Congress isn’t making enough to live on

[Ingomike]

Frankly, I would be okay with doubling or even tripling their salaries. However that only comes with stringent limitations in other areas.

For the higher salary they must be prohibited from trading in any securities, receiving any other remuneration for speeches, books, or any other income producing activity. Their immediate family members must be prohibited from lobbying, working for government at any level, and from trading in securities. Finally they must buy their own insurance off of the Obama exchanges, and they have no pension.

This is good. I think it would be a positive to implement something along these lines. The current situation ONLY encourages those many here have been describing and less will only exacerbate the problem. We have a serious problem that those that would provide great representation will not run, the only way to make money in DC is not acceptable to them.

 

[red_zr24x4]

Frankly, I would be okay with doubling or even tripling their salaries. However that only comes with stringent limitations in other areas.

For the higher salary they must be prohibited from trading in any securities, receiving any other remuneration for speeches, books, or any other income producing activity. Their immediate family members must be prohibited from lobbying, working for government at any level, and from trading in securities. Finally they must buy their own insurance off of the Obama exchanges, and they have no pension.

Throw term limits in there and cutting pensions and we can do it

 

[HoughMade]

Let's at least be accurate.

The $174k is the active congressman salary, NOT retirement.

Congressmen can get pensions which are partly paid by them and partly by their "employer" The amount of the pension varies by length of service and other factors including their contributions. By law, no pension can exceed 80% of the pre-retirement income. Since I am in favor of term limits, in my view, a pension wouldn't be an issue- give them a personally funded TSP and call it good.

I'm actually torn. We seem to be limiting congressmen to people to whole $174k is a lot of money and those to whom $174k is inconsequentially low. It pretty much lets out the high end of regular middle class and upper-middle class where a lot of successful thinking resides.

I'm not saying the salary should be raised to keep pace with inflation, I'm just saying that $174k isn't a huge amount of money regardless of the 2 residence thing. BTW- I have heard of several members of Congress who rent a town home or apartment and split the rent between 4 or 5 of them.

 

[BugI02]

174K in DC is not going to go as far as the same amount in most of the country. COL is expensive in and around DC. But I'm sure all those extras the congress critters get should cover the difference.

Then let's solve the problem by moving the parts of government out of DC to some places with an average cost of living. We then return to 90 day per year legislative sessions and then they go home to their real jobs. If it isn't important enough to get done in 3 months then it doesn't get done. If some want to stay in the DC metro area, moving all of those jobs to various other American cities will almost certainly bring down housing prices as well as the cost of living. If they need to meet for some reason outside the 90 day window, they can do it on Teams

$174000 puts them in the 94th percentile, well within the top 10% of ALL earners

 

[Shadow01]

Term limits will never happen. The next best thing is to make staying in congress as less appealing as possible. Nothing is off the table to reach that goal.

 

[JCSR]

 

[KellyinAvon]

Became millionaires from all the insider trading and they still complain. Sounds about right for DC swamp types.

 

[Ingomike]

Term limits will never happen.

Yep. That requires a constitutional amendment.

The next best thing is to make staying in congress as less appealing as possible. Nothing is off the table to reach that goal.

Then better people need to be sent, but if better people make a million a year running their business they are not running, INGO proves daily why most of them are not qualified either, so that leaves the grifters that don’t care if it pays at all, they will make theirs…

 

[BigRed]

BTW- I have heard of several members of Congress who rent a town home or apartment and split the rent between 4 or 5 of them.

Barney Frank had live ins.

 

[rkwhyte2]

Barney Frank had live ins.

And they brought in $$.

 

[rkwhyte2]

Housing should be provided. Either barracks for the newbies or officers housing for the more senior members. Don't like it well stop complaining we're providing this for nada. As far as pay well they should start at what a 2nd LT makes and go from their.

 

[Shadow01]

Yep. That requires a constitutional amendment.


Then better people need to be sent, but if better people make a million a year running their business they are not running, INGO proves daily why most of them are not qualified either, so that leaves the grifters that don’t care if it pays at all, they will make theirs…

Better people need to be sent now. It ain’t happening. Why the urgency if we cut their pay? So we don’t have grifters now? Or is it we don’t have grifters that don’t mind being poor? You seem to think reducing their compensation will bring something we don’t already have in DC. I say it’s been there already for decades.

 

[xwing]

As mentioned above, a legislative office was never meant to be a full-time career. Congress-critters should serve a term or two and then go back to a real job. (Of course it'll never happen.)

 

[Flash-hider]

Dang, if only they had reformed the unemployment system while they were in office to make it more equal.

 

[Expat]

As long as they are running a deficit I don’t think they should be paid anything.

 

[manifest destiny]

People spend 7-8 figures to get a temporary job that pays 6 figures. Then they complain about the low pay. It's tough for me to relate to their plight.

 

[printcraft]

Meanwhile, in the ivory towers of our .gov

 

[spencer rifle]

"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind." – Thomas Sowell

 

[Pepi]

I wish all these POS Morons would go fork themselves

 

[Shadow01]

Understand that people choosing to go into politics are people that need the security of like minded antisocial people. They are not capable of existing in normal society. They need the power to keep you away from them. Politicians are truly the undesirables of our existence.