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.”
@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.
Very interesting read, i did not know this. Thanks for sharing.
It looks like they moved out when George Miller retired from Congress in 2014, but they were there for about 30 years.
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.
Sounds like incentive to actually legislate in ways that constituents support.
Accountability can be a bitch if you act like an asshole all day.
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
Until laws are passed that limit stock trades/lobbying payments, I have no sympathy for their money.
To be clear, most all of them can go fuck themselves. I don’t really care about any of their financial states, and I absolutely support limiting their ability to make money off the office… It’s also a few million dollars a year we’re talking about, it’s a very cheap way to make things better
What I care about are incentives and selection pressures. I want normal people with morals and idealistic people in those seats. I don’t want rich people raised to crave approval from their peers, or people with dreams of climbing higher.
I want the job to be the end goal, not a stepping stone to another end
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.
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 🤬
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.
If you can’t live on 170k a year, you probably shouldn’t be making decisions for those on 30k.
Maybe they should skip their avocado toast or drink less Starbucks?
Something something bootstraps
I am completely down with paying Congress a shit ton of money, but we’re going to need a zero tolerance policy on bribery and lobbying.
You’re not going to get CEO payment and tips.
And zero tolerance - as in NO tolerance whatsoever - on insider trading.
Not ONE of them should be allowed to put anything into the market, except for some kind of automatic payments steadily pushed (NOT timed) into index funds only. And they’ll be told that ALL of their contacts and friends and family will be very closely watched. All of their communications can be pulled by the SEC if need be if their is any suspicion of them giving insider information to anyone else. And it’s one strike, and you are out. You are removed from office and do prison time if found guilty of this.
The American people are so sick of this stuff. The dishonest right wing talks about the likes of Pelosi, well guess what, she can rot in prison too if she violates these proposed rules. The fact is plenty of Republicans are doing it. But the problem is right now it’s legal.
Yeah I mean, they’re still going to find some ways to profit off the position but we can at least make a solid attempt to keep them from doing it. Thing is there’s a lawmakers there’s no way they’re going to ever agree to it.
Fuck yeah.
What about just the tips?
Nah that’s what the American people get. Repeatably and vigorously every day
It should also be tied to a multiplier on minimum wage or median income in their home state. You want a pay increase, you better be making life better for the majority of your constituents.
you’d* better be
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.
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.
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?
Federal minimum wage in 2009: 7.25. Federal minimum wage in 2023: 7.25. Cry me a fuckin river.
Maybe congresses salary should be a multiple of minimum wage so they always get increased together.
Try EQUAL to the minimum wage
They need a house in DC and at home. Logically it should be double the minimum wage.
The house in DC should be provided to them as part of being in congress.
Fuck that make them stay in “affordable housing”
Apparently a number of them live in their DC offices and shower at the Congressional gym.
Id like the people establishing the laws for the country to be paid better than a fry cook.
Yeah, twice as well. Duh
Yeah and if their wage was attached to the minimum wage, whatcha think if gonna happen to that minimum wage?
Then only the independently wealthy would run. No matter if they scale it up or not.
their housing and food in DC should be paid for imo, those are truly extra costs. The problem here is republican strategy has long been to defund congress and their offices to make them more reliant on donors.
I seriously doubt it unless they can make money otherwise.
Tie their pay to a multiplier of the minimum wage.
And don’t give them the authority to change the multiplier number.
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.
This isn’t as wild as it sounds.
A family friend was elected to Congress, and he had been an HVAC contractor prior to his election, and the move to DC was financially difficult because DC housing is very expensive and they still had a mortgage back in their district.
How did he work things out? He started accepting donations, and that’s as slippery slope. He’s become as corrupt as they come and I’m ashamed to have been his friend.
Now if only states maintained congressional residences in DC so their congressmen don’t find themselves saddled with +million-dollar mortgages on homes they might only be living in for 2 or 4 years.
Really, if you’re sitting on a million-dollar mortgage and you might be primaried in your next election if you don’t play ball with the lobbyists (or more to the point, you’d have to keep paying it after your tenure in congress ends) isn’t that just bending freshman congressmen over a barrel to be corrupted?
Conversely, imagine the scenario if you lose your re-election bid and in order to pursue the post-congress lobbying career you’d have to buy yourself a new home in DC.
Normalize getting the fuck out of DC when you’re out of office, guys/make it expensive to stay on
I’ve long said there should be a congressional dorm. Two, maybe four to a room, they share a bathroom with the room next door, one of those fridges with a microwave bolted to the top, cameras in the hallways.
Why is congress being treated like college freshmen?
Seems a little rude.
Honestly I’ve read that a lack of interaction between members of Congress has lead to a part of our extreme politics lately. They used to have dinners and such together and with enough interaction even representitives from opposite parties would become friends/friendly.
Maybe having a Democrat and Republican share a room isn’t such a bad idea lol although some people eventually hate their roommates so… Mixed bag I guess lol
Your asking a group of the most powerful people in the nation to live in dorms.
That would lead to even more clique behavior. Mean Girls with diplomatic immunity. Fun times.
Im sure investment tips would never be shared or colluded around.
And they would all be in one central location for the lobbists to come hand out bribes. Or terrorists to strike.
As for a uniform as some suggest, i prefer the George Carlin idea of NASCAR style patches worn for each corporate donor.
But treating congress people like children or soilders in basic training is just demonstrating a lack of proper thought on the matter.
Make them all live like in 12 Monkeys.
Just go the full monty and make it a cult.
They can sell soap for re-election funds.
We could pack all of them into a Quonset hut, each one gets a twin-size bunk and a foot locker like your average soldier. Maybe we should issue them mandatory identical clothing too.
Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay out the ass just so they can live a nicer life than the rest of us while they continually make far more than us and don’t try to govern properly (like raising our minimum wage).
If normal people need a bunch of roommates to afford DC, the less well-off Congressmen can deal with something similar until they have made enough good financial decisions to get something nicer, just like the rest of us do.
Also if someone sucks at making financial decisions, I honestly don’t think they should be in a position to decide fiscal legislation for the entire country, it’s clearly not a skill in their wheelhouse and that’s not the place to acquire that skill.
The problem is only the wealthy could afford to hold office.
Does rule by the 1% sound like a good idea?
Frankly the people advocating to force minimum wage living conditions on congress people are not respecting the problem or must be some of those “accelerationists” that just want everything to fall apart so it can get worse before it gets better.
I get that (most) people are upset with Do Nothing Congress 2: Insurrectionist Boogaloo, but to replace them with minimum wage rookies and blue blood elites raised to run the world is not a good idea. Its extremely stupid.
Not that I’m (seriously) advocating for them to go into a dorm, but these people decide their salaries.
If they were doing their job properly they would have raised it, or better yet they would have established a higher-end apartment-dorm type solution that is paid for by the state and so their paychecks are not used to cover their living expenses in DC (not college freshman standards, more like two bedroom apartments unless they want to pony up part of their paycheck, one for a bed and one for an office).
They’re not actually doing either of these things though, so I hardly feel bad.
This is an extremely high quality take! We have governors mansions in some (all?) States, the president gets the white house, but what do elected officials at the national level get?
Exactly. Paying them $10 milion a year would be a drop in the bucket to the us gov (about 0.1% of the budget).
And if it made them immune to lobbying and work for the people properly, it would be money well spent.
Unfortunately, I am not convinced raising their salary would help that much.
Hey Buddy, most of us don’t have wealth, either.
I’d be happy to have tax funded basic housing for them in DC.
Me too. Prison, right?
Yes, their housing in DC should be identical to the minimum standards that they prescribe for prisoners.
Drain the Swamp!?
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.
