{"id":5910,"date":"2005-11-23T09:09:51","date_gmt":"2005-11-23T14:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5910"},"modified":"2005-11-23T09:09:51","modified_gmt":"2005-11-23T14:09:51","slug":"remember-its-just-a-purchasing-power-adjustment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/remember-its-just-a-purchasing-power-adjustment\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember, it’s just a ‘purchasing power adjustment’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a month ago, it looked like lawmakers were making a welcome gesture about their salaries. On a 92-6 vote, the Senate agreed to forgo<\/a> the annual cost-of-living increase to their salary, and lawmakers said all the right things about doing their part to save a little extra money in the federal budget.<\/p>\n

That was last month. Last week, according to Roll Call, lawmakers saw their pay raise may a startling comeback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Friday’s passage of the $65.9 billion Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development conference report included a provision that earmarked some $2 million for Members’ annual pay hike. <\/p>\n

Despite near-unanimous Senate support to forgo the fiscal 2006 cost of living adjustment, the conference report included House language that gives Members an additional $3,100 beginning next January, bringing pay for rank-and-file lawmakers to $165,200 from the current $162,100. Members of the elected leadership are paid slightly more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Truth be told, we’re not talking about a lot of money. With today’s fiscal outlook, the savings associated with congressional salaries aren’t even a rounding error.<\/p>\n

There is, however, a symbolic significance. Lawmakers emphasized a sense of “sacrifice” when they cut funding<\/a> on food stamps, low-income health care, and child care assistance. But when it comes to a personal sacrifice from members of Congress, they’re still quietly giving themselves a raise.<\/p>\n

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who, along with Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) helps lead the drive to freeze congressional salaries, hopes to make this a political issue in the future.<\/p>\n

“People will find it hard to understand that Members of Congress will be getting a substantial pay raise at a time of enormous budget deficits and mounting debt, a costly, open-ended war in Iraq, and growing expenses for hurricane relief,” he said in a statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what’s the flip side? According to Tom DeLay, lawmakers aren’t boosting their own pay. “It’s not a pay raise,” DeLay said<\/a>. “It’s an adjustment so that they’re not losing their purchasing power.”<\/p>\n

If only Congress looked at the minimum wage the same way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a month ago, it looked like lawmakers were making a welcome gesture about their salaries. On a 92-6 vote, the Senate agreed to forgo the annual cost-of-living increase to their salary, and lawmakers said all the right things about doing their part to save a little extra money in the federal budget. That was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910","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=5910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}