Raising The Roof On Outrage

ALG News ^ | December 30, 2008 | Howie Rich

[CampusKing]

"With trillions of taxpayer dollars being poured into an outright socialist invasion of our nation's founding free market philosophy - you might think that the paltry sum of $2.5 million would be incapable of generating much outrage."

"You've heard the expression "a drop in the bucket?"

[CampusKing]

$2.5 million for Congressional pay raises may be the costliest appropriation—politically.

[servantboy777]

>>$2.5 million for Congressional pay raises may be the costliest appropriation—politically.”

Not necessarily for the entrenched.

[paul51]

no level of public outrage or taxpayer dis approval will ever prevent congress people from enriching themselves at every opportunity. Time for the ‘we have to pay them more to attract good people ‘ crowd.

[peeps36]

I wouldn't mind paying more if the money went to competent people who cared about the wellbeing of the country. Instead the money will go to incompetent swine who continue to ruin our country with their corruption and stupidity. America elects idiots and assh*l*s.

[farlander]

Ya know and it really doesn’t matter at all. Here’s an interesting fact: vast majority of the elected representatives come out of Congress millionaires (if they weren’t so already). They don’t do that on the 150k salary (or whatever they just voted themselves).

They do it by trading in the markets. The insider trading laws do not apply to congress. The congresscritters are perfectly within their right to buy or sell stock of companies they’re affecting with their legislation. So, here’s the scenario for ya - a large pork laden subsidies bill is going through the congress. You, as a elected official, KNOW that there ARE enough votes to pass. You go ahead and buy shitload of stock of affected companies (solar and ethanol comes to mind). Bill passes. You cash in. Repeat every 2-3 months. Retire loaded.

Thank you for playing.

[Hoffer Rand]

Not only that, even if you only serve a single day as a congresscritter, you get your salary plus very generous healthcare plan FOR LIFE as part of the pension plan. So even if you get voted out after one term, you still “retire” and get all kinds of bennies for life. Nice, huh?

[Robert DeLong]

Congress has a pension plan ... and it's not at risk.

It's a fairly nice one, too. Not extravagant, but nice.

Members are eligible to start collecting at age 62 if they have at least five years of service. If they have 20 years of service under their belt, they can retire at 50. With 25 years of service, they can retire any time.

What they get depends on a formula based on years of service and average pay(natch, right?).

So a congressman with 22 years of service and whose average salary for the top three years was $153,900 gets $84,645. A current congressman ending up with six years of service (it's two-year terms, after all) would get at least $16,503 (at age 62, of course).

In actuality, the average congressional pension payment ranges between $41,000 and $55,000, based on 2002 data from the Congressional Research Service.

SOURCE