Congress' Old-Media Habit: $1.2 Million a Month on News and Research

One group of people not contributing to the erosion of paid newspaper subscriptions: our duly elected representatives and their staffs.

The hundreds of line items for old-media purchases are among the many clues to Congress' news habits that AOL News spotted in its close reading of the House's last three Statement of Disbursements. Collecting all the invoices generated by Congress every three months, it was made available in digital form for the first time in December. Following the most recent update in June, the House's expenditures for the last six months of 2009 and the first three months of 2010 are now online, where they've been collected in a searchable database created by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation.