Last week, U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Fla., announced he has saved $4,012,697.58 in taxpayer dollars allotted to run his congressional office, since his 2010 election.
“Washington operates on the principle that if money is appropriated, it should be spent,” said Webster. “I have exposed and resisted this flawed principle and returned more than $4 million appropriated to my congressional office. Even as President Biden requests Congress approve a massive spending increase, I am showing that it is possible to restore fiscal responsibility and reduce spending. If every area of the federal government began intentionally prioritizing programs and cutting waste, we could get a lot closer to balancing our budget and trimming the massive burden of debt that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.”
Earlier this year Webster delivered a personal check to the Bureau of Fiscal Service at the Department of Treasury to roll back his salary to the 2008 amount. Every year since being elected, Webster has delivered this check to the Bureau to roll back his salary.
“Although this may appear to be a small action given the trillions of dollars the federal government spends, it is a step in the right direction. If all federal government spending was rolled back to 2008 amounts, we would no longer have a budget deficit and could begin to pay down our debts,” Webster’s office noted.
Turning 73 at the end of the month, Webster has had something of a dramatic ride during his time in Congress. While he crushed then-U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., in 2010, Webster had a tough time beating Democrat Val Demings in 2012 after redistricting. After another round of redistricting, Webster set his sights away from I-4 to a GOP-leaning district to the north.
Before serving in Congress, Webster put in decades of service in the Florida Legislature. First elected to the Legislature in 1980, Webster was the first Republican to lead the Florida House since Reconstruction and served as majority leader in the state Senate. However, Webster flopped in some of his efforts for higher office, including failing to become state Senate president and in a U.S. Senate bid back in the 2004 election cycle. After the 2014 election, Webster offered a leadership challenge to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, but came up short and was thrown off of the powerful U.S. House Rules Committee. After Boehner stepped down in 2015, Webster made another attempt to grab the gavel but lost out to then U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.
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