Congress Sucks But Votes Itself A Raise
on 06/14/2006 at 04:30 PM
Congressmen have to maintain 2 houses: one in their home district (House) or just State (Senate) and one in Washington. They also have to frequently travel back and forth to meet with constituents and/or campaign. In comprable terms of responsibility, in private industry they’d be pulling in about twice what they make in Congress (that’s why so many rich guys run for office: They’ve already made it and don’t care about the money anymore and are in it for the prestige.) Couple with this they’re also mostly married and have children to raise. DC public schools are a sick joke so that leaves either private school or boarding school.
I really don’t begrudge them their salaries. Stacks of $100 bills in the freezer, yes; I object to that. But their salaries are the least of the problem with government.
I concur, Orion. The usual view of a pol is of a lazy turd who sits around making backroom deals or bloviating on C-Span. In reality they have long and harried days. No problem with paying them well.
Some years ago the public were all riled up about congressional pay, so congress put forth a bill that stated that a pay raise would not occur. It was touted as a pay raise bill, even though it was just the opposite. Of course, members voted against the bill, so that they did get the raise, yet they got to go back home and say they voted against the congressional raise bill.
Oh, there’s a lot of backroom dealmaking and CSPAN bloviating; no question about that. Cutting their pay doesn’t stop that, though. There’s a strong argument for paying them $1 Million/year each and outlawing all other forms of income, especially including campaign contributions, while in office if you object to the deal making and bloviating. $538M wouldn’t even be a rounding error in the Federal budget. Effectively they get about that anyway through various means.
I’m just saying that carping about their salary only hurts the honest ones and annoys them all.
Sorry, gents! I don’t buy that argument for even one minute. There are top-level civil servants working at the Pentagon and other government offices who have to drive in to work every day from 40-70 miles out in the Virginia and Maryland coutryside. They do 90% of the work in DC.
Congresscritters do next to nothing as far as work is concerned. Their staffers do all the work, including researching the bills, preparing bills, etc. If Congresscritters are that desperate why not build them a housing project like they stick the poor in around the country?
Already made their millions and are doing it just for the prestige? Give me a break. That won’t wash either. They are public “servants” who are charged with spending our money. How is giving them the power to vote themselves a raise going to make them act more responsibly with taxpayer money? It won’t.
Why should they make more money than 90% of the small business owners in this country? Why do they have to travel back and forth in first-class. What’s wrong with coach class or Greyhound? If the DC schools are crap, they’re the ones who are in charge of fixing them. Why haven’t they done so?
High paid officials with all kinds of perks is just another name for an “aristocracy”. I ain’t having it.
ARGGHHHH!
I am in total agreement with Skipper on this one.
Skipper is obviously a very good man.
Those folks put themselves ‘above’ us normal peasants as is witnessed by their actions after one of their own, is caught with $90k of bribe money in his freezer. And the transaction where he received that marked money is on video.
Kinda reminds me of an old country/western joke. A young cowboy is ‘interviewing’ some new talent when his current ‘squeeze’ walks into the bedroom. Of course, she goes off like a rocket and calls him all kinds of bad names and acuses him of ‘steppin’ out.’
He looks at her innocently and says --’Hon who you gonna believe? ME, or your lyin’ eyes.’
Doesn’t make any difference what party he is from—they come together to defend each other.
I wonder if they would do that for one of us ‘peons?
Not Likeley methinks.
Over and Out.
$168k per year is too much.. especialy with all the perks with regards to taxes and such they have voted for themselves that don’t apply to the Working Citizens they supposedly represent.. Congress should only make enough to survive, and not be in the job for the money but rather for the aspect of helping people.. there are only a very few that I would actually not have quibbles with a $168k salary on(and Kerry, Teddy, and Murtha aren’t on that list).. The House and senate should not be in charge of voting on if they should get a raise or not.. I’m not sure where that should come under but I know I can’t just vote myself a raise, and I doubt many of the rest of you can unless you are president/owner of your business in which case if you aren’t doing so well you aren’t going to take an increase in pay.
Although I don’t really give much credance to any Poll(or much else) done by CBS anymore…
"Congress should only make enough to survive, and not be in the job for the money but rather the aspect of helping people.”
Hm. Nice sentiment. Tell me, if you lowered the Congressional salary to -0- would Ted Kennedy find another job? Howabout *Hillary*? Problem is that while there are people out there who would run for Congress for the love of humanity, there probably aren’t many of them (and some you wouldn’t want running Congress anyway!) and a lot more in it just for the power and prestige. It’s a conundrum: Every time we tty to take money out of politics we get more corruption in politics.
My personal belief is that we need to pay the Congresscritters enough that no one is afraid to beggar himself running for office and then term limit them back out before they start feeling too comfortable in the job. Dan Rostenkowsky was a decent Representative for the first 3-4 terms and then he started rotting on the vine. They finally had to catch him stealing stamps from the House Post Office to kick him out of there: Otherwise he would probably have left feet first on a stretcher. Many of our problems with the current Republican Congress are because they’ve started getting “comfortable” in their jobs, and yet the solution isn’t to replace them with even more “comfortable in their jobs” Democrats who’ve been chomping at the bit to take charge since 1994.
I don’t buy it at all - almost no one gets to ‘vote’ their own pay raise. While they are making this salary 30% of the military was eligible for food stamps, until the bloggers forced the press to make it known - still the % of increase for pay raises to make military salaries equivalent to private sector jobs - would be double digits. The pay sucks and certainly no one in the military does it for the money.
While I might slide a bit on the amount - I actually find the salaries of all the bureaucrats who get colas etc, etc, etc more annoying as it is almost impossible to fire them and they do so damn little for what they earn. Cushy gig if you can get it, but breaking into the ‘governmental’ job fare is so darn hard [could kick myself forever for getting out before I had ‘merit’] Just getting stabbed in the back po’d me way too much to stay on.
I say cut their salaries by their poll standings [not that I believe a Can’tBeSerious ‘news’ poll] maybe that will wake them up to the fact that they are supposed to be ‘public’ servents.
