Legislation that could have ended a years-long freeze on lawmakers’ pay raises was amended to maintain the pause as it passed out of committee Thursday.
The House Appropriations Committee sent the annual spending bill to fund the Legislative Branch to the floor for consideration with a vote of 33 to 24. The House is expected to pass the bill in July as leaders move forward with an aggressive timeline to pass all 12 funding bills before the August recess.
Notably absent from the initial version of the measure was language that kept intact a 15-year freeze on cost-of-living adjustments for members of Congress.
However, just before it was approved out of committee Thursday night, lawmakers voted to add the language back while keeping the pause. But not without opposition from both sides of the aisle.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), former House Majority Leader, called the issue “a serious question about whether or not the only people who could serve here are rich people.”
“I know this is politically controversial and I know that members on my side and members on your side will demagogue this issue, and that is unfortunate, because it is like cutting off our nose to spite our face,” he said during the hearing. .
He also agreed with comments made during the hearing moments earlier by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, who said an amendment adopted keeping the wage freeze intact had “constitutional problems.”
“That [cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA)] it should be limited to the annual percentage each other federal employee would receive,” he said. “In exchange for the annual COLA, all members of Congress were prohibited or severely limited from earning additional outside income, such as speaking fees or other honoraria that could easily be translated into pay-to-play agreements, resulting in potentially tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income, especially for more popular or powerful members.”
“I certainly agree with the ban on this type of outside income for members of Congress, and I disagree with the way the manager’s amendment addresses COLA,” he said. “If Congress wants to eliminate the annual COLA, Congress can certainly do so. But this cannot be done through the appropriations process and remain in compliance with the Constitution.”
Rank-and-file members of Congress received a 2.8 percent pay raise in January 2009 and have since earned $174,000 a year. Congressional leaders receive higher salaries, with the speaker of the House earning the most at $223,500.
Although federal Congressional salaries must increase annually under the Ethics Reform Act of 1989, members’ salaries have remained unchanged for more than a decade due to the legislation.
A report from Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that if the pay raises had gone into effect, members of Congress would have received an annual salary of more than $200,000 in 2023.
However, others spoke out strongly against a potential pay increase.
In a letter earlier this month, Reps. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), and Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.) called for funding legislation for fiscal year 2025 to block wage increases for members of Congress.
“Now is the time to focus on bipartisan solutions that invest in hard-working Americans. We need to enact legislation that focuses on the issues facing our constituents – rising costs at grocery stores and at the pump, addressing security at the southern border, and ensuring economic opportunities for farmers and small businesses in our districts,” the members wrote.
“Americans deserve to know that their members of Congress are fighting for them, to lower costs for working families – not to raise our own wages.”
All three Democrats are listed on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of front-line members running in competitive races this year.
Some conservatives also spoke out against the push, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), a prominent hardliner, and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.).
“What I did was what I knew I was going to do,” Burchett told The Hill. “As my banker always reminds me, I’m the most broke member of Congress from Tennessee and the most honest, so you know, that’s where I’m at.”
“And I would probably just suck it up and stay where we are,” he said.
Others say ending the pay freeze is important for members who don’t come from wealthy families.
“I think people at home would say, ‘Oh, everyone’s awake. They are getting richer. You receive your salary for the rest of your life. That’s actually not true,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Hill.
“If you don’t address member salaries, what you’re going to end up with, frankly, is you’re going to have less diversity at various points on the member economic scale,” he said, adding “that makes it harder for members who aren’t wealthy to be here because they have to keep a house at home and keep a house here and pay for all their travel and do all these other things.”
Some Democrats also made a similar argument as they pushed for the effort amid high inflation.
“Inflation driven by corporate greed definitely contributes to this,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida), while also noting “the cost of housing and then the barriers to entry into housing.”
“We hope this will also help us have more working families represented here in Congress,” Frost said Wednesday.
Frost, who gained national attention in 2022 by becoming the first member of Gen Z to win election to Congress, has spoken publicly about being denied an apartment in Washington, D.C., due to “very bad” credit.
Frost said at the time that his credit was poor because he “got into a lot of debt running for Congress for a year and a half.”
“This isn’t for people who don’t already have money,” he tweeted then.
The push comes at a time when both chambers are already behind on their annual funding work, and members on both sides are pushing for a stopgap to keep the government funded beyond the September shutdown deadline and the September elections. November – a measure that could also protect vulnerable members from all kinds of potentially difficult votes before constituents get to the polls.
Lawmakers have made similar unsuccessful efforts in recent years to resolve the pay freeze, including earlier this year when the issue emerged as a point of contention as leaders crafted fiscal year 2024 funding bills.
Other members have advocated for the issue to be addressed in the courts, while a bipartisan group of current and former lawmakers is pursuing a legal challenge arguing that the freeze is unconstitutional.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
