Ocasio-Cortez announces staff starting salary of $52K to champion 'living wage'

The Hill ^ | 02/23/2019 | Morgan Gstalter

[Robwin]

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) announced this week that no one on her staff would make less than $52,000 a year, a move aimed at championing a “living wage.”

The progressive firebrand’s policy creates an unheard of salary for young House staffers in Washington, D.C., where the average rent is more than $2,000 a month, Roll Call reported Friday.

“It’s likely one of the highest entry-level salaries on the Hill,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “We pinch pennies elsewhere, but it’s worth every dime to pay a living wage.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s communications director, Corbin Trent, told the outlet that salaries for the congresswoman’s office would top out at $80,000 — well below the $154,634 median wage, according to a Legistorm analysis of congressional chiefs of staffs.

Some Ocasio-Cortez staffers might be required to take pay cuts, Trent acknowledged. He is making $67,000 a year and has two children.“Is it easy? No,” he said. “But part of walking the walk is understanding that everyone is going to have a little bit of a struggle. You divide it up. You work together.”

Ocasio-Cortez announced in December that she would also pay her interns at least $15 an hour.

The lawmaker wrote on Twitter that she was facing pushback from people who didn’t understand how congressional salaries work.

“Each member is given a set amount that they disburse. GOP has refused to increase budgets in years to give hard-working staff a raise, which means people helping to run the country are getting paid $30k/year,” she wrote.

[CharlesWayneCT]

We didn’t elect you, or anybody there, to “run the country”. You are running the government, which SERVES the country.

And we don’t really care about staffers, who also are not “running the country”, they are there to help you SERVE the country.

And if you want to pay incompetent people too much money, and then try to pay the competent staffers nothing so you have more money to pay the incompetent ones, that is fine with me, it will be fun to see how many of your staffers actually quit because nobody wants to be paid less than what they are worth, or to have to work with incompetent peolple making just as much as they are.