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’.”
wait a darn minute, now that I think about, sure I know, that just a cost of living raise. For a minute I was concerned.
27th Amendment:
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and ERepresentaties, shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
The whole Congress should be impeached. They give themselves a pay raise while millions of taxpayers lost their jobs or have accepted pay cuts, no holiday bonues, etc. just to keep the jobs they have. Unconscionable and inexcusable.
They always get their pay raise! That makes me irate as it comes out of tax payer pockets. Tax payers who may be losing their jobs and homes.
Congress knows no shame.. The whole lot of them!
California Assembly also got a nice little raise despite ‘Arnie’s Armeggedon”. The only way to stop this nonsense is to quit sending in your taxes. I predict a massive tax revolt in the near future.
Yeah, we could try to vote the incumbents who have been there for 150 years out, but most people vote either their party straight or push the lever for the name they've heard of - year after year after year.
You’re exactly right. This way they don’t have to vote on it every year or have it on their conscience. It’s sort of one of their stealth perks. However, they aren’t stepping forward to overturn it. Inevitably, some lonely congress critter finds the fortitude to sponsor a bill every year to strike the automatic part of their salary increases. Few, if any, sign on to support it.
Snakes in the grass. I’m sick of the lack of integrity on the hill.
Good old Congress.
Yup.
You can ALWAYS rely on Congress to do the right thing!
The government has become the ruling class elite, our corrupt overlords. They just do what the hell they want.
They've gotten away with murder for years, and now through their corrupt leadership, have caused great harm to our economy and millions of Americans. The clock is ticking away as these arrogant government parasites as they count their latest, tax payer funded raises.
Just patting themselves on the back for that 9% approval rating of theirs.
With all the furor created when they held hearings and publicly debated this pay raise for themselves, I’m surprised that they voted for this. What is that? You mean they didn’t hold public hearings?
BTTT
There. I think I improved on your cogent observation.
Well played!
Pray for W and Our Troops
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