Posted on 12/17/2008 7:07:30 PM PST by NormsRevenge
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.
Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.
“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”
However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.
Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.
“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”
Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.
Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.
“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.
Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.
In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.
In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.
Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.
Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.
“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”
Well, nothing spectacular, I'm creating my own cards (in an envelope) to mail to these SOBs. I used to write lots of letters then got demoralized and then started writing again. No one writes much anymore, meaning real messages on real paper in real envelopes.
Time was when it was hard to just trash real letters to these people, they had to do something and the idea being that "processing", being handled by several people ("Here Suzie, send a form letter to this idiot"), it reached more folks that you imagine.
I learned this by being able to access a large state bureaucracy during my career, where all the moguls ruled from. It was said by a bureaucratic fatcat that each letter represented at least 10 people, probably closer to 100s, truth be known. I've seen a few letters actually change proposed laws, so it CAN work.
We conservatives aren’t envious or angry about that, HnO - we’re thrilled about your success. GRATZ!
If we’re paying for their performance, they shouldn’t get a raise. In fact, they should be fired.
Wasn’t it done late one night behind closed doors, without the normal media present? It was a few years back. Or am I thinking of another raise they gave themselves?
My employer took me and others to a group lunch today, during which one 55 year old white jackass was lecturing an Indian co-worker about the evils of the South, Bush and the goodness of Zero, though he didn’t call him that. I kept silent and the Indian guy, I think, knows a little better. Anyway, when the check came the manager said: “That’ll be $10 each!” Some Christmas lunch!
Filthy thieves.
lol...we have to shut the hallway lights off to save on the company energy bill. Something tells me we’re not getting a bonus this year...
I see. Destroy companies with wrong-headed public policy. Blame management. Take over the companies. Prop up the failed companies with somebody else’s (taxpayers’) money. Then give yourself a raise because of the importance of your job.
In the words of Gov. LaPettamaine (spelling??) in Blazing Saddles, “Yeah. We’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs!”
Nice. I knew a couple who made a big deal about inviting a bunch of people they knew over for a grand steak cookout at the lake on the Forth of July. It was going to be an awesome day. A couple of days before the event, they called everyone and told them to bring whatever kind of steak they liked.
Congre$$ has been on a real run lately , huh?
Many should be run out of Washington at the points of pitchforks.
However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.
Yeah, and Medicare ate it up. My monthly check has not gone up one dime in 7 years.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stations/HeadingRight/ASKShow
Obama - End Run Around Congress
Obama’s most brilliant stealth strategy for implementing “change” involves not just a change in laws, but a change in the way laws are made and passed. I’ll tell you how, and what it means for our country.
Click the link and listen to the program. It will send you into a tizzy tighter than a tick.
I would say more but it would get me banned.
This will be a great issue to hang on the Democrat majorit..
oh, wait, it won’t please the Washington Post to raise such a “divisive” and “mean-spirited” issue, so you know what that means: no NRCC cash for anyone who dare raise the issue.
I thought this was a joke.
After utterly destroying the US (and world) economies with their CRA Act mega-corruption, the gerrymandered Permanent Ruling Class rewards itself.
Nice slap on the faces for us peons.
I’m calling my senators tomorrow. This is just disgraceful.
I can’t believe these people.
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