House Speaker John Boehner’s office spent $2,000 on coffee alone in three months.
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High costs of Congressional food and drink on taxpayer dough raising questions
U.S. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy dropped $2,500 for 1 day of food at Tex-Mex joint Qdoba, a review of Congressional spending reports showed.
Comments (5)By Adam Edelman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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Republican Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s office spent $2,500 at a Qdoba in one day.
Ay caramba! What elected representative spent $2,500 in a single day at a Qdoba?
That would be the office of U.S. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy — who spent nearly $10,000 on food and beverage during the last quarter of 2012 — and more than $2,500 at the Tex-Mex joint on one day alone.
The surprisingly high expenditures raise renewed questions over how members of Congress use taxpayer funds, especially amid a Washington climate that has Republicans, in particular, pushing for slashed budgets.
J. Scott Applewhite/ASSOCIATED PRESS
House Speaker John Boehner’s office spent $11,225 in food-and-beverage expenses.
In total, Rep. McCarthy spent $9,789 on food and drink during the last three months of 2012, including equally generous outings at Chicken Out Catering and Buca di Beppo Italian restaurant, in Washington, according to a review of Congressional spending reports by the Washington Guardian.
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And despite the inclusion in that total of what would appear to be many pork-laden burritos, McCarthy didn’t even top the list of the heaviest food-and-drink spenders.
Alex Brandon/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s office laid out $10,000 in the last quarter of 2012 on food and drink.
That label was won by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who racked up $11,225 in food-and-beverage expenses, including $2,000 on coffee alone.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) also found his way toward the top of list, incurring nearly $3,000 in food-and-beverage spending.
Some of the most frequent expenses were incurred at grocery stores Harris Teeter and Whole Foods, coffee joints Joe Ragan’s and Dunkin’ Donuts and a slew of casual dining locations like P.F. Chang’s.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Whole Foods is a fave for Congress.
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But Democrats weren’t immune to the unsavory spending either.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent $3,510 on food and drink during the same three-month period, while Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) racked up $1,795.
Tim Boyle/Getty Images
House Speaker John Boehner’s office spent $2,000 on coffee alone in three months.
The tasty audit report was published as the U.S. government rounds out its first month of sequestration, a wide enactment of across-the-board spending cuts to the U.S. budget, designed to force Congress into reducing the deficit.
U.S. agencies and departments alone were charged with finding $85 billion in cuts in their own budgets.
Spokespeople for Reps. McCarthy, Boehner, Cantor and Pelosi didn’t immediately return requests for comment, although a representative from McCarthy’s office told the Guardian that the congressman had been “planning for the cuts as a result of the sequester and have made the necessary adjustments to our budget.”
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