Not all the money spent by U.S. senators’ office expense accounts goes out the door. Millions of dollars circle right back – through checks payable to the senators themselves and some of their top staffers, an in-depth review of Congressional spending by The Center Square found.
Records showing what justified the payments is a closely-guarded Senate secret, with Congress itself blocking public access.
The Center Square found more than a dozen senators and staffers received payments to themselves topping $100,000 between 2021 and 2025. Three sitting senators – two Democrats, one Republican – received $200,000 or more. The combined payments to eight senators and six high-ranking aides topped $2.2 million, spread out over more than 3,100 individual checks issued by the Senate.
The self reimbursements generated by those offices increased 60% across three years of full spending data examined by The Center Square, from $345,700 in 2022 to $554,000 in 2024, raising question about such spending patterns.
Informed of the reimbursements, David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said checks going straight to senators “should be outlawed immediately.
“This is very problematic, and it’s not something that I knew about,” he added. “And there is less of a paper trail. There is less transparency. And there’s so much temptation to inflate the numbers and to give yourself a little extra more when you’re writing that check.”
The senator who spent the most on self-payments in that period: Patty Murray, Washington Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Senate records show her office issued 184 payments to Murray totaling $235,115.
Second-most was U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who received 191 checks totaling $223,627. In third place, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, who received 242 checks totaling $202,039.
These weren’t paychecks, but expense reimbursements. That’s according to short descriptions listed among thousands of pages of Secretary of the Senate spending reports examined by The Center Square.
Senators don’t have to be paid this way. They could use government-issued travel cards, but these senators chose to pay travel expenses out of pocket, then be reimbursed.
And any Freedom of Information Act request attempting to obtain receipts, invoices, credit card statements or vouchers will be summarily rejected, Financial Clerk of the Senate Ted Ruckner explained. Congressional offices have discretion to release their own expense records, but The Center Square found only one sitting senator, James Risch, R-Idaho, willing to even discuss the payments or specific charges.
Payments in Risch’s name totaled nearly $177,000 over five years, ranking him sixth on the list among payees. But combined with payments to his chief of staff, Ryan White, his Senate office had the highest total amount in self-payments, with $313,627.
“The government does pay my expenses,” Risch said. “The vast, vast, vast majority of that is my airfare back and forth to Boise every week.”
