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Jewish World Review
January 31, 2008
/ 24 Shevat 5768
Congress helps itself. Again.
By
Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Let us pause to salute the US Congress, whose members have once again shown
themselves capable of surmounting partisan friction and institutional gridlock
when it comes to serving a group of Americans they care about deeply:
themselves.
When the 110th Congress returned from its holiday recess two weeks ago, the
mountain of unfinished business it had left behind in 2007 was still waiting —
everything from judicial nominations to bilateral trade agreements to the
terrorist surveillance program to the farm bill. But the gentlemen and
gentlewomen of the House and Senate made sure that nothing would impede what
has become almost an annual tradition: the hike in their own salaries. When the
sun rose on Jan. 1, so did congressional pay, from $165,200 to $169,300 — a
tidy little jump of $4,100.
This marks the ninth raise Congress has given itself over the past decade. With
the exception of 1999 and 2007, every New Year's Day since 1998 has triggered a
boost in congressional salaries of between $3,100 and $4,900. While the median
income of US families has increased by around $11,000 since 1998, the income of
their representatives in Washington has increased by more than $30,000.
Considering that the latter work for the former, the imbalance between them is
striking.
It is also unconstitutional.
Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to pay itself with
public funds, but the 27th Amendment circumscribes that authority. It provides:
"No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and
Representatives, shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall
have intervened." The amendment limits the power of Congress to change its
salary by preventing any pay raise from taking effect until the voters have had
their say. Members of the House and Senate are free to alter the next
Congress's salary, in other words, but they are prohibited from enlarging their
own.
Within months of the amendment's ratification, however, congressional pay rose
by $4,100, despite the lack of a vote in the House and Senate followed by an
intervening election. A law enacted in 1989 — ironically, an
ethics-in-government act — guarantees senators and representatives an
automatic raise every January, unless they specifically vote to reject it.
Whatever the merits of that law when it was passed, its incompatibility with
the 27th Amendment is obvious. The whole purpose of the amendment is to give
the electorate a political check on Congress's power to determine its
compensation. The whole purpose of the 1989 law is to deprive the electorate of
that check.
Absent a Supreme Court ruling, Congress is not likely to cease such brazen
flouting of the Constitution — and the Supreme Court has so far declined to
take up the issue. (Congress sets judicial salaries, too.) A voter backlash
might do the trick, but the public's abysmally low opinion of Congress rarely
has any impact on Election Day. Well over 90 percent of incumbents seeking
reelection are routinely returned to Congress.
Senators and representatives once understood that the right to set their own
pay carried with it the responsibility to let their bosses - the American
people - know what they were doing. So before taking a raise, they would hold
public hearings and a roll-call vote. The process was uncomfortable, and
properly so: It shouldn't be too easy for legislators to help themselves to
public funds.
But fewer and fewer members of Congress seem troubled by such ethical niceties.
One of the handful who try vainly each year to stop the stealth pay raise, or
at least put it to a vote, is Representative Jim Matheson, a Utah Democrat
first elected in 2000.
"I didn't know anything about this until I got here," Matheson said during a
phone call this week. "It troubled me that we were sneaking a pay raise through
in such a secretive manner. So I got up on the House floor to raise a
procedural objection — and nobody else backed me up." Not until last summer
did another member, Republican Lee Terry of Nebraska, join him in seeking an
up-or-down vote to block the increase.
In an institution that tends to breed arrogance and self-entitlement, Matheson
is at pains to remember that he works for the voters, not the other way
around. "I just know most of my constituents don't benefit from an automatic
adjustment in their pay each year; $169,000 sounds like a lot of money to
them," he said.
It is a lot of money, and there will be more of it next year. Even more the
year after that. Members of Congress may never get around to your priority, but
they do look out for number one.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
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