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View Full Version : Congress gets a Raise!?!




DirtMcGirt
12-19-2008, 11:29 AM
Can we get RP to propose some legislation stating that Congress can not get a raise if the budget is not balanced for that fiscal year?

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/with-economy-in-shambles-congress-gets-a-raise-2008-12-17.html

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.

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heavenlyboy34
12-19-2008, 11:38 AM
Pathetic! Congress fails (as usual). :p:mad::(

No1ButPaul08
12-19-2008, 12:04 PM
They should be working for $1, like the auto execs

heavenlyboy34
12-19-2008, 12:20 PM
They should be working for $1, like the auto execs

They should be paying US, IMHO. ;)

Madcat455
12-19-2008, 01:12 PM
They should be paying US, IMHO. ;)

No.. cause they'd just print the money to do it:p

Doktor_Jeep
12-19-2008, 01:22 PM
Congress voted itself a raise....


excuse me while I try to look surprised....



ugh.....grunt...... ech.....


I can't do it.

moostraks
12-19-2008, 01:28 PM
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.



Is this suppose to garner some compassion or support for this raise?:confused:

Someone needs to chew them a new....Well y'all get the point. This is disgusting and if I had a vomit emoticon I would insert it here.

TastyWheat
12-19-2008, 01:32 PM
Should Congress be allowed to give themselves a raise? Democratizing certain things can be bad (e.g. direct election of president, direct election of senators, voter initiative), but I really think districts should decide their own Represenative's salary and state legislators should be deciding their own Senators' salaries. I'm not sure if it would be appropriate for Representatives and Senators to be paid out of the state budget, but that's something to think about too.

phill4paul
12-19-2008, 01:53 PM
Dear Taxpayers,

Thank you so very much for you donation. It will allow us to continue to give, to ourselves, our cronies, our school classmates, our businesses, our prison system and our wars.

In this season of giving we intend to give as much as we receive. With this in mind we are asking you to give us a little more that we may give away much more.


Sincerely, Uncle Sam

polomertz
12-19-2008, 02:15 PM
They should be working for $1, like the auto execs

They'd still be overpaid.:)