A cost-of-living raise for Congress?

Congress is quietly moving to give itself a 2% cost-of-living raise next year, prompting complaints that lawmakers are trying to hide their wage boost.

A provision that would give cost-of-living adjustments to various federal officials — raising lawmakers’ pay to $168,500 next year — is tucked into a bill the House of Representatives passed this month to fund the Department of Transportation and other agencies.

Well, I suppose I can see where the cost of living has increased to the point that $168k and change might be a little tough to survive on, those lunches at the Watergate and Sans Souci and trysts at the Hay Adams can add up, and I doubt that the likes of Teddy K imbibe anything less than the best, but… I’ve always believed that some sort of merit should be attached to a pay hike, and I’m having a really tough time thinking of any reason to give Congress a raise based on merit, or based on anything else for that matter.

Of late, they’ve been behaving as though they work for themselves rather than functioning as employees of the electorate and their output has been questionable as such. Instead of giving them a raise, why not just give the money to some of the criminal aliens they want to give amnesty to, so they can send it home to help bail Vicente Fox out of some of his myriad economic failures? Or use the money for their next pork barrel “earmark”?

If it were up to me, all proposals for federal pay increases on all levels would appear on the ballot on the relevant election day and we, the voters, would be the yea’ers or nayers. We are, after all, their employers. How often do we see employees anyplace else getting to sit down and vote on their pay raises?

The legislation now moves to the Senate, where Democrats such as Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts are making the raise an issue.

Feingold said last week that he’ll try to stop the pay increase; Clinton has authored a bill that would tie increases in congressional pay to increases in the minimum wage. Congress hasn’t raised the minimum wage — $5.15 an hour, or $10,700 a year — since 1997. During the same period, annual congressional pay has increased by $31,000.

Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, would prefer to see congressional pay hikes tied to the federal deficit, now projected at $300 billion or more. “If we have a balanced budget, maybe then they deserve a pay raise,” he says.

It’s got to be a cold day in hell, because on this I agree with the liberals in Congress who plan to fight the raise. I don’t agree with Hillary’s proposal, her plan is merely a shrewd carrot and stick approach to giving Congress an incentive to raise the minimum wage, but as far as Feingold and Kennedy(spit!) are concerned, well….

I think Tom Schatz has the right idea: Tie congressional pay raises into their performance, their spending habits being a great place to start, since whenever they spend money, it’s our money they’re spending.

On the supposed other side of the coin:

Congressional pay has long been a sensitive matter, in part because it’s substantial. At $165,200 this year, members of Congress earn roughly four times the salary of the average American. On the other hand, they earn the same as federal district judges, deputy Cabinet secretaries, heads of major agencies and some senior federal bureaucrats. Supreme Court justices, top congressional leaders and Cabinet secretaries make more; President Bush earns $400,000 a year.

Some outside experts argue that lawmakers aren’t nearly as affluent as their six-figure incomes might lead constituents to believe. “They do have some unusual expenses,” says Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution scholar who studies Congress. Chief among them: the need to maintain homes in two places, one of which is in one of the most expensive areas in the country. According to the National Association of Realtors, Washington, D.C., was the 11th priciest housing market in the nation last year.

“When you take into consideration the cost of living in two cities, the salary is average at best,” says Jim Chapman, a former congressman who now works as a lobbyist.

Sure, but how many members of Congress live in middle class neighborhoods and anywhere near as modestly as most of their constituents?

I own a seven room home(not counting the laundry room, kitchen and two full baths) in a residential area in Charlotte, NC, and it costs me about $600.00 a month, give or take, to keep the bills paid, maybe another $600.00 to buy food and other necessities, and I eat well. Too well, in fact. Not counting entertainment and social issues, my annual living expenses, including homeowner’s insurance and property taxes, come in at around $25,000.00 a year, and that’s only because of a few ongoing luxuries. Unless you live in Georgetown or some other expensive area, you can live comfortably enough in DC on an income of $50,000.00 a year. So if I were a senator or representative, my annual cost of living might average, between living in both places, about $85,000.00 a year plus recreation. If I had a wife and a child or two who still lived at home, maybe 25k or so a year more.

On $168,500.00, that would leave me, after taxes, a good $70,000.00 plus for enjoyment, not to mention my unspent campaign money and the perks that come with being a member of Congress. Hmmm… Members of Congress aren’t superstars or gods, they’re merely citizens like the rest of us whom we send to DC to represent us in the running of our government. The great majority of their constituents have to budget themselves to various degrees, in fact many have little or nothing left over after taking care of “the inescapable”. Perhaps that’s what our politicians should have to do as well. It might give them a better perspective of the living situations of those they “govern”.

Further, in the private sector, most of us get paid what we’re worth to our employer, not what our personal expenses dictate. We have to adjust our lifestyles to our incomes, not the other way around. If Senator Livingston Hamilton Shmoe, lll wants to live in a fifteen room house in an upscale neighborhood back in his home state and a $5,000.00 a month apartment in DC, that’s not our lookout. We don’t pay Senator Shmoe to live like a baron, we pay him to do a job that he and most of his colleagues aren’t doing very well at the moment.

If they aren’t happy with what they’re being paid for the piss poor job they’re doing, let the bums go back into the private sector and practice Law, or whatever they were doing before they became politicians. Congress was never intended to be a career field, anyway — it was supposed to be a place to which one went for one or two terms, then returned to private life to reap what they’d sewn.

For much of Congress’ history, pay raises were enacted late at night, without roll call votes. To free lawmakers from the political embarrassment of having to vote on their own pay raises, Congress made itself eligible for the same cost-of-living adjustments as other federal employees in 1989.

Lately, including last year, the pay hikes have gone into effect quietly. During the 1990s, though, members voted five times to forgo the automatic pay hike. Some members say now’s the time to do so again, given the costs of the war in Iraq and Katrina relief. “Maybe Congress should tighten its own belt first,” Matheson says. “It would be an important symbol.”

Bravo!