(The Center Square) – 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. Four of them – three 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, from $345,700 in 2022 to $554,000 in 2024.
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."
High-priced commutes
Based on the Senate reports, the majority of the senators' and staffers' expenses were travel-related, with repeating labels such as "Senator Transportation," "Staff Transportation," "Per Diem" and "Incidentals."
Travel reimbursements are common in the corporate world, and workers at all levels of federal, state and local government often hand in receipts to be paid back.
But TPA president Williams said there’s a huge problem with U.S. senators being reimbursed that way: Congress exempted itself from the Freedom of Information Act when the law passed in 1966, so the public can’t determine if any senators or their aides may be abusing privileges.
There's no way to know if anyone flew first class, paid to fly family members, rented fancy limousines, spent nights at luxury hotels, or dined at gourmet restaurants. There’s also no way to know if senators use personal credit cards that come with cash-back rewards or other incentives, allowing them to reap financial benefits from tens of thousands of dollars per year in credit card charges run up at taxpayers' expense.
And while the U.S. House provides expense disclosures in electronic form, the U.S. Senate only releases the information in PDF files, which makes the expenses difficult to analyze. Williams said that's by design.
"This is what they have chosen," he said. "They're not changing this because they don't want people to know. They don't want their constituents to know. They don't want taxpayers to know. They don't want the media to know what they're spending money on."
Risch, though, described stringent internal controls by the Senate Disbursing Office.
"My people tell me the Senate drives them crazy with sending stuff back, saying, ‘Hey, where is the receipt for this or where is the receipt for that,’ or that sort of thing," the Idaho senior senator said.
With the exception of Risch, attempts to learn more about senators' expenses were met with denials or silence. The Center Square asked seven offices that spent the most on direct payments to produce backup records for a small sample of expenses.
Patty Murray’s office was asked for records on eight of her 184 checks, including two separate payments for $4,022 each, issued July and August. Descriptions for both say "Senator Transportation" and describe round trips from her home on Whidbey Island to Washington, D.C., by way of Seattle–Tacoma International Airport.
A round-trip Delta flight from Seattle to Washington, with Uber rides both ways from Whidbey Island to the airport, costs about half that. But without backup records, it's impossible to know exactly why she was reimbursed $4,022.
Murray declined an interview request through her communications director, Amir Avin, who said in an email, "Respectfully, we are not going to dedicate staff time redacting and preparing receipts for the Center Square’s review."
He described the charges as standard reimbursements, and said Murray makes an effort to fly home each weekend to hear from constituents.
Disputing that the senator’s overall travel costs are higher than her colleagues' travel, Avin said Murray uses her own card to be more efficient.
"The travel cards cannot be used for any other expenses that may arise while the Senators are on official travel," he said in an email. "Murray just does the reimbursement process because it’s a little more streamlined."
Not sharing anything
The second-highest spender in self-payments has even longer flights home. In one commute, Schatz, the senior senator from Hawaii, spent $10,000 over the Christmas holidays in 2024, described in records as "Senator Transportation / Washington DC to Honolulu and Return."
That's at least five times what round-trip flights cost, but it's not clear if other expenses were included. His office didn't respond to inquiries. Approached by a reporter from The Center Square as he walked through the underground tunnel to the capitol, Schatz said, "If it’s ten thousand dollars, it’s ten thousand dollars."
Asked if he travels alone, he said yes.
"I’m not really comfortable, for security reasons, disclosing how I travel," he added.
Barrasso’s office likewise did not respond to a request for an interview and backup records for eight of his 242 checks.
The office of Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, wouldn’t produce anything on the nearly $214,000 paid in 385 checks to Chief of Staff Carl Mica and former Chief of Staff Aaron Reitz, most of it labeled as transportation and per diem costs.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, and his office wouldn’t address spending by his regional director, Alfred Jenkins, who received 201 checks topping $186,000. Payment descriptions say it was "Staff Transportation" between North Charleston and other cities throughout the state.
The Center Square asked a spokeswoman for Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, for records on eight payments to the senator and eight to his chief of staff, Brent Robertson. Between the two, they received a combined 488 checks for a total $289,170. And both have taken heat from the news media for allegedly superfluous travel.
In the senator’s case, in 2024 The Wichita Eagle reported Marshall spent taxpayer funds on flights and other travel expenses visiting a vacation home in Sarasota, Florida, near his grandchildren. The reimbursements reviewed by The Center Square show at least $9,100 in expenses for trips that included Sarasota. All were prior to the Eagle's stories
Last year, Politico questioned why a chief of staff for a Kansas senator charges taxpayers for commuting to Lynchburg, Va., where he lives. Records reviewed by The Center Square show more than $25,000 went to Robertson for travel involving Lynchburg. Again, those payments stopped before Politico posted the story.
"Sorry, our office is unable to give out those records," Marshall’s communications director, Payton Fuller, wrote in an email to The Center Square.
One senator answered questions
Risch said before The Center Square asked about it, he wasn’t aware he received direct checks. He said his staff puts the payments directly back into his credit card that pays for flights. He said the only perks he’s aware of are airline miles on his card and the government’s contracted rates with airlines.
"I can understand where I’d be at the top, because I do go home every weekend," he said. "I think Boise’s probably one of the most expensive places to get to."
His office wouldn’t provide any backup records either, though, saying that would take too much time to compile. He instead provided details about his largest single reimbursement – a $4,337 payment from September 2022, described as "Staff Transportation" in a Senate report.
In an email, Press Secretary Janessa Tolman said that paid for multiple flights and a car rental with fuel and tolls. There was a flight with a connector from Washington to Boise; a flight to McCall, Idaho; flights with connectors to and from Orlando to meet with NASA officials in Titusville, Florida,; and a flight with a connector from Boise to Washington.
The senator said he flies coach. The government won’t reimburse for a first-class ticket, though he said he does get complimentary upgrades sometimes from airline miles.
Risch, a former Idaho governor, said he’s never seen any government agency as strict about reimbursements as the United States Senate.
"If you’re going to slip something past the rules of the senate, it would be a heavy, heavy lift," he said. "You have to give them receipts, and they will call back and say, 'Well, we don’t like this, we don’t like that.' And you’ve got to explain it to them. This is not something that’s cavalier."
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