If you’re interested in how your Congressman is using the approximately $1.5 million he receives every year to run his office, you can check out the expenditure reports here (for those of you who object to my use of the masculine form, please note that Virginia only has male congress-persons).

For the first time ever, the quarterly spending report is posted online by request of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

A couple things jumped out at me as I perused the report, which shows expenditures from July to September. First, what is it with the bottled water? At least several hundred was spent by each member from July to September. Rep. Randy Forbes spent $626.63, while Rep. Jim Moran spent $524.93–which, incidentally, accounts for 10 percent of his spending on supplies.

Perhaps this is normal for most offices; I wouldn’t know, since I’ve only worked at a bankrupt newspaper where our Christmas parties amounted to potluck lunches and we were lucky if the vending machine was stocked.

I was also surprised by the variance in travel expenses, which ranges from $19,522.76 spent by Tom Perriello down to Jim Moran, who spent $208.24 and reported spending only $240.62 on travel for the year so far. Here is how much each member spent on travel, from most to least:

Tom Perriello: $19, 522.76

Rick Boucher: $17,596.12

Robert Wittman: $12,670.33

Robert Scott: $10,122.32

Glen Nye $9,553.82 travel

Randy Forbes: $9,202.98

Eric Cantor: $8,836.67

Bob Goodlatte: $6,068.97

Frank Wolf $2,309.30 travel

Gerald Connolly $2,215.24

Jim Moran: $208.24

Check out the report for yourself, and let me know what you think. It’s easy to search for names; simply open the file that contains all three documents, click on the binoculars on the left and search by last name (to narrow it, include the middle initial).