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.”
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
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.