The House of Representatives Quarterly Statement of Disbursements is available online today (hat tip: Sunlight Foundation). This report has been published in hard copy for many years, but this is the first time that it has been made available over the internet, pursuant to a June 3, 2009 directive from Speaker Pelosi.
As an example of how this report might be mined for interesting information, I searched the document for the term “town hall.” This search revealed that 41 Members had submitted reimbursement requests described as being for “town hall” events during the July 1 to September 30 quarter. Since earlier Statements are not available online (and I am not planning to go through these multivolume sets manually), I can’t say how that compares to prior years. The party breakdown is noteworthy, though. Of the 41 Members, 39 were Republicans and 2 were Democrats.