Posted on 07/22/2010 4:18:38 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
(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!
(Excerpt) Read more at aolnews.com ...
Biggest spender: The second-highest-spending congressional office during the nine months we looked at was that of Democratic Rep. Jim Costa of California, who spent $1.3 million, with nearly a quarter of that being expenditures on staff. He was topped by fellow Democrat Pedro Pierluisi of Puerto Rico ($1.5 million), who cannot vote on legislation.
» Biggest expense: Benefits for retired federal employees took the largest slice of the pie, with the Federal Employees Retirement System showing some $80 million in expenditures.
And Obama created at least another 1,000 pensions yesterday when he signed the financial so called reform legislation. That’s on top of the 900 new IRS pensions and God knows how many others Obamacare created.
save for later
Buno for future
Anyone that believes that voters can reform these criminals short of armed rebellion is insane.
Many dont know why we have the right to bear arms.
Actually, it bought itself dispensation from all the rules and regs and new laws it put on us.
btt
The only other employer that I have seen pay off college loans, was The Firm that paid off Tom Cruise’s student loans.
They were nothing but Mississippi Mafia Thugs.
That is why it is so important we amend it so that once a government official stops being a government official, they don’t get their same salary.
They need to have the same retirement plans regular American citizens have.
Freakin’ thieves!!!
bookmarked for later reading.
Most importantly, reciting statistics is meaningless to begin with: the authors must show that the spending is unreasonable, by comparing it to some benchmarks. They don't even attempt to do that. Makes me wonder what their majors were in college: they certainly have no idea about the difference between numbers and information.
The screaming huge font is a giveaway from the start, of course.
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