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(July 21) -- Congress requires a lot of stuff to keep itself running. Like coffee. And plane tickets. And student loan payments.
That's the point underscored (and underscored again) by figures collated by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that uses technology to try to make government more transparent. In early June the organization released its latest massive data dump on the expenditures that House representatives make from their Members Representational Allowances, or MRAs. Separate from campaign accounts, which have to be filled through fundraising, these sums -- ranging from $1.3 million to $1.9 million in most cases -- come from taxpayers' dollars and are meant to cover a lawmaker's operating, rather than political, expenses. Paying for an attack ad with your MRA is a no-no, for instance.
Together, the Sunlight Foundation's three databases of this internal congressional spending -- prepared in coordination with the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call -- show what the House spent on itself in the last six months of 2009 and first three months of 2010. The files provide an unprecedented window on what legislators buy themselves with your money, and AOL News wanted to know what kinds of eye-opening details they might contain. After combing through the info, we found plenty, from the House's bill for bottled water purchases to what it coughed up for new drapes.
So here are the most noteworthy findings. In the coming weeks, we plan to break these numbers down even further, because, whoa, they're a treasure trove!
I'm glad this was exposed. The Congressional salaries are just the tip of the iceberg. They need staff and offices, phones and computers. I am surprised the care and feeding of Congress only costs one billion. "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money!" -Attributed to late Sen Everett Dirksen.
I thought it went to fund the Military Industrial Complex?
And pay for hip replacements:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png (broken link)
But not all our money got spent that way. Some of it went to buy computers so SEC lawyers could download porn instead of catch Madoff--and so Minerals Management inspectors could download porn instead of inspect drilling rugs.
But not all our money got spent that way. Some of it went to buy computers so SEC lawyers could download porn instead of catch Madoff--and so Minerals Management inspectors could download porn instead of inspect drilling rugs.
But Congress took care of that now..no one can work in the one of several new committees formed under Obamacare that has been caught watching porn while working in another agency
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