Shutdown

February 27, 2014; Washington Post

Last year, when the federal government went into shutdown, 237 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle declared that they would donate their pay for that period which ended up being 16 days. So the Washington Post went back and asked what each of them donated and to what organizations. To date, 150 lawmakers have responded, and the charts contained here show the lawmakers who ended up donating money to nonprofit groups in their districts and home states.

Some donated after taking a bunch of deductions, but others really tried to stay true to the spirit of the thing. Another 14 returned their pay to the U.S. Treasury, but many kept their pay because they said they would donate only if federal workers and congressional staffers weren’t retroactively paid, and they were.

You can click through and see if one of your own legislators is listed here but here are a few examples of those that gave to charity.

Shelley Moore

Capito

R

WV

$7,733.33 to the Appalachian Children’s Chorus; Appalachian Reading Center, in South Charleston, W. Va.; Craik-Patton House, in Charleston, W. Va.; Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation; Kanawha Pastoral Counseling Center; Larry Joe Harless Community Center, in Gilbert, W. Va.; the Tamarack Foundation.

Joaquin

Castro

D

TX

$2,377.24 each to Fisher House Foundation and Battered Women and Children’s Shelter, in San Antonio.

Rosa

DeLauro

D

CT

$7,500, “her gross pay pro-rated for 16 days that the federal government was shut down,” to the Ted DeLauro Scholarship Fund at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

Tom

Cotton

R

AK

$2,543 each to the United Way of South Arkansas; Eleanor Klugh Jackson House for Crisis Intervention, in Hot Springs, Ark.; and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. “He took his daily salary (found by dividing $174,000/365) and multiplied it by 16 (total number of days of the shutdown). That amount was then divided evenly among each charity.”

—Ruth McCambridge