/ebook/products/0-13-251359-5/MAG01se1004p0147.gif)
Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
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’.”
We are nothing but smelly peasants to these goons. There is a story in Charlotte about an expensive party thrown but some government office, the press (surprisingly) crashed the party..it was fun to watch them squirm.
They need to take a month without pay.
The Messiah’s coronation is beyond reprehensible considering all the “poor” people that Liberals are supposedly so concerned about. You know, the peons, the US Congressional Liberals destroyed.
Disgusting
Torches and pitchforks!
Just an idle thought....
Pay raises are given out in the private sector based on performance and after an annual review. What have these belly crawlers done to deserve a raise? They answer to no one.
That's what I was wondering too.
I'd include the banking and insurance executives in there somewhere.
... 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.”
While I am against congress raising its salary when it has done so much to destroy our economy, this senior citizen activist is an idiot. His statement is just stupid on its face. We are talking about 2.5 million dollars here and he thinks it could be better spent "helping millions of seniors"? I'm sure that sum of less than $2.50 each will go a long way toward keeping their heat on this winter. Decry the idiocy of congress giving itself a raise when the economy is so bad all you want, but at least try to use an argument that doesn't make you sound like an idiot.
I have said for years that their salary should be tied to the median income in some way. Of course, I also think we should have term limits which would also eliminate the need for pensions. Let them have a 401K like the rest of us peons.
LOL I love that!
Good plan. Of course, my congress critters (my goodness, my state rep is Wexler!) are probably not going to care a whit what I think, but hey, I need to let them know!
I think a ‘pink slip’ Holiday card might be in order.
Next round of tax refund/rebate checks should be returned marked NSF. You see my dollars are worth more without that check.
Set-up the United States of America Escrow Account and deposit all tax payments into that account until such time as the government stops printing fiat money.
It's ideas like yours is what I was hoping folks would start coming up with. Most times, I'm very uncreative and your ideas can be done without lengthy letters, more to the point and with impact IMO. Thanks for that.
I've done many cartooned cards for troops and special days and while the artwork is not a problem, the IDEAS can sure be slow coming, very frustrating. I've seen cartoons to these people but one does have to be careful not to cross the line of overt threats and slander.
He once stated in a committee hearing the nomination of a district court judge that he "loved his government."
This was uttered to a conservative judge who twenty years earlier had expressed, in writing, his misgivings about the monstrous federal government.
I'll bet he's a proud card-carrying member of the socialist AARP.
I canceled membership in that phony club some time ago.
They rail Wall Street for taking paychecks while their companies do poorly, then vote themselves a raise.
WHAT A COUNTRY!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.