At least someone’s getting a raise — redux

June 30, 2005

I noted yesterday that members of the House approved another boost in their own pay this week, because, in the immortal words of Tom DeLay, lawmakers needed “an adjustment so that they’re not losing their purchasing power.”

I noted that these pay increases, which bring congressional salaries to $165,200, come at a time when the minimum wage hasn’t been increased since 1996 and the real value of the minimum wage is $3.50 below what it was in 1968. Fleshing this out a bit, my friend Eugene Oregon at Demagogue noted today just how much congressional salaries have gone up while minimum-wage earners have seen their buying power drop. With some help from Terry at Thinking Rocks, we have some pretty interesting information.

Congressional salary, 1996 (the last time minimum wage was raised): $133,600

Congressional salary, today: $165,200

Total congressional raise since last raise to minimum wage: $31,600

That’s right — since the last time congress has voted to raise the minimum wage, they have voted themselves raises that total almost 3 times the entire salary of a person working for minimum wage.

Yep, full-time employment at the minimum wage now offers Americans $10,700 a year (about $5,000 below the poverty level for a family of three). Since the last time these low-income workers got an increase, lawmakers’ raises — not the salary, just the raise — is nearly tripple that minimum wage annual total.

This is a gift of a campaign issue. It’s being delivered to Dems on a silver platter. In a gift-wrapped box. With a pretty little bow on top.

and a tag that reads “Wake the Fuck UP!!”

  • Trouble with that gift is that very professional Democrats – John Edwards excepted, I guess … any others? – have ever been poor enough to appreciate it.

    In a very weird way, the success of what Max Weber termed “the Protestant Ethic” has turned the pre-industrial Christian view of things upside down. To the medieval mind wealth was a snare, a this-worldly trap (“eye of a needle” and all that) while poverty was merely temporal and ultimately good (“blessed are the poor”). Religious orders included Poverty among their Sacred Vows.

    With the rise of wealth as a sign of pre-destined Salvation (distorted Calvinism), wealth defined the new saints, poverty the new sinners. Minimum wage? Most wealthy people (i.e., virtually all successful politicians) regard it, as did Herbert Spencer and Thomas Malthus, as support for idleness and sin. I’m sure most of Congress shares DeLay’s view: the poor don’t have any purchasing power anyway – they certainly can’t contribute significantly to their campaigns – so who cares whether they get any increase.

  • How exactly will most Dems be able to capitalize on this? Only a couple (Matheson, Feingold) have actually tried to block the raises. On the other hand, while there have been Democratic attempts to raise the minimum wage (eg, Kennedy’s rejected amendment to the bankruptcy bill), some Republicans can claim they tried to raise minimum wage as well (Santorum’s rejected amendment to the same bill — and, yes, I realize the problems with that amendment, it was just for show). This issue just does not seem like a winner.

  • Isn’t it only a campaign issue if most (if at least the leadership) as well vote against the raise. In the ABCNEWS article, I gather that Nancy Pelosi supports the COLA.

    In a House riven by partisanship, raising members’ pay is one of the few things Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agree on.

  • I heard on Air America this morning that one Congressman – a Dem whose name that I don’t remember – tried to have the vote where it wasn’t a voice vote, he was overruled, a nice way to cover their tracks.

    If minimum wage was raised it would give overall wages a push from the bottom up and a lot more people than the bottom wage earners would have more purchasing power.

    I suspect that our lawmakers like the idea of keeping full employment at 5%, afterall we can’t have those workers getting to much power. The wonders of supply side economics.

  • Yet another piece of evidence that Delay doesn’t care about anyone but himself. It never ceases to amaze me that people who vote for him still think that he is looking out for their interests.

  • But… but you *need* to keep Congressional salaries high enough to successfully attract the best people from the private sector

  • #6 Steven –

    Looks like you’re right. No chance of Democrats getting a propaganda windfall here. Move along, everyone.

    I remember in the late ’80s/early ’90s Cong pay raises became a huge issue & were demagogged mercilessly as a sign that Congress was “out of touch” etc. Of course, then the Dems were in power & the Repubs were the ones taking merciless advantage. Now that the tables are turned everyone’s much more civil. At least on this issue, since being civil is to the advantage of the Republicans.

  • Like you really think the Dems will do anything with this? It seems like Repubs are always giving them ammunition and they don’t do anything with it. Hell the Dems are almost as big a problem as the Pubs. With a few exceptions.

  • I don’t know how we can use this as a campaign issue–127 Dems, including the top 5 (Pelosi, Hoyer, Menendez, Clyburn, Lewis) voted for it. Missed opportunity.

  • The Democrats don’t care about their core values
    anymore. They don’t care about the people anymore.
    And they are spineless. In some ways, worse than
    the Republicans. At least the neocons believe
    in their warmongering, selfish, supply side policies.
    Don’t tell me that most Democrats don’t believe that
    the war in Iraq was a ruthless, horrific crime against
    innocent people, or that global terrorism has
    been hyped exponentially beyond what the facts reveal – far fewer people worldwide have been killed by acts
    of terror over twenty years than are slaughtered on
    the highways of just this nation in one year.

    But the Democrats haven’t got the guts to recast
    priorities and expose the Republican domestic and
    foreign policies for what they truly are. They
    continue their stampede to the right instead of
    doing right, time after time after time.

  • A number of good points here.

    I do like the idea of tying the minimum wage to congressional pay.

    Time and time again, though, these perfect gift issues (perfect in the sense that they encapsulate or highlight the power, corruption and lies (so to speak) of Republicans) slip through their hands. The best issues (in my eyes) are ones, like this, in which the contours are pretty obvious and simple, and touch upon basic issues of fairness, honesty, and decency. Issues by which the support of a particular position comes across as the “common sense� thing to do while conveniently highlighting the hypocrisy or corruption of the other side. The bankruptcy bill would be another good example of this.

    Which brings up a second related problem – their shortsightedness in the service of campaign $. Democrats seem to be deathly afraid of alienating deep pocketed interests. So, instead of doing the right thing and “standing up for the little guy�, they (not all, of course) time and time again side with “industry�. This, despite the fact that most of this money ends up going to the Republicans anyways.

    Anyhow, its all wrapped up in a big messy bundle which includes their quickness to apologize (which makes them look weak), compromise (which makes them look weak), and completely shoot themselves in the foot (which makes them look weak and bumbling).
    Contrast this to the ability of the Republicans in the ‘90’s to saddle the Democratic-controlled Congress with the blame for perceived corruption and abuse of power.

    This, despite the fact that Republicans were feeding from the same trough. They seemed to realize that whatever their own flaws, the public will blame whichever party is in power.
    Which the Democrats haven’t figured out yet.

    OK, so I guess it does all just boil down to their spinelessness.

  • BC et al.,

    This is a GREAT issue for ’06, but not congressional pay, minimum wage. You want people to wake up and get excited, run on a platform of minimum wage. It wasn’t rich business that reelected BushCo; it was blue collar guys in Ohio, retirees in Florida, etc. etc.

    People are voting against their economic interest because the Republicans have managed to frame the debate around social rhetoric. Well, minimum wage is one of them. And this cannot be a “lazy/sinful� issue—these are working folk, not welfare recipients. So Democrats should be all over proposing an increase ASAP.

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