Posted on 11/26/2006 6:30:13 AM PST by BenLurkin
Despite having a hardscrabble farmer and an avowed socialist in their ranks, the incoming class of senators does little to shake the Senate's image as a millionaires' club.
Bob Corker, senator-elect from Tennessee, boasts an estimated $64 million to $236 million fortune, according to the financial disclosure he filed to the Senate. Claire McCaskill, the senator-to-be from Missouri, has a portfolio worth roughly $13 million to $29 million.
And Sheldon Whitehouse, who ousted the fifth-richest member of the Senate, Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, is hardly hurting for cash himself: He has $4 million to $14 million parked in various trusts and funds.
All told, at least half of the ten men and women joining the Senate next year are millionaires, with Corker and McCaskill shoo-ins to number among the ten richest senators. That rarefied club includes Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who Roll Call newspaper ranks as the richest senator, with an estimated net worth of $750 million. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., comes in second, with an estimated fortune of $243.15 million.
The wealth of the incoming class will hardly raise eyebrows in the Senate, where about half of the current 100 members are also millionaires and the average net worth is $8.9 million, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington. By contrast, less than 1% of the U.S. population has a net worth of $1 million or more.
In 2006, senators were paid an annual salary of $165,200.
Though the affluence of today's Senate might seem staggering, it is hardly out of the ordinary for Congress' elite upper chamber.
"Overall, senators have historically been wealthier," says Donald Ritchie, a Senate historian.
The peak of Senate wealth probably came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when wealthy businessmen like George Hearst, the father of newspaperman William Randolph Hearst, and Simon Guggenheim were members.
Though millionaires are far more common today thanks to inflation, lots of members in the 19th century Senate would have been multimillionaires in today's dollars, insists Ritchie. Back in 1900, $100,000 was roughly equivalent to $1 million today.
So glaring was the affluence of the turn-of-the century Senate that it prompted a series of muckraking articles in 1906 called the "The Treason of the Senate." That led to the 17th Amendment, which instituted the direct election of senators in 1913. Previously, they were chosen by state legislatures.
It is difficult to pinpoint a senator's precise worth because they are required to disclose only the ranges of dollar values into which their assets fall, rather than an exact figure. Therefore, it's unclear for example whether Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota's senator-elect, is a millionaire: She reported assets of $325,000 and $1.4 million.
Unless they got their money by criminal acts it doesn't really matter to me that they are "rich".
It matters to me that many of these exceedingly wealthy people impose taxes on we lesser mortals "for our own good."
Our Senate is a huge ongoing joke on America. It's all just black comedy.
It also matters to me when election time comes around and "We the people" pay for these bastids elections campaigns like they're poor and destitute and can't afford to pay their own way.
Also gotta wonder why these sobs worth from 10 to 700 million bucks apiece fight so hard for that crappy 160k a year job. This is why we have so mucb corruption up there now. They don't do it for the money. THey do it for the influence and corruption.
May not matter to you, but it matters to me ;(
We need to re-distribute THEIR money, not ours? I'd vote for that..LOL...
I boast an estimated 0 to 500 billion fortune, but it is all on paper.
BUMP!
Taxes that they themselves avoid.
Corker is a self made man, more than what most there can say.
Yea, but they don't get to reap the windfall of SS benefits like WE do! /s
Exactly, and don't think for a minute that these people do not have the best accountants and tax professionals who know how to invest their money, and get them through tax loopholes. People who we could never afford. Advantage goes to millionaires.
They probably get that too - based on their work history before WE started paying them.
Unless they got their money by criminal acts it doesn't really matter to me that they are "rich".
It matters to me if they gained their wealth from being politicians. If they were successful before gaining office, fine, but too many of them are eating at the trough of "consultation" fees, board memberships, and all sorts of shady money deals, like the nonsense going on with a certain western representative, water rights, and his spec homes development.
It would very interesting to compare assets before being elected to the Senate and in the present - also for the House members. As Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying,"follow the money trail".
What really interests me is how Clinton went into the White House owning an old Ford convertible and he and his wife came out multi-millionaires.
Would you want a bunch of losers, instead?
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