{"id":4567,"date":"2005-06-29T10:25:41","date_gmt":"2005-06-29T14:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4567.html"},"modified":"2005-06-29T10:25:41","modified_gmt":"2005-06-29T14:25:41","slug":"at-least-someones-getting-a-raise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/at-least-someones-getting-a-raise\/","title":{"rendered":"At least someone’s getting a raise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kudos to Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) for his valliant effort to stop an automatic pay raise for members of Congress. Alas, it didn’t work<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The House on Tuesday agreed to a $3,100 pay raise for Congress next year to $165,200 after defeating an effort to roll it back.<\/p>\n

In a 263-152 vote, the House blocked a bid by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to force an up-or-down vote on the pay raise. Instead, lawmakers will automatically receive the raise officially a cost of living adjustment as provided for in a 1989 law that barred them from pocketing big speaking fees in exchange for an annual COLA.<\/p>\n

Matheson was the only one of 434 House members to speak out against the 1.9 percent COLA, which will raise members’ salaries in January.<\/p>\n

“Now is not the time for members of Congress to be voting themselves a pay raise. We need to be willing to make sacrifices,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I realize that nearly all members of Congress have to maintain two residences, which can be expensive. But the reactions to Matheson’s effort were absurd.<\/p>\n

“It’s not a pay raise,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. “It’s an adjustment so that they’re not losing their purchasing power.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Right, purchasing power. Members make over $162,000 a year, but inflation still happens. We don’t want these lawmakers to be able to buy less on the same amount of money, do we?<\/p>\n

No, that special treatment is reserved for the working poor. While DeLay and others are looking out for their own purchasing power, the minimum wage hasn’t been increased since 1996. Proposals to increase it have been introduced several times since, but have been rejected by the Republican majority. Indeed, as Think Progress noted<\/a>, the real value of the minimum wage is $3.50 below what it was in 1968. Full-time employment at the minimum wage, which was established to help workers maintain a minimum standard, now offers Americans $10,700 a year — about $5,000 below the poverty level for a family of three.<\/p>\n

I wonder how Tom DeLay would respond to arguments that boosting the minimum wage isn’t “an increase,” it’s just “an adjustment” so workers aren’t “losing their purchasing power.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kudos to Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) for his valliant effort to stop an automatic pay raise for members of Congress. Alas, it didn’t work. The House on Tuesday agreed to a $3,100 pay raise for Congress next year to $165,200 after defeating an effort to roll it back. In a 263-152 vote, the House blocked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}