Free Republic

It appears that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is unable to afford the astronomical rent for a D.C. apartment until she gets her first Congressional paycheck. But who paid for her to campaign and criss-cross the country? AOC barely campaigned within her own district. I doubt that she received thousands of dollars in small donations, given that she won her primary when three-fourths of the district didn't even come out to vote. She was a mini-Queen maker, endorsing candidates in Hawaii, for example. And Hawaii is not cheap. The plane tickets, the hotels, the clothes she wears, food....all this stuff isn't cheap...

New information obtained from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) brings the grand total of known travel expenses of President Obama and his family to $79,630,433.93, Judicial Watch reported Wednesday. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called President Obama’s travel spending a “scandal” and an “abuse of the office.” […] The priciest of the seven trips — to Seattle and Los Angeles to raise money for Democratic congressional candidates in July 2014 — cost taxpayers $237,731.05 on hotels, $19,888.70 on rental cars, $1,451.40 on air and rail travel, and $2,425,085.50 on Air Force expenses, for a grand total of $2,684,156.60, according...

Government employees can enjoy luxurious overseas business trips on the taxpayer’s dime thanks to generous foreign per diem rates established by the State Department. Per diem rates include the cost of lodging, meals and incidental expenses that the government is willing to give civilian federal employees for their official foreign travel. The rates are meant to cover lodging at “adequate, suitable and moderately-priced facilities” and meals at “facilities typically used by employees at that location,” according to the State Department's office of allowances. All federal employees traveling to foreign countries on official business can get reimbursements from the government at...

Analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau Under this resolution, a senator who is absent without leave from two or more session days is subject to a penalty equal to $100 for each day that the senator is absent without leave. In addition, the senator must reimburse the senate for the actual costs incurred to compel his or her attendance. The penalties and costs are imposed by adopting a privileged resolution that identifies the senator who has been absent without leave. A senator who is subject to the penalties and costs imposed by the resolution may only be heard on the...

Members of Congress said Thursday that details of their expense claims wouldn't be posted online before mid-November at the earliest -- two and a half months later than the deadline previously set for publishing them in an electronic format for the first time. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the House Chief Administrative Officer to put information about expenses claimed by members of the House on the Internet "at the earliest date," in an announcement reversing a longstanding policy of providing the information only in books totaling about 12,000 pages a year. The chief administrative officer, a congressional employee, set an...

On Christmas Day, Sen. Arlen Specter flew to Europe and the Middle East for 11 days of meetings with government officials. The travel-disclosure form the Pennsylvania Democrat filed for the trip reported the seven-country tour with his wife, an aide and two military officials on a private military jet cost $571 a person, or a total of about $2,800. The real cost was far higher, in excess of $70,000, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Mr. Specter's travel report is one of scores of examples of the gap between the expenditures congressional delegations are required to report and what...

California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez on Friday provided a few details about the most eye-popping charges he made with campaign money, but resisted calls to fully explain how tens of thousands of dollars' worth of purchases in Europe and at high-end U.S. retailers were related to official state or party business. "I'll explain some of the expenditures," Nunez said. "But what I will not do is provide people with the fullest explanation of every single expense because it's not required by law." Nunez held a Capitol press conference Friday following revelations first in The Los Angeles Times last week that...