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Congress proves it’s recession-proof
By Howie Carr | Friday, December 19, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Will you be getting a pay raise next year? No, I didn’t think so. Well, guess who will be getting a little something extra in their direct deposits in a couple of weeks? The U.S. Congress - all 535 of those sticky-fingered windbags.

Merry Christmas from the taxpayers.

This is not a joke. Thanks for the subprime mortgage crisis, Barney Frank! Here’s your bonus for tanking the economy - another $4,700, on top of the $169,300 you were already making.

Ho-ho-ho, and I’m not referring to Barney’s former live-in heartthrob, Hot Bottom.

Isn’t it odd that this Yuletide pay grab is generating so little press? I spotted it yesterday on The Hill Web site, under the headline, “With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise.” These same statesmen have been railing against Detroit’s Big 3 CEOs, demanding they take a dollar a year. Yet somehow it’s OK for them to chow down for another heaping helping at the public trough.

And our delegation includes a couple of double-dippers - career hacks who are drawing both a congressional paycheck and a monthly kiss in the mail from the State Retirement Board.

Come on down U.S. Rep. Bilk, I mean Bill Delahunt of Quincy. As the ex-Norfolk district attorney, Delahunt has been getting a state pension check since January 1997 - currently $4,801.98 a month. That comes to $57,623.76 a year.

Then there’s Rep. John Olver of Amherst. Before he went to Beacon Hill and had his mind, such as it is, kidnapped by Billy Bulger, he was a professor at UMass. Olver’s been on the state dole since November 1992, and currently collects $2,263.21 a month, which works out to $27,158 per annum.

Nice “work” if you can get it. Every year a handful of congressmen tries to freeze the law that gives them this annual pay hike. The co-sponsors are usually reps from marginal districts. Once they’re safely re-elected a couple of times, they forget about reform. This year, according to The Hill, the pay freeze bill had 34 sponsors in the House - 8 percent of the members. I’m sure there would have been even fewer if the solons had thought it was a serious proposal, which of course it wasn’t.

They think they’re entitled, of course. After all, they could be making a lot more in the Dreaded Private Sector, right? Actually, we’ll have to take their word for that, because so few of them have ever actually had a real job in the DPS. Barney Frank? You’re kidding, right? Fast Eddie Markey? Stop, you’re killing me.

The nearest thing we have to a mogul among our delegation is Sen. John “Liveshot” Kerry, and I’m not referring to his impressive credentials in the gigolo industry, but to his brief stint as a titan in the chocolate-chip cookie industry in Quincy Market.

First the Legislature gets a pay raise, and now Congress. What recession? Ho-ho-ho.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1140019