House lawmakers will be allowed to be reimbursed for lodging, meals, and incidentals during this session of Congress thanks to a little-noticed regulation change by a key congressional panel.
It’s a major reversal from previous years when lawmakers maintained a residence in the nation’s capital and their home districts without any expectation of extra supplemental funding.
Lawmakers and their staff were made aware of the change in an email sent Tuesday obtained by the Washington Examiner. Members of the House of Representatives make about $174,000 a year, and they have not received a pay increase since 2009. One-bedroom apartments in Washington, D.C., a secondary place of residence for members, can cost more than $2,000 a month.
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The Committee on House Administration revised the travel regulations of the Members’ Congressional Handbook late last year, determining a daily rate of allowable per diem determined by the General Services Administration. The reimbursements are only allowed when members are in the District of Columbia for business. The funding is allocated through the Members’ Representational Allowance, which covers official expenses.
The bipartisan House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress proposed and approved the new reimbursement policy on Dec. 30 of last year. No members of the panel were opposed. The committee’s final report noted that Washington “ranks in the top ten most expensive U.S. cities for renters.”
“While $174,000 is much more than the median household income, members must also maintain homes in both their districts and in Washington, D.C.,” the committee wrote in the report. “Unlike their counterparts in the executive branch and private sector, members do not receive a per diem or reimbursement for their out-of-pocket living expenses when they are at work in Washington.”
Former Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) was made aware of the new changes and pointed out members could be reimbursed a minimum of $39,000 in expenses a year. He said he believes it’s a waste of taxpayer resources and circumvents the normal congressional pay raise process.
“You can have a reasonable public policy debate on whether congressmen should be paid more or less, whether they’ve earned what they got, whether they earned a pay raise,” Brooks said in a phone interview with the Washington Examiner. “But there should be no debate about [whether] you’re doing it in public or doing it clandestinely. It’s the people’s money. It’s the people’s business. Any pay raise or improvement and compensation package ought to be done in the public arena. And this one was not.”
In previous years, many lawmakers have opted not to get a permanent residence and instead live out of their Capitol Hill offices. Brooks believes there were between 50 and 100 members living in their offices during the last session of Congress because it was both cost-effective and convenient.
Former Rep. Dan Donovan, a Republican who represented New York’s 11th Congressional District, told Spectrum News in 2018 about his decision to live in his office on Capitol Hill.
“There are many members [who] because of their wealth before they came to Congress, they are able to buy an apartment, buy a townhouse. There are others of us who have a family, a limited income, and certainly have expenses back home that don’t afford us the ability to have a home down here,” Donovan said.
As recently as 2020, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MI) filed complaints with the House Committee on Ethics over the practice and introduced legislation in 2018 to prohibit members from sleeping in their offices as a way to save money.
Many new members have been outspoken about the struggle of securing housing. Rep. Max Frost (D-FL), the first Generation Z member of Congress, tweeted about his own experience during freshman orientation.
“Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad,” Frost tweeted. “He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee. This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.”
Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee.
This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.
— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) December 8, 2022
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Back in 2018, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) also said in several interviews after she won her election that she could not afford to rent an apartment in Washington at the time.
While the new policy was approved by a panel of bipartisan members, Brooks is urging Republicans and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to reverse course.
“The Republicans are in charge of the House. Kevin McCarthy is the speaker. At a minimum, he should call for a House floor vote on whether this compensation increase should be permitted,” he said.
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The guidance on housing reimbursements and the documentation that will be required are still being hammered out. Neither interest nor principal for mortgage payments is reimbursable.
