In February 2025, as DOGE was firing federal workers by the thousands, Cliff Bentz went on CNN and told Jake Tapper he was willing to cut his own congressional staff to help.

"I think everybody has to step up. The Constitution requires that we protect our nation for posterity. We're not doing it. I'm doing the constitutional hard work of trying to figure out how to shrink our budget down to a point that is somehow sustainable and if that requires that kind of reduction of our staff, so be it."

He said it on The Lead on February 21, 2025 — a month after the inauguration, as the Capital Chronicle later noted in its reporting on his office's books.

One month earlier, his office had spent more taxpayer money on travel over Trump's inauguration weekend than any other office in the U.S. House of Representatives.

$20,750 for one long weekend

The Oregon Capital Chronicle went through the quarterly disbursement reports every House office is required to post, and published the numbers on August 7, 2025.

Between January 17 and January 22, 2025, Bentz's office reimbursed four staffers — his chief of staff and three Oregon-based field representatives — about $20,750 for hotels, meals and rideshares.

For comparison:

That's six times the average for total travel and more than three times the average for lodging. His office outspent the next-highest office in the entire House — a Texas Republican's — by nearly $2,800, and that office was covering nine staffers to Bentz's four.

Oregon's three Democratic House members also attended the inauguration. Their offices billed taxpayers $264, $311, and $755.

One Bentz staffer alone was reimbursed $6,250 for four nights of hotels. Two others billed $3,128 each; the chief of staff billed $3,775.

Bentz's spokesperson, Alexia Spentzas, told the Capital Chronicle that some of the cost came from an annual in-person staff planning session in January that "overlapped with the opportunity to attend the inauguration of the 47th president," and that extra district staff came to Washington because more than 1,000 constituents had requested inauguration tickets.

She would not say which staff were included, how many people, or where any of them stayed.

Kate Titus, executive director of Common Cause Oregon, told the paper she'd expect a party to spend somewhat more on its own president's inauguration — "That said, the spending you've identified does seem shockingly high."

The Malheur Enterprise got there first

Three months before that, the newspaper in Bentz's own back yard had already gone through his books. In an editor's note published May 7, 2025, Les Zaitz of the Malheur Enterprise laid out a pattern.

Bentz uses his taxpayer-funded office budget to cover the rent on his Washington, D.C., home — which Congress permits, and which not every member chooses to do. In April 2024 that came to $2,580 for the month. In September 2024 it was $2,349.

In those same months, his campaign — donor money — was paying for stays elsewhere. The September bills included $338 at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, $1,294 at the Coeur d'Alene Resort, a self-described luxury golf and spa resort, and $381 at the Churchill Hotel. In July 2024, his campaign reported $7,784 for "travel/event" at Black Butte Resort in central Oregon. Zaitz put that last number in local terms: more than seven weeks of income for the average Malheur County household.

Congressional records also showed his chief of staff, who is paid well over $150,000 a year, staying in $700-a-night hotels while on public business. The average nightly rate in Oregon is about $154.

The Enterprise sent Bentz the document listing his 2024 travel costs and offered him the chance to explain any of it or point out an error. He didn't respond — not to that, not to a request for receipts, not to specific questions. His communications director's answer was that his expenses are reviewed by House officials and that he is "fully compliant" with internal rules.

Nobody said the spending was against the rules. That's the point. It's allowed, and he did it, and he won't discuss it.

What "shrink our budget" meant back home

Bentz represents Oregon's 2nd District — most of the state east of the Cascades plus Jackson and Josephine counties. It is not a wealthy district. Nearly 58,000 households there — one in five — rely on SNAP to buy groceries. Almost half of those households include someone over 60.

While his office was billing $6,250 for one staffer's four nights in a Washington hotel, DOGE was cutting thousands of federal jobs — including many in Bentz's own district, as the Capital Chronicle noted. Bentz's public position on all of it was that everybody has to step up.

He carried that through to the votes. He voted for the budget bill that cuts Medicaid in a district where 70% of children are covered by it through the Oregon Health Plan, and where an estimated 37,946 people are projected to lose health coverage.

Asked by OPB where Oregon's Medicaid program could absorb $2 billion a year in cuts without cutting benefits, his answer was that "we need to get rid of some of the things that have been abused by states such as Oregon — and I mean abused."

Abuse is a strong word from a member of Congress who charges the public for his rent and won't say who slept in the $6,250 hotel room.

He's not the only one

This is a well-worn shape. In Florida, Mike Haridopolos praises DOGE for exposing waste — after a community college paid him $152,000 in public money for a 175-page double-spaced manuscript that existed in a single copy. The austerity is always for someone else's line item.

What makes Bentz's version sting in eastern Oregon is the scale of the gap. His office spent more than fifteen times what Oregon's three Democratic House offices spent combined on the same weekend — and a month later he made the case for firing federal workers, on national television, as a matter of constitutional duty.

Bentz has been in Congress since 2021. He is Oregon's only Republican in Washington. When two Oregon newsrooms asked him to explain his own spending, he didn't answer either one.

Source

Oregon's US Rep. Cliff Bentz outspent every House member on Trump inauguration weekend — Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle, August 7, 2025. See also Les Zaitz's editor's note in the Malheur Enterprise, May 7, 2025.