Rather than giving themselves a raise, Congress passed a law a few years ago that allows for an insane amount of reimbursements for members of Congress, on everything from travel to housing. And a new analysis of the receipts has revealed that Matt Gaetz is one of the top recipients of these new government handouts, that actually don’t require any receipts at all. Republican Nancy Mace wasn’t far behind him. This program is ripe for abuse, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
A recent new report has outlined the disturbing large sums of money that members of Congress, mostly on the right, have received thanks to a brand new congressional reimbursement program that was first put into effect in the year 2023. The law was passed last year because, hey, these politicians in Washington DC, they don’t live there. So they have to spend a hundred days out of the year there. They’ve gotta have lodging, they gotta eat food, and we can’t expect them to pay that out of their congressional salary. And they didn’t want to vote to give themselves a raise because they know how bad that looks to the public. So they just decided, we’ll put this program in place that offers $5.2 million, excuse me, per year for reimbursements and we’ll just live off of that. Here’s what happened. Nancy Mace, Republican representative, submitted $19,395 in reimbursement claims from the program last year.
And according to two former staffers who spoke with the Post, Mace directed her staff to find the maximum reimbursement she could get regardless of her actual expenses. Her staff told her she couldn’t conceivably net more than 1,726 in monthly reimbursements. But Mace requested reimbursements at an average of over $2,000 a month anyway. And that’s nothing compared to what Matt Gaetz got. Matt Gaetz is now quickly becoming the king of government handouts. Representative Matt Gaetz reimbursed himself more than $10,000 for food last year, double the household average, and nearly $30,000 for lodging. Gaetz got reimbursed for more than $4,000 for lodging for two months in 2023, which is twice the average cost of rent in Washington DC, and more than $3,000 for five months.
So Matt Gaetz, of course, he’s not the top spender. No, no, no. The top person with their reimbursements was Republican Representative Jack Bergman. But Gaetz was a close second, Nancy Mace right after him. So the top three, all Republicans. Here’s the thing. I am okay with members of Congress getting reimbursed for lodging and food in Washington DC and Washington DC only while they’re there. I have no problem with that at all, because if you don’t have that and these people have to pay for basically two homes in two separate cities, you’re gonna end up with only rich people being able to afford to run for Congress. So this program is decent. It’s not good though. And the reason it’s not good, and these lawmakers know it, and that’s why Nancy Mace was able to, according to the report, possibly inflate her reimbursements, is because they don’t require receipts. None. All you do is write on a piece of paper, I spent this, and then the government says, well, okay, then here’s your check.
They don’t have to provide receipts. Every government agency in the country, every corporation, every business from small to large requires receipts. If I want to write something off on my taxes, I better have a receipt or else I don’t get to do it. So everybody else in this country, if you want to get reimbursed for an expense or write it off on your taxes, you have to provide a receipt, but not these people. And therein lies the problem. There is no accountability. There is no validation that these expenses were actually incurred. That’s the problem. Fix that loophole and I got no issues with it. But until then, every single one of these reports is gonna be met with skeptical eyes. And if Matt Gaetz can’t provide the receipts, then I have no choice but to assume he didn’t actually spend that much money. You want to prove us wrong? Submit the receipts to Congress, release them publicly. Otherwise, everybody participating in this program, not just Gaetz, we’re all gonna think you’re a bunch of government moochers.
