The Republican chairman, Michael Steele, promised on taking office that he would bring the party to corners of America it had not reached before. It is a fair bet that most Republicans did not expect these corners to include the Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage and S&M club in Los Angeles.

It emerged today that the Republicans spent almost $2,000 last month on a visit to the club where topless women hang from nets on the ceiling and simulate sex in a glass case.

The lavish spending will anger grassroots Republicans who are bombarded almost every day with more requests for contributions to help the cash-strapped party. A Republican National Committee spokesman said that it was looking into the matter. It insisted Steele was not at the club, but did not identify who had spent the money.

Such extravagance, in a time of recession and by the party that bills itself as fiscally conservative and reflecting family and Christian values, will renew questions about Steele's leadership.

The spending is disclosed in a Republican filing, as required by US law, to the Federal Election Commission.

It says that $1,946.25 (£1,300) was spent on 4 February for meals at the Voyeur West Hollywood by the Republican National Committee.

The Los Angeles Times, in a review of the club soon after its opening in October last year, described it as being modelled on sex scenes in the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut.

"There is also a heavy net suspended above the club's lounge area where performers writhe above the heads of clubgoers. Even more provocative scenes are played out in an enclosed glass booth area adjacent to the club's dancefloor area," the paper said.

A reviewer for the Yelp website wrote: "At one point I walked to the bathroom and pretty much just stopped dead in my tracks to watch two girls simulating oral sex in a glass case."

The Washington-based Daily Caller website, which dug out the details of the Republican spending, also unearthed an RNC trip to California that included a $9,099 stop at the Beverley Hills Hotel, and a trip to Hawaii for the party's mid-winter convention that cost $43,828.

The Daily Caller also claimed that Steele had raised the issue of buying a private jet for his travels. The party has not bought a plane but it did spend $17,514 on hiring private jets last month. It also spent $12,691 on limousines.

Steele inherited a surplus of $22m when he took over chairmanship of the national committee in January last year, but that dropped to $13m, well short of the kind of money needed to fight an election. With the congressional midterm elections due in November, Steele has been appealing for donations.

An RNC spokesperson, responding to press inquiries about the Voyeur West Hollywood, told the Hill paper: "The chairman was never at the location in question. He had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable."

The spokesperson added: "The committee has requested that the monies be returned to the committee."

Steele, the first African-American to chair the Republican party, has been subjected, since taking over the post in January last year, to a whispering campaign by senior party members as well as public calls for his resignation from grassroots party members. The critics said he was disorganised, failed to control spending and was an erratic television performer.

He lost some credibility among party members for calling the Rush Limbaugh talk radio show ugly and then apologising later to Limbaugh, a favourite of grassroots Republicans.

Steele has blamed his predecessors for failing to build a stronger party base. "We missed the mark in the past, which is why we are in the crapper now," he told the Washington Times last year.

The criticism of him abated at the end of last year and early this year after a string of Republican election wins.