House Members Vote To Raise Their Salaries
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WASHINGTON — Despite record-low approval ratings, House lawmakers yesterday voted to accept an approximately $4,400 pay raise that will increase their salaries to almost $170,000.
The cost-of-living raise gets lawmakers back on track for automatic pay raises after a fight between Democrats and Republicans last year and again in January killed the pay hike due this year. That was the first interruption of the annual congressional pay hike in seven years.
The blowup came after Democrats last year fulfilled a campaign promise to deny themselves a pay hike until Congress raised the minimum wage. Delays in the minimum wage bill cost every lawmaker about $3,100 this year.
On a 244–181 vote yesterday, Democrats and Republicans alike killed a bid by Rep. Jim Matheson, a Democrat of Utah, and Rep. Lee Terry, a Republican of Nebraska, to get a direct vote to block the COLA, which is automatically awarded unless lawmakers vote to block it. The Senate has not indicated when it will deal with a similar measure.
As part of an ethics reform bill in 1989, Congress gave up its ability to accept pay for speeches and made annual cost-of-living pay increases automatic unless the lawmakers voted otherwise.
In the early days of GOP control of Congress, lawmakers routinely denied themselves the annual COLA.
Under the annual COLA, lawmakers automatically get a pay hike unless Congress votes to block it. The majority leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland, and the minority whip, Rep. Roy Blunt, a Republican of Missouri, worked to smooth the way for the pay hike.
Typically, the annual vote on the pay hike comes on an obscure procedural move—instead of a direct up-or-down vote—and the Democratic and GOP whips each delivered a roughly equal number of votes to shut off any move to block the pay hike.
This year’s vote was made ticklish by last year’s battle. Republicans said Democrats broke a promise not to use the pay raise issue against GOP lawmakers in campaign ads and were, generally speaking, more reluctant to supply votes.
