Congress Eyes Pay Raise for Itself
WASHINGTON - After raising the minimum wage by 70 cents an hour this week, many members of Congress are ready to give themselves a pay increase of roughly $4,400 per year.
That would take their annual salaries to nearly $170,000.
Campaigning last year, Democratic leaders said it would be wrong for Congress to accept a pay hike until it raised the minimum wage. That happened on Tuesday, when the minimum wage rose from $5.15 to $5.85 per hour; it will reach $7.25 an hour on July 24, 2009.
Cost-of-living increases are automatic for members of Congress unless they’re voted down. The House of Representatives already has cleared the way for such a raise in 2008, but a bipartisan coalition is out to block it, with critics saying the money could be better spent during a time of war and high deficits.
“This is the people’s money, and we need to use it on their priorities,” said Republican Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, who’s co-sponsoring a bill to prevent the raise. “Increasing the pay of members of Congress is not their priority.”
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, said she’d back a similar measure in the Senate.
“I don’t think Congress should get a raise,” she said. “I think it would be a nice thing to tell the American people that we could go a couple years without a raise.”
Under current plans, members of Congress will receive an automatic pay raise, estimated at 2.5 percent, in January. In a show of bipartisan consensus, the House voted 244-181 last month to kill a proposal that would have forced a straight up-or-down vote on the pay increase.
Defending the pay raise on the House floor, Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said she was “happy to report that the Democrats kept their promise” in raising the minimum wage for the first time in a decade.
Opponents said a raise for Congress would be ill timed.
“According to the recent polls, Americans don’t like the Congress,” said Rep. Howard Coble, a North Carolina Republican. “Our numbers, lower than President Bush’s numbers, are in the tank. To enact this (cost-of-living increase) will do nothing, in my opinion, to improve our already diminished reputation.”
Rep. Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican, said congressional popularity is at an all-time low because “viciousness and the partisanship are probably at an all-time record high.” He noted that only two of the first 60 bills the House passed this year were signed into law.
“If we were on a baseball team and we hit two out of 60 . . . we would be sent down to single A ball for such a pathetic percentage,” he said. “So we are not performing well enough to deserve it.”
Republican Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the House minority whip, said most Republicans - “with great discipline” - have resisted using the words “pay raise,” instead preferring to call the increase a cost-of-living allowance.
“Every member has some obligation to the institution for the compensation to, as much as possible, keep pace with inflation,” he said. “I think this should be as good a job when I leave it as it was when I took it.”
Opponents are pushing House leaders to schedule a vote on legislation to block an increase. Two such bills have been introduced in the House, though no votes have been scheduled.
“It’s mystifying to me why the House leadership will not allow a straight up-or-down vote on a pay raise,” said Graves. “I vote against every pay raise because taxpayers deserve better.”
Rep. Nancy Boyda, a Kansas Democrat and another co-sponsor of one of the bills, said “democracy sometimes moves slowly,” but she said she’s hopeful that the House will reconsider its position and block the pay raise.
“In my district, the median wage is still going down, so it just doesn’t seem right for Congress to take care of itself,” Boyda said. “I guess maybe it depends where you’re coming from . . . . If we get a pay raise, I will donate it to charity.”
Congress approved the law making its pay raises automatic in 1989, giving legislators an easy way to avoid tough votes that could hurt them during re-election campaigns. Since then, congressional salaries have nearly doubled, from $89,500 to $165,200 a year.
President Bush is paid $400,000 a year. His salary isn’t affected by changes in congressional pay.
Hotakainen reports for The Kansas City Star and The Wichita Eagle.
2007 McClatchy Newspapers
Nooooo it isn’t just one party of 535 lawyers playing both ends against the middle! Were good! They completely sold us out but that’s OK!
Because the Millionaires club really needs that extra 4,000 per year. 535 x 4,000= 214,000 that can be spent elsewhere or sent back to the taxpayers.
I”ll let my representatives have another $4,400 if I get to give it to them by shoving it up their….
Using campaign spending limits to get America better politicians is the only way to solve America’s problems enough.
This pay raise deal just puts everything in the proper light to show how absolutely hypocritical many in the US Congress are. They want to give themselves a damn pay raise right now, but they’re going to phase an increase in the minimum over several years, which by the time people get it, won’t amount to much of a damn. Give us a damn break!
Be a good idea if they would earn their keep before asking for a raise.
Mr. Pilgrim, I heard, went around the Texas’ legislature handing out $10,000.00 checks to all the politicians, he said it was easier to pay them that way. Corporate America might take a hint from Mr. Pilgrim and just toss bales of money into the House and Senate rather than go the long route and have the K-Streeters buy them a little at time.
Once the politicians have arrived at the dollar goals they crave they could then go about our business as well.
Must be a couple of good ones in Washington somewhere — just hard to see the wheat for all the chaff.
AD, we don’t need no stinking break: we just need for those folks to do what they swore they would.
DIRECT DEMOCRACY. NO POLITICIANS. http://ni4d.us/
FIRE ALL of THEM except for Kucinich and the members who oppose a pay raise.
The tea in the harbor is becoming more perceptable……
damn near palpable.
This is simple….
535 congress members plus the Executive branch and judicial branch are all lawyers or business people and they report to several large businesses. They stopped listening to us and at best patronize us. As law abiding American citizens Thomas Jefferson would now have us fall back from the Constitution and follow the Declaration of Independence that says…
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”
Okay, let’s discuss this thing, shall we? In the 10 years it took for congress to raise the minimum wage, congress gave itself $36,000 IN RAISES. That alone is THREE TIMES what the minimum wage full time, all year round worker makes. And for WHAT? To sell out the country to the highest bidder? I think they all deserve a whipping, not a goddamned raise.
now for my BIG comment on this article. Here is the quote:
“Rep. Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican, said congressional popularity is at an all-time low because “viciousness and the partisanship are probably at an all-time record high.” He noted that only two of the first 60 bills the House passed this year were signed into law.”
Might that be due to the fact that the REPUBLICANS have filibustered things OVER 50 TIMES since this congress started? What a goddamned hypocrite! You want to know why people hate congress? LOOK IN THE MIRROR! There isn’t one of you that seems to be interested in anything but your own furtherance, and I think ALL of you should go HOME. Relearn what it is like to be a CITIZEN and get shafted by your gov’t just like the rest of us have had to do over the last 26 years. Maybe THEN you will understand just what a miserable, useless, completely IGNORANT WASTE OF TIME YOU HAVE BEEN.
You want something other than contempt? Start acting in some other way than contemptible. You deserve every bit of hate you garner.
For those who need to see justice on this plane, in this space and time, I have minimal consolation. I can applaud your anger and grief in the face of such egregious abuse of those in positions of power, but we already know that greed has become an ersatz US religion, that Reagan gave it a whole new facelift. What I can say is, in the measure it is given, it must be wisely used… to those who claim much for themselves while denying others, their justice will come. This is what karma is all about. Imagine if these individuals stood before beings of LIGHT, stood before the holies of holy and acted this way? What they are doing is being recorded into the silent filament that constitutes the record of souls, it is known to mystics as the Akashic record (read by the likes of Edgar Cayce and others). In other words, they will pay a price, no one gets away with this kind of abuse of justice and completely callous disregard for citizens in need while putting self-interest first and foremost. The ugliness stinks to high heaven, and there are sources there quite hip to what’s going on.
I want them hung in reality not in someone’s concept of the hereafter. I can just see the right wing and other so-called law and order Chrisitian hypocrites letting suspected criminals off the hook on the basis that the hereafter will take care of their crimes.
Hang em now and hang em high. Treat them with the same medicine they prescribed for Saddam Husseim. That is the only justice and the only fair thing to do. Remember the saying: “i didn’t judge the bastards. I just expedited their trip to meet the judge.” Something like that from good o’l Eastwood types.
If and when anyone has the opportunity/unfortunate karma to actually see and speak to their elected representatives, I suggest, in no uncertain terms, we all tell them they are worthless assh…s and to go f… themselves.
Meet the new boss… Same as the old boss.
What’s another $4,400 when we’re already robbing you blind.
Yours truly, Congress
p.s. Using campaign spending limits to get America better politicians is the only way to solve America’s problems enough.
There was a time it was argued that political offices needed higher pay levels to lure able candidates away from more lucrative jobs in the private sector. That may have been true at one time, when politicians all the way from town councilors to the president, were seen as citizen-servants and not careerists.
It seems to me that a majority of officeholders today have more than sufficient private means - everything from inherited wealth to investments - that the income from their office is at best supplemental and at worst negligible in terms of their other income. Add to this money from lobbyists and other brib - er, contributions - and that government paycheck becomes a mere pittance. Furthermore, the laws regarding what happens to campaign fund surpluses upon a pol’s defeat or retirement vary from state to state. In some cases, it becomes nothing more than a big fat bonus on top of an already hefty pension.
We could also ask why congress needs high pay. The government provides a host of administrative support for senators and representatives, all the way from office furniture repairmen to mail folders. The headline at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/1992/08/01/87440/index.htm
declares: “What CONGRESS Really Costs You: $2.8 Billion a Year: the Problems Run Much Deeper than the Scandals and Perks You Have Read About. Indeed, No Matter How Extravagant and Inefficient You Now Believe Congress Is with Your Money, the Reality Is Worse.” (That’s $5,233,644.86 per legislator) This story is quite old - how much worse is it now? Perhaps a legitimate question to ask, in light of the perks, is how many members of congress actually need their salary to live on, as ordinary Americans do, much less cost of living adjustments?
We keep having the word “democracy” waved in our faces like a magic talisman, but the real term for the system we live by is plutocracy, kleptocracy, kakistocracy - choose any or all; they’re equally applicable.
Term limits folks - six years and they are gone. No more career freeloading, bribe taking, anti-America lawyers sucking from the US teat. And one, six year term for any moron that wants to be called president. If they don’t get impeached at year three.
It’s O.K., because they really are so much better and deserving than the rest of us. … so tired of thinking about the abominations this gov. lets happen in the name of the American people …
Here’s a thought. I could live for six months on just the raise.
WHY do we vote for people who “earn” so much more than most of us???????????
Love the Earth and She’ll love you back.
again??????
how does this keep happening?????
Just so all of you know, thier so called “cost of living” raises come out of your taxes!!!!!
so we all work our asses off, just to survive, and they have given themselves raises what???
every year? maybe twice a year since 2000 (as far as I can remember)
F THEM! THEY SHOULD ALL BE FIRED IN MY OPINION!
what do they do, I mean really except sit around, argue and bla bla and accomplish NOTHING!
damn, I would get fired for that, not given a raise.
if anything they should be making MINIMUM WAGE NO BENEFITS! SEE HOW THEY LIKE IT.
I make 12.00 hr…………………… 7 yrs ago that would have been good money. now I just work to pay my stupid bills and I dont even have a lot of that. rent,electric, phone, car, ins for car so I can get back and forth to wk, so I can make money to pay my bills, laundry (no wshr & dryer in my cabin) GAS!!!!! and gee if I am lucky I get to buy some food!
it’s not like I am out blowing my money, cuz I dont have any to blow!!!!!! I dont get it.
SO! since I havent had a raise in 2 YEARS and not like there are a ton of jobs where I live believe I look everyday IT IS ALL RETAIL) WTF!?????
economy is good????? yeah, good for them.
so, I stopped paying my taxes. they can KMA!
I will not pay them. I WONT not until I start to see some progress in THIS COUNTRY. all our tax money is going into thier pockets, to Isreal, to war, and not going to the citizens of the USA, like the Katrina victims (as an example) the list goes on & on. it’s BS
and believe me I have done my research.
If you are afraid to NOT pay your “taxes” that is called
EXTORTION. You have a choice.
This has become a taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION NATION!
Believe it! Look around, what do you see happening here?????
the only reason nothing is being done, why The People are not standing up is because they are to busy sitting in front of thier stupid boxes.
so as usual we talk and talk and do nothing.
I wont post on here again because I am sick to death of people just talking out of thier butts and doing nothing. Talking, in this kind of situation does nothing. We are The People of this country. It is our JOB and our RIGHT to disband this BS excuse for a “government”. They work for us, it is not the other way around.
“The People should’nt be afraid of thier Government.
the Government should be afraid of thier People.”
–Fr: V for Vendetta
“Look what all this talking got us baby…..”
—-Live