(July 21 -- Legislating: There's an app for that. Commissioned by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., it's called GovWatch, and it aggregates the social media feeds of the GOP members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, with a goal of "giving the American taxpayer a mobile window on Washington spending."

Though it's not quite as flashy, there's another way to keep tabs on Congress' spending, and specifically what it spends on itself: The searchable database that the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation has created from the the House's Statement of Disbursements. Collecting all the invoices generated by Congress every three months, it was made available in digital form for the first time in December. Following the most recent update in June, the House's expenditures for the last six months of 2009 and the first three months of 2010 are now online.

Full Report
How Congress Spent Your $1 Billion
Food Tab: $604K on Bottled Water
Interns and Pages: $4.4 Million
News and Research: $1.2 Million
Travel: $1.4 Million a Month
Congress Is a PC: Just $22K on Apple
About This Series

What those reports show is that while Apple has made some inroads on Capitol Hill -- Politico reports that the the unofficial iPad Owners Caucus includes Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.; Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.; Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.; and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah; along with Issa -- it still has a long way to go in winning over Congress' many CrackBerry addicts.

For more of what Congress spent on office equipment and supplies during the nine months in question -- including its not-inconsiderable bill for freshening up the decor -- read on. And because we love few things more than wallowing in data, AOL News has also put together an overview of the charges the House racked up in other categories.

Equipment and Supplies

IT'S GOOD TO BE IN THE BUSINESS OF SELLING PAPER CLIPS TO CONGRESS. Whether it's computers, office supplies or carpet, lots of companies are ready to leap in with both feet to satisfy government contracts.

You need computer to write all that legislation on...

$18
million
Spent on computer hardware
$5.3
million
Spent on computer software (the equivalent of 26,600 Windows 7 upgrades)

$6.5M
Paid to CDW -- an IT company that is one of the largest businesses the House deals with
$6M
Paid to Cisco -- a networking and server hardware company
$2.5M
Paid to Dell -- which means there are a lot of black boxes floating around

» ... And we're a PC: A paltry $22,507 went directly to Apple. Though the folks at The Atlantic can't be happy about that, given Congress' image, this might suit the marketing folks in Cupertino just fine.

...and lots (and lots) of ink to print them all out

$7.5 million spent on office supplies (like toner cartridges and pencils)

» Holding their own: Despite all the biggies in this category -- CDW, Staples, Office Depot, Boise Cascade (better known as OfficeMax) -- the No. 3 recipient of congressional cash might be the most interesting: Alliance Micro, a local firm that describes itself as "a service-disabled-veteran-owned small business" and caters to printer needs, which received $502,233.