastructure, technology, and information management in the government.
Additionally, a considerable sum of $101M was spent on travel. This likely includes transportation, accommodation, and other similar expenses.
Narrowing into Spending by Party
Diving deeper into spending across categories, further dividing the disbursement categories by political party shines new light on how Democrats and Republicans compare in their budget allocations.
Spending by political party aligns for relatively most of the categories. However, slight contrasts are clear. Republics are spending considerably more on personnel benefits while Democrats exhibit higher allocations towards transportation of things. Other slight differences include Republicans spending more on travel and franked mail while democrats channeling more funds towards personnel compensation. The difference between benefits and comp (likely salary) spending is intriguing. The emphasis on personnel compensation by Democrats may highlight them prioritizing workers’ rights, equitable wages, and advocacy. Republican’s spending on personnel comp is still their largest disbursement channel but they also spend significantly more on benefits than Democrats.
Regarding total spending by party since Q1 2011, Democrats emerge as clearly spending more.
This can be justified when looking at the broader political philosophies. Republicans tend to lean towards fiscal conservatism while Democrats place a high priority on education, healthcare, social welfare programs, etc. Thus, democratic policies may necessitate higher levels of overall spending.
Disbursements Over Time
Taking a step back and examining spending by category over an extended period of time offers the opportunity to draw new conclusions.
Tracing back to Q1 2011, the disbursements are relatively stable and lack massive fluctuations on average. The only categories with seemingly sporadic changes are benefits to former personnel and personnel benefits. As seen in the prior graphs, personnel compensation is clearly the highest allocated category. However, it follows an interesting trend of rising, then plateauing for 2–3 quarters, then declining to the original value. This cyclical trend has repeated itself consistently since 2011.
The rent, communication, and utilities category seems to closely mirror the printing and reproduction category. Although the magnitudes diverge in some cases, the overarching trends display significant correlation over time.
Where The Money is Going
The disbursements data has “payee” information detailing where these payments are going. Although it is incomplete, drawing conclusions on the limited data is still helpful.
Looking at the chart above, the United States Postal Service, Citibank Gov Card Service, Leidos Digital Solutions Inc., Desktop Solutions Inc., and Fireside21 are the largest beneficiaries of disbursements. This makes sense given they are essential services or products to the government. Nonetheless, the magnitude is still noteworthy and should invoke some contemplation. For instance, approximately $174M going to the postal service is a very large quantity of money that is being spent on mail, packages, etc. It would be interesting to delve into this further and gain more granularity, but unfortunately the data is limited on the finer details.
