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.Quite a nice little gimmick that is.
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.”
....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.
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Thursday, December 18, 2008
It must be nice to control your own salary
Congress likes to get a pay raise, but they don't like to vote for one because it tends to make constituents irritated so they had a nice little brainstorm to make their pay raises automatic unless they vote to postpone a raise. Well, this year in the midst of all the economic angst that people are suffering across the country just didn't seem like a good time to postpone legislators getting their own pay hike so that automatic 2.8% pay raise will sail right through.
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4 comments:
I wonder....do the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan get an automatic pay raise too or is it just for our celebrity Congress?
NeoKong,
All troops and even military retirees received a much deserved pay raise this year. I would say it was well earned though there was much debate regarding the amounts and the recipients. For instance, there was an opportunity to get more money out to personnel in critical military occupational specialties and to specific pay grades where we are seeing increased losses to the civilian sector (for higher pay).
Congress, as Betsy points out, had no public debate about their own merits and no public show of who supported their raise and who did not, as usual.
TERM LIMITS.
DEFENESTRATION!
We taxpayers need to make a BIG noise about this! The more people contact Congress to complain, the more likely that something will be done to change this.
THIS group in Congress certainly does NOT merit any increase. True justice would dictate a pay CUT for them.
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