House Democrats propose $4,500 pay raise for Congress

[brooklynite]

Source: Politico

House spending leaders want to break a decadelong pay freeze and give members of Congress a cost-of-living bump that could pad their salaries with an extra $4,500 next year.

Congressional salaries have been frozen at about $174,000 since 2009, when Democrats controlled Congress and decided to suspend automatic cost-of-living increases while heading into the 2010 election year.

Now, House Democrats say they are moving forward with fiscal 2020 funding bills that won’t block those pay increases, which are guaranteed by a 1989 federal ethics law.

“There is strong bipartisan support for these modest inflation adjustments,” said Evan Hollander, a spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee, noting that the panel does not have to take action to allow the automatic increases and will simply be forgoing language that would block the raises.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/04/congress-pay-raise-1353195

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Disagree - not the time to bring this up.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. yeah

the timing is not real good with this idea...…..

[BeyondGeography]

2. I agree with you

Real wage growth is nil. Until that changes Congress should bite the bullet.

[NCjack]

6. That would reward Republicans who have done nothing for 10 years. Don't do it

until Congress get some meaningful accomplishments. If the Republicans grow spines and participate in bring the Trump oligarchy to justice, a raise for Congress would be welcomed.

[BeyondGeography]

8. lol...R's are fully on board with Trump's kleptomania and stonewalling

Let’s give ‘em a raise.

[ripcord]

64. Orignally the Congressmen and Senators only received a per diem

It only covered their expenses, they didn't want professional politicians.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Hey how about addressing the STAGGERING wealth and income inequality?

How about a living minimum wage? (Would boost the economy since that money would be spent immediately.)

How about a real tax cut for the lower middle class who haven't seen wage gains for three decades?

[Brainfodder]

70. You want decency and value for our $?

How dare you Bernardo!



Greed is the root cause of all this malarkey!

[Hoyt]

4. +1. Not a good move at this time.

[mindem]

5. WTF

Tone deaf much?

[DURHAM D]

7. Tone Deaf nt

[SCVDem]

9. When does SS

Get a raise?

[elleng]

10. I agree, not the time to bring this up.

[aggiesal]

11. I thought that congress could ...

vote pay increases, but it would not take effect until the next congress is seated.
In essence, they can not give themselves a pay raise.

This doesn't seem right and it looks bad.

[Angleae]

44. Correct, 27th Amendment

[aggiesal]

51. I'm not as think as I dumb I am ...

Either the Dems wanting this don't know about the 27th amendment
or the writer of the story doesn't know about the 27th amendment

House spending leaders want to break a decade long pay freeze and give members of Congress a cost-of-living bump that could pad their salaries with an extra $4,500 next year.

I believe the writer doesn't know or the writer is a right wing hack that is trying to make the Dems look bad.

I have no problem with this as long as it is explained to the public that this goes into affect in Jan. 2021

[Angleae]

56. What, a reporter who doesn't do research? That would never happen. Really, it, wouldn't.

[aggiesal]

57. You forgot this ...

[rockfordfile]

12. Which Democrats?

[BeyondGeography]

14. This comes out of Appropriations

[DURHAM D]

24. None listed.

I think Nita Lowry is head of Appropriations. She needs to have a talk with the staff member who made the statement.

[theaocp]

13. Who gives a fuck if this has bipartisan support or not?

Way to give y'allselves a pat on the fucking back.

[catrose]

15. How about this? Federal minimum wage at $15/hr (even for tipped jobs) and Congress can have a raise.

But only half of what they propose. Personally I could live like a queen on $174K, so my sympathies lie...elsewhere.

[cstanleytech]

19. 15 an hour is pointless and useless in the long run.

I am not saying that because I oppose higher wages for workers either rather it's because in the long run we will be back asking for another increase. Why? Because the cost of goods and services are not static and they will rise so what is needed is something to get businesses to be reasonable in raising the workers wages on their own.
Personally I favor using the carrot and stick approach of higher taxes for businesses that only lowers depending on how many of their workers earn atleast 500% or more over the federal poverty level.
The more workers they have that earn that much then the lower their taxes.

[Nuggets]

31. Free markets and allowing business to regulate themselves including giving fair wages

is a pipe dream.

Minimum wage gives a floor. They are free to raise wages anytime, but greed always gets in their way.

Honesty we should tie wages to executive compensation packages including cars, houses vacations etc.

Don’t allow them to take more than 30 times their lowest paid worker. Allowing corp management/investors to control the purse strings was a bad idea to begin with.

[cstanleytech]

32. Setting a specific wage has proven to be a worse one as

what the businesses and wealthy did was they bought the politicians and those politicians have dragged their heels on raising wages like they should have.
But either way something needs to change because if it does not the wealthy had better look at another country to move to because eventually fewer bodyguards will want the job as the body count rises.

[Nuggets]

34. No it hasn't.

Misery Index
https://inflationdata.com/articles/misery-index/

History of US Minimum Wage
https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/

Pros and Cons of Raising Minimum Wage
https://toggl.com/pros-and-cons-of-raising-minimum-wage/

[JonLP24]

35. Minimum wage is too low it needs to be raised

Strong unions raise wages more than minimum wage but I support doing both.

[cstanleytech]

46. I am not disagreeing but I think it needs to be done in such a way that we

are not still in the same boat again in 5 or 10 years of needing to get Congress off their butts to do it again because the price of goods and services have risen.
In other words it needs to be setup so the companies actually become more willing to pay their workers a living wage without having to go to Congress to get them to do it every few years and linking it to the corporate taxes is probably the only way we are going to get those that run the corporations to stop being so greedy.

[Brainfodder]

65. Pointless, I disagree

I like your post, but getting everyone working to at least $15, which is below with inflation where it should be, is at least a huge step in the right direction.

Also have employers be forced to provide healthcare to ANY workers they employ.

That is truly needed!

The # jobs where they limit hours to avoid the expense is disgusting and I have refused work for that reason alone.

"Part time this!"

[cstanleytech]

66. My idea would hopefully cause businesses to

drastically reduce the whole limiting of hours though.

[Brainfodder]

68. HC needs forced, been obvious a while?

What could happen is consolidating to the max though, resulting in even fewer jobs.

About a decade back a relative of mine experienced just that, wound up doing 2.5 peoples work with no raise in pay, just the keep your job speech? [no longer there, retired, forced a bit though, not cool]

[cstanleytech]

71. So the current limiting hours with schedules that

fluctuate making it next to impossible to get a 2nd job is better?

[JI7]

29. i agree and i am in a high cost of living city and state

[jmowreader]

41. Could you live like a queen if you had to have two places to live?

And I keep telling people, we are NOT going to attract the caliber of people we want to be Congress members if we're paying them what a Walmart store manager makes. If you want the kind of people who can earn a million a year in the private sector, less than $200k a year is a bad joke.

[JI7]

48. many good people make far less than a million and not even 6 figures

i live in a high clost of living city/state and i could live well on that amount even with having 2 places to live.

[jmowreader]

49. Come at it this way

If you have the skills to get a $1M/year job, and you’ve got one, are you going to be either willing or financially able to take an 80 percent pay cut to serve in Congress? Very few politicians are married to big-time stock players like our Speaker is.

You could also do things like build housing areas in DC for Congress people to live in as part of their pay, so they don’t have to buy that DC house. There are a lot of military bases in the NCR you could put them on. Get the company that builds military housing to whip up 535 homes suitable for lieutenant colonels.

[sarisataka]

16. *sigh* it's like they want to loose

Although, frankly, I am more offended by the spokesperson's spin than the raise itself.

[Fullduplexxx]

17. Lol omg no impeachment for us and huge pay raise for them

Yay blue wave

[Nitram]

18. Now that's a stupid idea. WTF? Talk about tone deaf.

[choie]

20. Do your fucking job

and impeach the son of a bitch and then maybe you'll deserve a wage hike.

[turbinetree]

21. Since our social security and medicare have been under attack since 1983

think on how this pay raise will look like for people on those pay plans.....................this is not a good time to do this.............................there are more important items on the bucket list...............................like going after a criminal enterprise sitting in the white house.................

[TimeToGo]

22. Yes

Also -- I once again argue -- the FICA tax should not stop on anything less than a Congressional salary.

[CaptainTruth]

23. Um, no. This is a really bad look. Just no.

[keithbvadu2]

25. $15 an hour for Congress itself. Republicans consider that a high pay rate.

$15 an hour for Congress itself. Republicans consider that a high pay rate.

[badhair77]

26. Oh no no no . . .

Not having it.

[toddwv]

27. And people say that the Democrats don't know how to work the media...

Who thought this would be a great time to bring this up?

[procon]

28. Before lining their own pockets with money they

squeezed out of their hapless constituencies, maybe they should step back and get a fresh look at the bone crackingly bad optics on this terrible scam.

Before any politician thinks it would be a wonderful idea to give themselves generous raises, perhaps they should first mustering a little "bipartisan support for these modest inflation adjustments,” to be handed down to the common man who is struggling just to survive.

[Nuggets]

30. Nice misleading headline

Dems didn’t “bring this up”. Who are these “house spending leaders?



“Now, House Democrats say they are moving forward with fiscal 2020 funding bills that won’t block those pay increases, which are guaranteed by a 1989 federal ethics law.”


Why would they bring this up? Who asked these House spending leaders”?



“There is strong bipartisan support for these modest inflation adjustments,” said Evan Hollander, a spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee, noting that the panel does not have to take action to allow the automatic increases and will simply be forgoing language that would block the raises.


Ah, so there is strong bipartisan support but it’s being laid on Dems only, for some strange reason.

[JonLP24]

36. Thanks

This doesn't bother me compared to most things coming from the federal government.

[Irishxs]

33. Boy, what a good way to influence the public about impeachment!!

Way to go, Dems!! Keep going and even I won’t vote for you.

[YOHABLO]

37. This will not play well in the ''heart land'' folks. Believe me.

[salin]

38. not til also raising national minimum raise be a similar amount.

Lets say I work 40 hours at one low wage job, and 15-20 hours at a second low wage job. If Congressional reps get a 4,500 raise (at our cost) - so should the minimum wage worker - at the rate of full time work (for 40 hours). Given that these jobs do not have paid vacation, assume 50 weeks an hour to account for 10 days of family or personal emergencies where time is taken off (with NO pay.) At the federal minimum wage of 7.25 the pay for 40 hours (full time) = 7.25x40hrs a week x 50 weeks = 14,500 (which is way additional work is taken on.) To increase those same hours (40 hrs a week x 50 weeks = 2000 hours of work) to get a raise of 4,500 = 4500/2000 for the per hour increase =2.25 an hour.

This pay raise should not happen unless tied to an increase of 2.25 an hour, raising the minimum raise from 7.25 to 9.50 an hour.

Why the cost of living raises happen to everyone, not just Congressional Representatives, and frankly the costs of living increases are much more harmful to people earning 14,500 a year than those earning more than 10 x that amount.

[marble falls]

39. Clodfooted and tone deaf.

[bluecollar2]

40. Nicely done...

Congratulations on providing the limbaugh/hannity line of the evening.

[Progressive Jones]

42. Test balloon. Does the GOP go along, instead of their usual obstruction

to Dem legislation? GOP faces could be rubbed into this when they jump at it.

[Hotler]

43. Sure, go ahead, help yourselves .......

and round it up to an even $5,000.00.

[orangecrush]

45. ...

[DrToast]

50. My proposal. Make Congressional salaries 3.5 times median income

When Americans do better, Congress does better.

[former9thward]

60. Then they are severely underpaid according to your proposal.

$61,400 x 3.5 = $214,900. Congressmen make $174,000 a year.

Median U.S. household income rises 1.8 percent to record $61,400 in 2017

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/09/12/median-household-income-rises-1-8-61-400-2017/1272004002/

[DrToast]

61. The multiplier that is used is not the main point

The point is that it should be some multiple of median income.

Make it 3 times. That would put it closer to where they are at now.

[former9thward]

62. The multiplier is totally the main point.

You don't get to change it just because you didn't do the math. They deserve a big raise according to you. They thank you!

[DrToast]

63. It's my post. I decide the main point, not you.

Thanks for playing.

[lsewpershad]

52. Not until

workers wages are increased 4000 a year..

[mr_lebowski]

53. Pretty sure Congress got yearly pay raises automatically 1998-2009

Which was codified into law, in part in exchange for forgoing any honorariums (fees for doing speaking engagements and the like, from 3rd parties), which many of them used to make good money for doing.

Then, because the economy sucked in 2009, Democrats (I believe) voted to stop receiving these automatic pay raises (though didn't change the 1998 law allowing the auto pay-raises), and apparently Congress has kept themselves at the same salary for the past 10 years by renewing the 2009 language on a yearly basis.

So this means Congress has basically voluntarily foregone what were supposed to be auto-raises for the past 10 years.

It was done because the economy was in bad shape at the time. It no longer is.

Why exactly is it so egregious that they get their first raises in 10 years, when the economy is doing so well?

They were supposed to get these raises every year. Dunno if it was as large as 4500/year, not sure where that number comes from, but ...

10 years is a long time to willingly forego your legally prescribed auto pay-raise ...

And really it's a misnomer to call it a 'proposal for a pay raise'. Pay Raise is already legally in place.

[Turin_C3PO]

58. Right or wrong,

it just looks bad. No need to give the other side any talking points.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

54. I don't have a problem with this as long as other Federal employees get their scheduled raises.

[MissMillie]

55. sure wish

someone would give me a $700/week raise.

[Politicub]

59. Wow - $174k/year is great money. What about social security recipients?

Where’s the “modest inflation adjustment” for them?

“There’s strong bipartisan support.” Of course there is! They are voting for a raise for themselves.

[Brainfodder]

69. Weird value?

The obvious + $4,500 at that tax bracket, at least half comes right back?

Surprised they didn't add another 0?

[Ace Rothstein]

67. Is there any way for Trump to block this?

Why give him that win if he can?