How much your member of Congress expensed under new receipt-free program

Last week, The Washington Post reported that 328 members of the House of Representatives were reimbursed at least $5.8 million in 2023 under the program, which allows lawmakers to expense some lodging, meals and incidental costs while they are in D.C. on official business.

A House official sent an email this week reminding members that they could face criminal prosecution for lying about expenses.

To help the public better understand how members of Congress are using the program, The Post has created a database of 2023 reimbursements. The database is based on information released by the House as of Wednesday, and is searchable here:

The expense program was intended to help members defray the costs of maintaining two households — one in their home district and the other in super-expensive D.C. But the program, which a House panel approved on a bipartisan basis and with little fanfare in late 2022, had the added benefit of allowing members to put more money in their pockets without a public vote on the House floor. Beneficiaries include lawmakers from across the country, delegates from U.S. territories and Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner.

Members of Congress haven’t given themselves a raise since 2009, fearing that a vote to raise their salaries — already more than twice the median U.S. household income — would be politically toxic. In 2022, the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress suggested the expense program as an alternative.

As implemented, the program is shrouded in secrecy, and its lack of a receipt requirement means it essentially operates on the honor system.

“It’s a problem both when you don’t have to give receipts, so there’s no way of checking whether people are actually spending the money they say they are, and when you make it difficult for people to know what’s going on,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The program’s administrators decided not to require receipts because they feared that making them publicly available could reveal where lawmakers stay while in Washington, and because it would put an administrative burden on House officials, according to a document provided to members explaining the program. Processing receipts would have required more staffers, and Congress would have had to vote to appropriate money to hire them, according to a review by the Committee on House Administration.

The Post emailed every member in the database to confirm the accuracy of the numbers. Many responded confirming the numbers. A spokesman for one member, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), said the lawmaker received slightly more than the amounts The Post calculated.

The typical member who participated in the program received more than $18,000 for 2023 expenses, according to the data released as of Wednesday.

Lawmakers face no deadline to file for expenses incurred during their term, according to the Committee on House Administration. But lawmakers must file all their 2022- and 2023-related expenses by December of this year to be reimbursed, according to the committee.

The Post found that many members filed for reimbursement months after incurring expenses.

More than half of members who participated in the program were reimbursed for expenses more than three months after they incurred them, according to a Post analysis.

On Jan. 29, Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.) was reimbursed for more than $44,000, equivalent to a quarter of his annual salary, for expenses incurred in 2023. The reimbursement date suggests he filed his expenses many months after he incurred them.

Samantha Carter, a spokeswoman for the House’s chief administrative officer, declined to comment on whether there is a final deadline past which a lawmaker would not be reimbursed if he or she filed expenses.

It is not possible to understand how much each member spent based solely on publicly available information. The limited data the House releases on the reimbursements is part of a larger collection that details all spending by member offices and includes staff salaries, office supplies and travel, accompanied by inscrutable “budget object codes.”

No key to the codes is provided with the data, and the House’s chief administrative officer declined to provide an explanation of what the codes represent. To decipher these, The Post obtained additional documentation revealing the codes that identify these new reimbursements.

The Post obtained a copy of the form House members use to request reimbursement, pictured below. On this form, reimbursement amounts default to the maximum possible rate, a figure calculated monthly based on the amount the government allows other federal employees to be reimbursed for lodging, meals and incidentals while traveling for work. If a member’s reimbursements are lower, they must manually adjust the total. Although the House has encouraged members to keep records of their expenses — and a top official reminded them that they are “strongly encouraged” to do so in an email this week — the form does not mention receipts or record-keeping.

The program’s lack of transparency has not prevented it from leading to political attacks on at least one member. The Post reported last week on allegations that Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who fended off a primary challenge Tuesday, overcharged the expense program last year for costs related to a townhouse that she owned with her then-fiancé.

Mace denied wrongdoing, but the campaign manager for Catherine Templeton, her leading primary opponent, slammed her over the report, telling a local newspaper that Mace “stole from all of us.”

A review of bills obtained by The Post that appear to include Mace’s 2023 property tax, insurance and utility bills suggest she may have overcharged the program by thousands of dollars. The program does not allow homeowners to seek reimbursement for mortgage principal or interest. Mace’s office declined further comment.

Misusing taxpayer funds under the members’ allowance could violate both House rules and federal law, Kedric Payne, a former deputy chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics who now serves as the vice president of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, told The Post last week.

Bookbinder said he believed the program is a “positive” overall, in that it could enable more people who are not wealthy to be able to afford to be a member of Congress, which requires maintaining two homes. But Bookbinder said members must earn taxpayers’ trust by making the program more transparent and accountable.

He also objected to the members’ reimbursement form defaulting to the maximum. “It certainly seems like something that — either intentionally or unintentionally — could lead to abuses,” he said.

Nicole Markus contributed to this report.