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Comment by electromagnetic | Hacker News Reader

I fail to understand why taxpayers pay $174,000 as a salary to Congressmen given that 261 of them are millionares. Furthermore, I don't get why they're given a wage when dozens of them are being handed this salary or more on a single issue. McCain got paid almost 12 times as much on this bill as his wage.

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The one way to ensure that all Congressmen are millionaires is to take away their pay. Honestly, the salary is already too small, they have to maintain a second residence in DC, which is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. In all seriousness, $174,000 is not enough money to support a family in a middle class lifestyle in DC. A townhouse in a safe neighborhood is $5,000/month, most of the public schools are terrible and the private schools expensive, and the local taxes are extremely high.

Also lawmakers can't spend their campaign warchests on personal items.

Complete FUD. I live in the DC region and dont need nearly this much to be comfortable with my family. Now if I wanted to live in a prime spot downtown and forgo any commute or other compromises that would be a different story but I see no reason why our tax dollars should support congress living like rockstars.

This is complete FUD. My wife and I make ~100k, and live inside the beltway, quite comfortably, within a 30 minute drive to Capitol Hill.

Fairfax and Montgomery County have some of the highest rated public schools in the nation.

Do you also maintain a home in the state that you actually represent? This might be FUD (I don't know) but saying that you do fine with less money isn't indicative of anything if you aren't doing the same thing.

In a perfect world, paying them salary would hopefully make them ignore individuals/companies offering them donations in exchange for favorable legislation because they already were making a good wage.

In the real world, it's just a $261,000 bonus.

They horde money for campaign (ads). The notion that they are doing a Scrooge McDuck in taxpayer money is generally false. I'm not putting the onus on the taxpayer, but attack ads and the like are extremely effective and... expensive. Their number one goal is to get (re)elected and money=>ads is the most effective way to do it. Standing on principle and making articulated arguments just polarizes.

This is why in parliamentary systems the MPs get a wage and get campaign funding (IIRC respective to their previous campaign share, IE the incumbent gets the most).

What I don't get there is that they still get payoffs, but we're talking a private jet flight versus $2 million in cash.

I get what you are saying, but Congress has had a salary longer than attack ads.

You're right. But, my point is there is no amount of money we can reasonably pay them that will come close to the money they require to get re-elected, which is more important to them than anything else.

McCain got paid almost 12 times as much on this bill as his wage.

Campaign donations are not the same as a salary.

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