Congress can't even debate a bill without wasting money. In the first two months of this year, it spent at least $27,500 "on printing charts, props, and posters, sticking them on easels (or making staff hold them up) and giving speeches about them," according to FloorCharts, which has been archiving congressional charts and posters since 2012.

That figure was obtained by estimating the average cost of a chart at $50 and totaling the number of charts used by the House and Senate (550) over the two-month period. This number doesn't include all committee charts, but the analysis found that Republicans "used about 20 more charts than Democrats." FloorCharts notes that "this is napkin math, because there is no line item in the office budgets for 'printed charts, props, and posters.'"

That tot

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