Congress raises its own pay

Cowboy hat By Jim Hightower - Fri., 10/1/04

I bring you tidings of great joy! At last, our Congress critters have raised wages in America! You're not silly enough to think for a moment that Congress would raise your wages, are you? For the past several years, they've kept the minimum wage in our country stuck at the paltry poverty level of $5.15 an hour. It's their wages that they've just raised. Again. This is the sixth pay hike that our lawmakers have bestowed upon themselves in the past six years. This time it's an extra $4,000 each, boosting their gross pay to about $162,000 a year.

Congressional leaders sneak these steady increases through without a vote (a $25,000 total over those six years) by making them automatic—but Rep. Jim Matheson, Democrat of Utah, keeps calling for a vote anyway. This year his colleagues again refused, 235 to 170, to cast a direct public vote on their money grab. To learn how your member of Congress voted on Matheson's attempt at honesty, call Taxpayers for Common Sense at 1-800-TAXPAYER.



Filed Under: Political corruption