House Sheds Light on Member Expenses

In an unprecedented move to increase congressional transparency, as of 1 pm this afternoon, the House of Representatives Statement of Disbursements is available online [1]. 

The Statement of Disbursements (SOD) is a record of the public funds received and expended by Members of Congress in their pursuit of their official representational duties, as well as the expenditures of the House committees, leadership, and administrative offices.  Disclosure has been required by law since 1964, and must be published within 60 days of the end of a quarter.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) directed [2]the Chief Administrative Officer in June 2009 to make the records available online.  Prior to today's release, the SOD were publically available, but only in book form either at Federal Depository Libraries or for purchase from the Government Printing Office.  Those who had the time and resources to access a copy were then faced with the cumbersome task of finding what they were looking for in a poorly indexed three volume, 3400 page document.  As a result, public access in practice was restricted.

This is a big step towards increased congressional transparency, and one that will surely increase public trust in the institution and in their representatives in the long run.  The United States has been, for the most part, spared the sorts of expense scandals that have plagued the British Parliament of late, but there were several instances [3]in the early 1990s of Members of Congress misusing office funds for their personal gain.  Easy access to these records for both the public and the press will aid both groups in holding the people's representatives to account, and stands as a serious disincentive to abusing public funds.

As noted [4]by John Wonderlich on the Sunlight Foundation blog, today's disclosure is only a first step.  This earliest edition of the website only features the SOD in a large PDF file with minimal search functionality.  The next logical step is to increase the user friendliness of the disclosure. 

The Senate, which issues its own Statement of Disbursements semi-annually, is due to put their expenditure reports online beginning in 2011 at the start of the 112th Congress, in order to allow time to develop sufficient web infrastructure for the release.