Bob CollinsThe U.S. Senate is following the lead of the U.S. House and is entering the 21st century soon. On Monday, the Senate passed an appropriations bill funding Congress’ own budget. The bill would provide senators with office budgets of $3.1 million to $4.9 million next year, depending on the population of their state and other factors. It included a provision requiring Congress to post their office expenses online. Currently, they’re kept only in paper records.
But the data is already available online thanks to LegisStorm.
I’ve put together Minnesota’s congressional delegation spending up to the latest full year available. Where possible, I compared it to the same office’s spending back to 2004.
| FY 2008 | FY2007 | FY2006 | FY2005 | FY2004 | Increase | |
| Klobuchar | $2,455,415 | $1,599,638 | ||||
| Walz | $777,158 | |||||
| Ellison | $878,792 | |||||
| Bachmann | $754,929 | |||||
| Oberstar | $1,153,911 | $1,029,835 | $1,056,817 | $1,046,012 | $921,187 | 25.3% |
| McCollum | $1,004,280 | $892,103 | $849,939 | $871,002 | $813,563 | 23.4% |
| Coleman | $2,288,895 | $2,162,587 | $2,138,923 | $1,955,451 | $1,889,943 | 21.1% |
| Sabo | $966,036 | $836,820 | $800,529 | 20.7% | ||
| Kline | $836,655 | $815,467 | $846,007 | $821,164 | $696,507 | 20.1% |
| Dayton | $2,508,160 | $2,339,313 | $2,174,434 | 15.3% | ||
| Peterson | $1,005,940 | $1,005,239 | $954,052 | $943,859 | $886,238 | 13.5% |
| Ramstad | $861,371 | $865,602 | $865,980 | $859,810 | $797,103 | 8.1% |
| Gutknecht | $720,731 | $783,798 | $688,906 | 4.6% | ||
| Kennedy | $733,192 | $809,807 | $767,066 | -4.4% | ||
In most cases, the biggest expense — aside from the congressional salary — is the salary for the lawmaker’s chief of staff or administrative assistant. These numbers are not necessarily the annual salary, because they may include bonuses and they don’t include time a person may have split with a campaign committee.
In the last full fiscal year, these were the top earners in the position per congressional office:
| Aide | Assigned to | Disbursement |
| Lee Sheehy | Klobuchar | $160,692.60 |
| Mark Brownell | Peterson | $158,940.97 |
| Bill Richard | Oberstar | $155,837.02 |
| Kari Moe | Ellison | $155,434.75 |
| Jean Hinz | Kline | $119,883.33 |
| Joshua Syrjamaki | Walz | $104,166.70 |
| Michelle Marston | Bachmann | $103,804.67* |
| William Harper | McCollum | $22,459.35 |
* – Includes salary of previous chief of staff.
Meanwhile, the Center for Public Integrity has drilled down the political food chain and examined financial disclosure requirements for state lawmakers around the country. Minnesota was ranked one of the worst.
