Gross

Stop Sleeping in Your Offices, Members of Congress Told

Letter asks ethics committee to investigate “unsanitary” arrangements at Capitol buildings.

It’s become an easy way of telegraphing your commitment to serve, but now a group of House Democrats are asking an ethics committee to investigate the “legality and propriety” of members of Congress sleeping in their Capitol complex offices, suggesting the habit may be more about saving rent money than anything else. Politico reports that more than two-dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus signed a letter questioning the practice, of which Speaker Paul Ryan is a leading advocate: “I get up very early in the morning. I work out. I work until about 11:30 at night. I go to bed. And I do the same thing the next day,” Ryan said in 2015 when asked whether he would continue sleeping in his office after becoming speaker. “It actually makes me more efficient. I can actually get more work done by sleeping on a cot in my office.” But CBC member Watson Coleman said office sleepovers unfairly gave “members an opportunity to live here rent-free using all the facilities.”