Congress is never popular, mostly because they don’t do a hell of a lot, and raising Congressional pay is a dumb move politically.
But on AOC charged, willing to go off the cliff electorally to prove a misguided point and in that way the Democrats lose elections. Arguing in favor of a Congressional pay raise is and always has been political suicide.
From Politico: House Democratic leaders are postponing consideration of a bill that would include a pay raise for members of Congress after facing a major backlash from the party’s most vulnerable members.
Top Democrats agreed in a closed-door meeting Monday night to pull a key section of this week’s massive funding bill to avoid escalating a clash within their caucus over whether to hike salaries for lawmakers and staff for the first time in a decade, multiple lawmakers confirmed.
At least 15 Democrats — mostly freshmen in competitive districts — had pushed to freeze pay after some Democratic and Republican leaders quietly agreed to the slight pay increase earlier this month.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told POLITICO after the meeting he thinks they will pull the bill so Democrats can resolve the issue of congressional pay raises.
The issue flared up on Monday in the Democratic leadership meeting, at which there were intense discussions of whether to force members to go on the record about pay raises, which some battleground Democrats believed would put a target on their backs in 2020.
“Nobody wants to vote to give themselves a raise. There’s nothing good about that,” said Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.), who attended Monday’s meeting.
From The Daily Wire:
As The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti pointed out Monday, while the current Congressional salary doesn’t quite qualify them for the much-maligned “one-percenter” label, they do make the “five-percenter” category. Despite her calls for equality in America, democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) has repeatedly called for a raise for legislators.
“Members of Congress often vote to cut or keep their allowances low,” she tweeted in March. “It’s a superficial gesture, bc keeping Congressional pay low is what creates the desperation + impetus for good, experienced staff to flee to lobbyist jobs. Raising staffer pay helps get money out of politics. Same w/ member pay.
Members are paid more than avg — but job reqs 2 residences + we can’t take tax deductions for work costs. No one wants to be the one to bring up increases, so instead ppl take advantage of insider trading loopholes & don’t close them for the extra cash.”
Early Tuesday, she again defended Congress giving themselves a raise. “Yep. Voting against cost of living increases for members of Congress may sound nice, but doing so only increases pressure on them to keep dark money loopholes open,” she wrote in a series of tweets.
“This makes campaign finance reform *harder.* ALL workers deserve cost of living increases, incl min wage workers. What this does is punish members who rely on a straight salary, and reward those who rely on money loopholes and other forms of self-dealing. For example, it incentivizes the horrible kinds of legislative looting we saw in the GOP tax scam bill.
It’s not a fun or politically popular position to take. But consistency is important. ALL workers should get cost of living increases. That’s why minimum wage should be pegged to inflation, too. Voting against cost of living increases is 1 reason why dark $ loopholes stay open.”
