Posted on 02/23/2019 1:22:28 PM PST by yesthatjallen
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.
The New Yorker said it was “pretty sad” who people thought the low salaries were a good thing.
“Low pay a big reason why money in politics is a problem - you can make a lot more money becoming a lobbyist & setting up a relationship w/ one, since the actual job doesn’t pay enough,” she wrote. “Domino effect.”
Her office has not yet finished hiring, but Trent told Roll Call that hiring will likely cap out at 18 staff members, the congressional limit.
Ocasio-Cortez has previously called for lawmakers in Congress to increase pay for members of their staff, stating that some don’t make a living wage.
In December, she wrote that she had met several bartenders, managers and servers in D.C. who also work in Senate or House offices.
"This is a disgrace. Congress of ALL places should raise [Members' Representational Allowances] so we can pay staff an actual DC living wage," Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star on the left, wrote in a tweet.
How does someone take a “pay cut” on a job they just entered? I guess socialism DOES work different from anything we’re used to.
STAFF - that means the people who cause all the problems for the rest of the country and who will write the stupid releases she’ll have to retract?
What happens when they don’t want to work?
Corbin Trent, Communications Director: “Is it easy? No, 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.”
Everything that spews from their vile mouths reeks of collectivism.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the article
says she will be disbursed a certain amount
to pay up to eighteen staffers. If she increases
the pay of anyone, the total has to still be the disbursed amount.
In other words, she isn’t spending more money, just reallocating it to fewer staffers. Am I reading it wrong?
Does that mean that she and all staff are paid equal amt of money. Perhaps all gov’t workers should be pd the same
This is how socialist work. They take your money and then pontificate about how you should spend what you have left. God help us if we ever let them take our guns.
I think she should pay all her staffers min wage ($13.25/hr in Wash DC) and donate the rest to help her poor relatives in Puerto Rico.
That wage in DC is at the poverty level.
GOOD!! If the pay were lower, we'd get fewer of these people ruining our lives. Why does she NEED EIGHTEEN full-time staff people? All these people do is pass laws to take away our freedoms. Don't we have enough laws?
It sounds like AOC has an office full of mentally retarded staffers -- just like their boss.
When she chased Amazon out of NYC, she complained that a tax break of $3 billion would have been better spent attracting "real jobs" to NYC. Amazon was going to bring 25,000+ new jobs to NYC with an average salary of about $150,000/year.
So she hires 18 staffers at a MAXIMUM salary of $80,000 ... and she's actually proud of herself? LMAO.
“...everyone is going to have a little bit of a struggle. You divide it up. You work together.”
Socialism’s worked real well, all thru history.
SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State forces you to give one to your neighbor, shoots the neighbor and forces you
to milk them both, giving all milk back to the state.
The State gives you a cup of sour milk.
MARXISM
You have two cows.
The government takes both and shoots you.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you nothing.
They shoot your family and put you in a gulag.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, promises more free cows, lets you vote and gives you sour milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots your wife and kids.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.
GUAMISM
You have two cows.
You never milk them, they just eat the grass, so you don’t have to mow the lawn.
You live on welfare and get food stamps, so you don’t need the milk. (H/T Fai Mao)
LBJ GREAT SOCIETISM
You have two cows.
The president realizes that neighbor wants their own cow, slaughters
your calf every year preventing you from having a cow to sell.
The president takes the slaughtered cow and turns it into hamburger,
has a cook-out so neighbor stops trying to own a cow themselves.
The neighbor spends next 50 years going to presidents cook out and
never gets his own cow. (H/T PCPOET7)
LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM
You have two cows. So what? (H/T Celtic Conservative)
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
CONTEMPORARY WALL STREETISM
You have two cows.
You sell one, bundle the other with a goat, a mule,
and two dry cows.
You pile into the derivatives market, buy a Gulfstream
and when it all comes down around your ears...
You go to the government for a bailout.
I guess you’d have to be another Congresscritter
to understand why it takes 18 staffers to run an
office where the legislation can get passed
without anyone reading it, anyway. Think Obamacare.
From that statement, it's a short path to "Of course we in government should be paid enough to be comfortable, far more than those we govern. It's for the best."
I say AOC’s overpaid staff would starve out in the real world...as should that worthless POS congressbroad! (Almost used a term for female canine...)
Jeez, when do I get a “living wage”? I have been existing on a somewhat lower level than that for a number of years now, and that is COMBINED spouse’s income and mine.
Cash flow is a dicey thing to deal with in the best of circumstances. Would the $52,000 be enough for the lowly staff to make out in DC?
She doesn’t care ... the taxpayers will pay it.
They got to pick the pockets of everyone “The Glorious Leader” had shot.
When Occasional Cortex first came on the scene, there was a story about her failed attempt at capitalism. She actually started up a publishing company, but liberal big government rules, regulations, fees and taxes got in the way of success. There is an AOC quote out there “You don’t really make a profit in your first year,” Ocasio-Cortez told the now-defunct DNAinfo when she was 22. “To get taxed on top of that is a real whammy.” She was commenting on the difficulty business startups encounter. She so failed at free enterprise that she went completely over to the Dark Side communist, socialist, Big Government Creepozoids who find it sooooo easy to spend ‘other people’s money.’ To them ‘the rich’ have all the money, and have ‘taken it’ from the poor. (I have always found it amusing that people with NO MONEY have made the rich wealthy) Does not compute.
The way Occasional Cortex talks reminds me of my middle school math students, only my middle school math students understood a lot more math than AOC.
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