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Congress Hikes Pay!

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Shocking news: Congressional leaders demand to be paid just one dollar a year! Thus they acknowledge their own flagrant irresponsibility in causing the economic crisis.

According to congressional leaders (and I quote), “Our mammoth fiscal irresponsibility is the single biggest culprit in all this, not counting the easy-credit policies of the Fed. We pretended we could spend and tax and regulate like there was no tomorrow, demand easy-loan terms to bad credit risks, etc., with no bad consequences. Just get something for nothing. Boy, were we wrong! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!”

Yeah, right. That’ll be the day. Congress may demand that CEOs schlepping to Washington for handouts get paid just a dollar a year, but the congressmen themselves won’t even freeze their own pay.

Of course, many of them should be resigning. Instead, they have quietly, not to say furtively, allowed an automatic pay raise to go forward, the so-called Cost of Living Adjustment.

Representative Harry Mitchell sponsored a bill to prevent the automatic pay raise from happening in 2009. But it never escaped committee. As Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense points out, things are “wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise.” So add another $4,700 to the average congressional salary. Meaning they’ll make $174,000 beginning this January.

Because they’re doing such a swell job, right?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

3 replies on “Congress Hikes Pay!”

Congressional pay is too low for some and too high for others. Because it is too low it fails to attract truly talented people who can earn far more doing more productive things. Because it is too high it attracts incompetents who couldn’t earn near as much doing anything else. There’s a simple solution to this problem. Congressional pay ought to be set at about 10 percent more than the average the person earned in the three years prior to election, adjusted for inflation, of course.

While I’m at it, I guess I should add that Congress is far too small. Because Members of Congress represent such large constituencies, they are not responsible to the voters in their districts. Our founding fathers had it in mind that a Congressional district would contain about 30,000. That would give us a Congress of about 10,000. I’m not sure how that would work but almost anything would be better than the present “Imperial Congress.”

What do you expect? When a 12% approval rated Congress is 90+% re-elcted! Most by a wide margin, we can expect more of the same “Tax and spend” idiocy!! The ONLY answer is to vote against ALL incumbents!!

Dream On, People!…

Will we ever see a news item like this? “Shocking news: Congressional leaders demand to be paid just one dollar a year! Thus they acknowledge their own flagrant irresponsibility in causing the economic crisis. According to congressional leaders,……

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