From Wikipedia it sounded like for the most part they were basically living a paycheck ahead. So they were basically always overdrafted, but in the end got caught up. Is that not correct?Interested to hear where you got this information from as it appears to place more of the blame on the sloppiness of the House Bank itself rather than the actual guilty abusers of the system.
In 1992 the annual congressional salary was around $130k, or say $11k per month. Even at the 8 months that's an approximately $90k interest free loan.
At one time I saw a list of the overdrafts by amount. I wasn't able to find anything current but this is a pretty good article.
Caught In The Act
In the wake of the congressional check-bouncing scandal, members rushed forward to confess. But with voter outrage running high, many may be banished from their kingdom on the Hill.www.newsweek.com
"the 66 most egregious offenders wrote about 20,000 rubber checks with a face value of $10,846,856."
This averages about $164k each, well more that their respective annual salaries.
Also, the checks never actually bounced, because the (dumb) rules of their “bank” were that they’d all be covered. That was changed/fixed after this came to light.
Was anybody using it as basically free money instead of “just” a free loan?
