Senate approves bill to skip pay raise for Congress in 2011

Source: Associated Press

The Senate passed a bill Thursday that would deny members of Congress a built-in pay raise next year.

Senators and members of the House make $174,000 a year. They receive an automatic cost-of-living pay hike unless they pass legislation to block it -- as they did last year.

The Senate passed the measure, which would deny lawmakers an automatic pay raise of about $1,600 next year, unanimously without a roll-call vote.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/22/AR2010042205370.html?wprss=rss_politics

With their lifestyles, not a single Senator socked away millions because of his or her $175K a year, yet every one of them is a multi-millionaire.

The COLA is something like 3% for the year.

Financially, it just doesn't pay--literally or figuratively--to take the COLA and risk getting bounced out of office. And that's just them, without counting the jobs and "courtesies" their family members get.

See also Reply 15.

especially a bunch of senators!

nt

learn how to struggle with the rest of us, yea, just dreamin.

If they voted for a pay cut.

Source: Washington Post

The Senate passed a bill Thursday that would deny members of Congress a built-in pay raise next year.

Senators and members of the House make $174,000 a year. They receive an automatic cost-of-living pay hike unless they pass legislation to block it -- as they did last year.

The Senate passed the measure, which would deny lawmakers an automatic pay raise of about $1,600 next year, unanimously without a roll-call vote. The House has yet to act on it but probably will go along, given election-year pressures.

The last time Congress opted to take the raise was in 2008.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/22/AR2010042205370.html

should we pay them anything they don't represent the public they are paid by their masters( the cooperations 0.

:cry:

work three full days, but D.C. weather can get unpleasant sometimes.

So, cut 'em some slack, willya?

Last year, Congress declined its own COLA increases while other federal employees took theirs. However, the elderly and disabled were told that they were not geting any COLA increase because the cost of living had not gone up at all. (Though there was a small stimulus payment.)

Apparently, a different index is used for Social Security than is used for federa employees. And, the projections are that COLA for this year will not rise, either--at least not on the index used for the elderly and the disabled. However, the COLA index for federal employees apparently did rise again.

I guess the price of cat food is relatively stable?

lobbyists and industry? OTOH, if we cut their pay in half wouldn't that make them rely even more on funding from those who have plenty of money to give?

I've lived in countries where the police were so poorly paid that they made their living through extensive graft and corruption. Society ended up paying more for their low salaries than if they paid them a decent wage that would have enabled them to operate more honestly.

Obviously, foregoing a COLA is just for show in terms of making the Senate any more or less susceptible to "bribes". Paying senators and representatives some "obscene" salary and benefits (structured to finance their own campaigns using these or other public funds) would undoubtedly be terrible PR and will probably never happen, but would have the effect of making them less dependent on lobbyists and their funds.