Rank-and-file members of both the House and Senate are paid $174,000 a year.
That probably seems like a decent amount of money, and it is: The median household income in 2022 was $74,580, according to the US Census.
But consider that members of Congress generally have to maintain two residences — one in Washington, DC, and one in their home state — and that they haven’t gotten a raise since 2009.
Inflation, meanwhile, has eaten away at the value of that salary over time: If lawmakers’ salaries had kept pace with inflation, they would be paid over $250,000 today.
Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican who served as the interim speaker of the House following Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, told The Dispatch that congressional pay needed to be raised in order to attract “credible people to run for office.”
Let’s just build a big congressional dorm with furnished studio apartments and make them all live there when Congress is in session. It would save the government a fortune in cost of living reimbursements and security costs.
You know genuinely I don’t understand why this isn’t a thing. It’s expensive to have two homes, especially when you aren’t even sure you’ll have the job for more than four years. It would lower the cost of entry into politics for people who do work minimum wage.
Shoving someone into a land full of surprise expenses seems like a perfect recipe for corruption.
It would lower the cost of entry into politics for people who do work minimum wage.
It sounds like you understand perfectly well. Politics is for rich people to get more power, and get richer by granting favors to their friends. “Public servant” is the lie they tell to make us feel good about it.
Yes, I know that there are the few modest politicians, but it’s the exception to the rule.
They could also just have an apartment, they don’t need a mansion in Virginia.
Even 2 apartments are expensive, I remember AOC was having trouble finding one in DC
Matt Gaetz would organize a panty raid. I guarantee it.
I had toyed with the idea of putting cameras all over the building and charging to view them…
Congressional barracks or even a neighborhood would actually be a great idea. It could get its own metro line.
Like it’s a job with a lot of time there. I think it’s fair that they be able to comfortably live there with their spouses and other loved ones, but it would be good to keep housing centralized to them. I’m reminded of Air Force neighborhoods where I grew up. Sometimes your aimless walk would get you a conversation with someone holding a machine gun because there are medium security off base residences
I remember an election or two ago a story about a freshman congressman having to sleep on a cot in his office because he couldn’t afford DC rent.
Make it a munger dorm.
Squid games dorm
Put them in government housing on welfare with Medicaid.
There would be the added perk of people not wanting to remain congress critters for more than a couple of terms unless they really care about the job
A bunch of them sleep in their office already. Worst kept secret in Washington. Dorms would be an upgrade.
Great idea. And we have so much unused real estate the government owns in DC if they didn’t force people to return to the office.
Many members of Congress already sleep in their office (which is technically against building codes). Dorms would be an improvement.
That’s a version of Big Brother I’d definitely watch. At least the first season.
Maybe they should skip their avocado toast or drink less Starbucks?
Something something bootstraps
If inflation has eaten away at your 6 figure salary that hasn’t been updated since 2009 imagine how the plebs making $7.25/hr feel.
They should make the salary a multiple of the federal minimum wage.
Fuck that, make it directly proportional to what the average american is able to put in their savings account. You do not get to be paid by me to profit if I am not also doing so.
Why the fuck are we all sitting here sympathizing with these fucking animals we have in Congress right now? They have not done anything to help you since they’ve been in office. If you’re going to give us breadcrumbs, you also get bread crumbs. I’m shocked at the way people are thinking about this.
No, I think there’s a point to be made here
100k isn’t a lot in DC, and they’re going to be traveling back and forth a lot. It’s a high salary, but it’s middle class level when you add in the second rent and the expenses related to the job
Do you want your politicians to be worried about their financial situation? Or already be wealthy? That seems like a recipe for the kind of legalized bribery we have going on
It also means that power is the only draw for people to that position.
There’s not a lot of security there, what do you do if you lose? You’ve now got two rents, maybe even two mortgages and a family, and the only job that is going to pay on that scale with those qualifications is something I don’t want to exist, like being a lobbyist or working for a PAC
They have to have two houses, one in Washington, and one in their home district. Washington is an extremely high cost of living area. This is a time when $175k really doesn’t go as far as it sounds.
But yes, raise the minimum wage, too, because $7.25/hour doesn’t go far anywhere under any circumstances.
Tie their pay to a multiplier of the minimum wage.
And don’t give them the authority to change the multiplier number.
And make the multiplier 1.
Under paying is a good way to make sure that the only people who run for office have financial incentives outside of the salary. Ie: it makes corruption and insider trading more likely.
I would say we should pay them enough to have a solidly comfortable upper middle class lifestyle in perpetuity, and force them to relinquish all prior assets and holdings beside their family home/vehicles. Ideally, these would be highly respected community members and making the comfortable would be commendable. However, they should not be able to leverage their position for personal gain. That should be true after their tenure as well. They should be given a sizeable pension, but any earning related to their office should be forfeit to an approved non-profit. That means speaking engagements and book deals should not be a source of income.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t be paid well, just that the multiplier should be 1. There’s another number that could be adjusted upward.
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It’d be perfectly acceptable for an employer to pay minimum wage if minimum wage wasn’t some insultingly low number based on a fantasy land where self-pulling bootstraps grow on trees.
Also don’t pay them if they aren’t working. Fuck this whole BS with abstaining vote.
minimum wage, and their wages, and almost everything else they deal with should be indexed to COL or the relevant stat. why we keep using static numbers eludes me.
Id be significantly more open to this if you assholes hadn’t spent the last 50 years helping steal money from the poor for billionaires.
@MicroWave @steinbring We should not increase their pay. Instead we should simply provide housing connected with public transit so members of Congress can cut some of their costs and actually experience what it is like to live this way. They already get great healthcare and access to a fitness center and cafeteria.
I understand what you’re saying but I think you can’t get elected to a national house or senate seat without being wealthy or very connected to wealth.
The income is mostly just a joke. There should be an equitable way for people without an income or wealthy connections to be elected on merit and opinions rather than by virtue of giant funding.
Personally I vote for election advertising bans by 3rd parties and to make all election advertising done through a collective pool of funds shared by all candidates. These fucking PACs are a big problem today and they are everywhere
But the Supreme Court said spending my money to support political causes is freedom of expression protected by the first amendment! How dare you try to limit my expression!
/s just in case.
Schumer lives in a share house when in DC. There’s no reason Congress couldn’t provide that or dorms or something similar.
You have any links about this? I’d like to read more
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/index.html
This is from some years back, not sure if that’s still his living situation as majority leader.
Yep, excellent idea.
Housing for them is the real issue here.
Their approval is through the floor and this is a violent country by 1st world standards. If they went on predictable public transit schedules every day they would literally start getting killed by the public.
.
Most of us don’t have wealth
Reality disagrees. While over half of Congress are millionaires, the highest credible number for the US population in general is 12%
In fact, the 100 highest earners in Congress more than doubled (https://ballotpedia.org/Personal_Gain_Index_(U.S._Congress) their personal wealth in a single year, with the top 10 “earners” increasing their wealth on average 422% in a single year!
Hey, everyone: he just said 12% of the United States population are millionaires. More than one out of every 10 people. Think about that.
Guess how net worth looks for the bottom 88%.
Wealth disparity in this country is insane.
Hey, everyone: he just said 12% of the United States population are millionaires. More than one out of every 10 people. Think about that.
First, that’s the absolute highest estimate of anyone halfway credible.
Second, that includes real estate holdings. If you own a house anywhere even halfway desirable but don’t have a penny to your name otherwise, you’re usually still a millionaire.
Guess how net worth looks for the bottom 88%.
Absolutely 3rd world country atrocious. For some of the top 12% too, once you take their house out of the equation and only count the wealth they can spend without becoming homeless.
Wealth disparity in this country is insane.
Definitely. Anyone who says otherwise is either an idiot, part of the problem, or both.
Isn’t a fair bit of that graft and/or insider trading?
Yeah. After all, bribes are legal in Washington as long as you don’t say out loud what they’re for. And insider trading is hardly contained, politicians who have no prior experience with stocks suddenly consistently outperforming the market.
There’s even a Nancy Pelosi stock tracker for you to profit (less than her since she doesn’t have to announce in real time) on the insider trading of her and her husband!
In Washington, the corruption is not just overlooked, it’s written into the rules and demanded by party leaders 🤬
If you can’t live on 170k a year, you probably shouldn’t be making decisions for those on 30k.
If they’re struggling, then maybe they should pick up a second job, maybe cancel some of those subscription services?
Stop buying Starbucks and avocado toast
Hell, maybe even pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
In all seriousness, if you can’t live off a $175k salary in a country where the most expensive state requires you to make like $110k a year alone to live comfortably, that’s a you problem.
I have no love for our politicians, at all, but that’s somewhat misrepresentative of the situation.
They’re not spending their money only in one state. They usually have to maintain multiple residences, one in their home state and another in the notoriously expensive DC metro area. DC cost of living eats a significant chunk of that value, I’m sure
TIL something new - I did not realize they have to have homes in both their home state and in DC. Actually, I’m kind of surprised that’s how it worked, and it’s shitty if the government doesn’t provide them COLA or something if they have to have two homes.
An additional benefit of the congressional dorm idea is to not get them too settled into a permanent situation - they know it’s temporary. Maybe it will help encourage more frequent turnover
The problem is that that are picking up second jobs, in a sense.
We should actually pay them more. We don’t want only the rich able to represent us.
We should pay everyone more as well.
I get the sentiment, but having members of Congress beholden to an employer would be pretty bad. There’s already a corruption issue with insider trading, speaking fees, the revolving door, etc.
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Funny how they cry about not being able to live on almost 200grand a year, yet they expect my grandmother to live on 12k a year from social security.
No they don’t, SS isn’t intended to be a basic income. We should have a basic income, don’t get me wrong, but they’re pretty vocal about it being (in theory, if not reality) a supplement to retirement savings.
Congressional pay rate should be tied to national minimum wage rate. In order to raise one you have to raise both by the same percentage.
The equivalent of $83/hr if they worked 40 hrs a week for 52 weeks. I think their pay is fine just where it is.
Clearly he just needs to buy less avacado toast and get a third job.
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You are severely undercutting that hourly pay. They work the equivalent of a part time job that asks you for help 6-8 times a year and will buy you pizza and beer for showing up, kinda like helping a buddy move.
Not only that, but they have an immense amount of support staff that actually works so they don’t have to.
To get paid the average HOUSEHOLD income +130% to do this is fucking plenty. Boooooooooooo fucking hoo. Until they do something meaningful while in office, they can suck a thousand bags of bagged up dicks that are in bags. They’re not even allowed to suck the actual dicks.
But its not the rank and file that get to do the real work, so lets ask what is the salary of non rank and file, and how many of each are there? What percent the whole pie does the rank and file make up, and what does the single top salary earn?
Get a roommate.
No joke, but many of them do essentially bunk together, especially the ones that aren’t horribly corrupt.
Yeah, that’s not too surprising. I’m sure rent there is crazy and they need a second home there.
There was a short lived show in the early days of Amazon Prime starring John Goodman with this exact premise. I really enjoyed it.
Hey Buddy, most of us don’t have wealth, either.
To be fair, they need a house in their hometown and a house in DC. That can be extremely expensive. You want congressmen to be financially independent so that they don’t need to accept bribes and such.
They’d still accept bribes if they were paid 5 million a day.
Its not about the money.
its about the position, and power.
This. They need to be forcibly stopped through legislation
And enforcement of legislation - can’t get caught fucking around if the legislation is not enforced or enforceable.
Because they are so good about obeying laws as is.
- It’s* not about the money.
- It’s* about the position, and power.
They already have the position and the power. This doesn’t make any sense.
They don’t need a house in either. They can rent a shitty apartment like the rest of us.
Housing is clearly what I meant. You think DC has affordable apartments?
People live there so yea…
If it’s really that bad build a housing project for them with the bare minimum necessities. Let them see how the people they claim to represent live.
Making only the federal minimum wage, they would not be able to afford any housing in DC. Not even the projects.
174k is quite a bit higher than the minimum wage.
My bad I mixed this thread up with the one saying they should make minimum wage lmao.
If we only had a group of people who could pass laws to make housing affordable, gosh
You got them there
DC is expensive as golden shit.
Many represenitives live in their office.
But they take them anyway.
Some do. But if you pay them almost nothing, they all will because they will have to.
Not when they retire from their job.
