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What is the cost of a House vote?
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (L) meet as the House of Representatives consider the 'Repeal of Obamacare Act' in Washington, DC, on July 11, 2012.
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Say this for Republicans in the House of Representatives, they're nothing if not determined. Today they held the 33rd vote in the past 18 months to repeal the health care law. It passed, like all the others before it, along party lines.
Being that there is no such thing as a free lunch, all this symbolic voting must actually cost something, right?
It’s really hard to break down the cost of a vote in Congress. In fact, none of the congressional watchdog groups in Washington have done it. So we had to do our own, back-of-the envelope calculation. We figured out how much we spend per day on salaries and office costs for members of the House of Representatives and their staffs. The grand total? Almost $2 million every day. Are repeat, symbolic votes worth the cost?
Not if you ask Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "Congress has become almost a joke," he says.
Mann says the House’s health care repeal votes are a waste, because the Senate won’t vote to repeal the health care law. Mann says it’s just a way to score political points.
But Jim Harper of the CATO Institute says, the House is using the repeal vote to send a message to voters. "We the House Republicans really want to get rid of Obamacare," says Harper. "Democrats likewise want to signal to the public that they want to keep it."
But Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense says, the message got through on the first few repeal votes. Still, he says Congress does have days when it gets things done in a flurry of votes. Both symbolic and substantial.
"You know they went through this marathon of days and days of offering amendments and voting on it. That was like legislative porn. I was lovin' it," says Ellis.
Well, at least somebody’s happy.
About our math: We calculated the cost of a vote by totallilng the annual salary of 435 House members. Then we added that to the total amount of annual allocations each House office receives. Finally, we divided that by 366 days in 2012 to determine the total cost per day. Click here to check our math.
Kai Ryssdal: Say this for Republicans in the House of Representatives, they're nothing if not determined. Today they held the 33rd vote in the past 18 months to repeal the health care law. It passed, like all the others before it, along -- yes -- party lines.
Going nowhere in the Senate, but it did occur to us that, there being no such thing as a free lunch, all this symbolic voting must actually cost something, right? We asked Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer to take a look.
Nancy Marshall-Genzer: It’s really hard to break down the cost of a vote in Congress. In fact, none of the congressional watchdog groups in Washington have done it. So we had to do our own, back-of-the envelope calculation. We figured out how much we spend per day on salaries and office costs for members of the House of Representatives and their staffs. The grand total? Almost $2 million every day. Are repeat, symbolic votes worth the cost?
Not if you ask Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution.
Thomas Mann: Congress has become almost a joke.
Mann says the House’s health care repeal votes are a waste, because the Senate won’t vote to repeal the health care law. Mann says it’s just a way to score political points.
But Jim Harper of the CATO Institute says, the House is using the repeal vote to send a message to voters.
Jim Harper: We the House Republicans really want to get rid of Obamacare. Democrats likewise want to signal to the public that they want to keep it.
But Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense says, the message got through on the first few repeal votes. Still, he says Congress does have days when it gets things done in a flurry of votes. Both symbolic and substantial.
Steve Ellis: You know they went through this marathon of days and days of offering amendments and voting on it. That was like legislative porn. I was lovin' it.
Well, at least somebody’s happy.
In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace.
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What is the cost of a House vote? More than often the answer is "simplicity". Thanks for this great article. http://www.thewebdivision.ca
Seeing as you didn't use the "back of the envelope" for your calculations, but the front, I have to wonder what else you got totally backwards. My guess is that rather costing us taxpayers $2M by wasting a whole day, their inactivity saved us a massive sum that dwarfs that $2M in comparison. Love you guys!
All the more reason to support No Labels.org's-- No Budget No Pay initiative. No Budget No Pay means that Congress doesn't get paid unless they pass a budget and all 12 appropriation bills by the beginning of the fiscal year. If they fail they don't get paid until they do. We have two bills HR3643 and S1981 with 65 co-sponsors in the House and 10 in the Senate. Unfortunately, it seems that the leadership in both Chambers don't want this level of accountability. The most basic responsibility Congress has is deciding how much money the government takes in and how much it spends. But Congress has passed its spending bills on time only four times since 1952. In the last 14 years, annual spending bills have been submitted an average of four months late. As a veteran, an active-duty military spouse, and American, I truly find this dereliction of duty a totally disrespectful.
Nancy - you forgot the cost of benefits for members + their staff. That figure is usually between 22-27% of wage costs but your calculations - even back of the envelope - are incomplete without it !
ps: the bigger question is what exactly is the country getting from this supposedly full time legislature that costs the taxpayers $1.9M per day ???? I would say not much - a good start on the budget deficit would be to:
a) cut their salaries
b) cut their office allocation
c) cut their perdiems
d) cut their benefits
e) they aren't employees - stop giving them gov't pensions - allow them to contribute to a 401K or the like but NO gov't pension
f) eliminate their special h/c insurance - force them to buy a plan with MediCare -- better yet open up MediCare so that EVERYONE in the country who wishes to buy in can do so
g) eliminate coverage for their dependents - allow them to buy at cost dependent coverage
this should be a good start........ others ?????
I loved the juxtaposition of this article in Wednesday's broadcast (Congress spends more than $60M on repetitive activity producing the same / no result) with the following article where our representatives berated the armed services for spending $20M for NASCAR sponsorship with no result for recruitment.
Very much the case of seeing the mote in your neighbor's eye while ignoring the beam in your own.
We, the people, would be right to think that both cases are a waste of our money. Unfortunately the response in both cases seems disappointingly similar:
- An Army publicity officer said that they would continue to spend their budget how they liked until Congress passed a law to the contrary.
- The House will continue to spend their budget to demonstrate that the majority there is still opposed to the Affordable Care Act.
What I hear is "this is my money to do with what I want, regardless of what the facts say or the public thinks."
Which is why we have a debt of $14T and rising ...
Thanks Nancy for putting some numbers to what many people see as Congress' wastefullness, and for shining a light there.
And what do you think the r's do IMMEDIATELY after spending all this time doing their drama queen best to impress and obstruct...
It's really all about golf... http://youtu.be/ny-C4AIth38
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