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.
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.
Maybe they should do something about the out of control rent prices lol
Make it a munger dorm.
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.
I was also thinking the extremely wealthy wouldn’t want to tolerate living without the luxury they are used to.
Squid games dorm
Put them in government housing on welfare with Medicaid.
Many members of Congress already sleep in their office (which is technically against building codes). Dorms would be an improvement.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
It looks like they moved out when George Miller retired from Congress in 2014, but they were there for about 30 years.
Very interesting read, i did not know this. Thanks for sharing.
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.
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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.
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.
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 🤬
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!?
