Last month, I asked in this space if there were a way we could find out how much money Peter Roskam is spending on those mailers that those of us in the district receive from him with regularity. This week, the House of Representatives provided at least a partial answer to that question. The answer isn’t pretty.
On Monday, the House of Representatives for the first time made available online its quarterly expense reports. This was done in response to direction given by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi back in June of this year. in order to “increase transparency and ensure greater accountability to the public”.
The report is over 3,000 pages long and is in .pdf format, so it isn’t easy to use but it is a start. I haven’t explored the document in its entirety, but was able to quickly able to find how much Roskam is spending on mailings (probably exclusive of the costs of design and printing) and was shocked by what I found. The excerpt from the report is here for your convenience.
In the 3rd quarter of this year Peter Roskam sent out 3,002,372 piece of mail using his franking privileges. That averages out to 11.8 pieces per district household between July and September alone. The cost of mailing was $116, 528.59, exclusive of the costs of production.
I paid a little over $11,000 in federal income taxes last year. So Peter Roskam has blown through 10 yearsof my tax payments in a single quarter. If that weren’t enough cause for anger, Roskam spent this money on what amounts to propaganda, critical of Democratic efforts to address the healthcare crisis and the threat of global climate change, designed to obstruct progress.
Roskam was number two in the entire House in terms of volume of mail sent. (Number one was Democrat John Barrow who bills himself as a fiscally conservative Blue Dog). He was among the highest spenders on mass mailings.
Roskam is all over the place these days talking about the irresponsible spending of the Democrats in Congress and here he is spending tax money like water on partisan political mailings. Roskam has a lot of nerve. His credibility is absolutely zero.
I sent this as a news tip to the Tribune. Hopefully they will pick it up and run with it, though Roskam is usually treated uncritically by the local media.
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