GOPer Fiscal Responsibility and Boehner’s Unique Monthly Expenses
From Rollcall:
Boehner now receives a monthly $2,083.33 direct payment for expenses, according to the most recent expenditure reports from the Clerk of the House. Because the total of the expense payment is the same each month, it is apparently not reimbursement for individual itemized expenses.
Boehner’s office offered no details about how his monthly check is spent. Spokesman Michael Steel would only say, “This money is used in appropriate ways for expenses related to his official duties.”
Beginning in January, Hoyer, now the Minority Whip, saw his monthly expense check drop to $527, and the Maryland Democrat in March stopped accepting it entirely.
A spokeswoman in Hoyer’s office confirmed he has not taken the expense payment since February because he decided “the appropriate thing to do was to stop receiving it.”
While Congress has set aside $235,000 a year to cover the expenses of House and Senate leaders, Boehner now appears to be the only Member of the House accepting this money in direct payments each month.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) generally used the expense account to pay for meals or ceremonial events; the expense payments were not made out to her directly. Since she became Minority Leader in January, there is no record of any leadership expense-account payments from her office.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who served as Minority Whip in the 111th Congress, doesn’t use the account at all. Nor does Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who served as Majority Whip in the last Congress, their offices said in March.
Roll Call reported earlier this year that even as Congress has looked for budget-cutting initiatives, there appeared to be no effort to trim the annual budget for leadership expense accounts.
Fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, eh?