Member-only story
Unpopular Opinion: Congress Deserves a Pay Raise
Hear me out: Who wants to work for a company that hasn’t given its chief executives a raise since 2009?
As with any omnibus spending bill designed to pass in an extremely polarized congressional environment where neither party has a commanding majority, there is plenty of excess to criticize in the recently proposed Continuing Resolution (CR).
The business-as-usual spending bill was proposed by Congressional leadership as a stop-gap measure to keep the government funded until mid-March when, presumably, it will be easier to get things passed in Congress.
The kick-the-can-down-the-road tactic and the assumptions implicit about Republicans having an easier time in March passing Trump administration priorities in March weren’t the only points of contention for eagle-eyed voters. Conservative gumshoes and independent journalists weren’t the only ones eager to pick the bill apart, either.
One particular point of contention, especially for the smaller-government fiscal conservatives and libertarians who hoped to see less profligacy from Republican Party stalwarts they rewarded at the ballot box in November, a potential raise for members of Congress.
Many media outlets report that Congress gave itself a pay raise, but that isn’t exactly true.