Retiring GOP Lawmaker: $174,000 Isn't Enough Money for Us
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
However, then I found an article that said this already happened for this year: https://www.closeup.org/a-new-rule-results-in-cost-of-living...
So, basically, House members already got a raise of $34k this year. The fact this wasn't even mentioned in this businessinsider article makes me think Patrick McHenry should STFU.
It's essentially PM type hours without PM type pay.
You easily earn more and work less hours as a GS 12-14 with much less stress (GS-15 sucks though because you start dealing with SES and Political Appointees)
Maybe Congress should build some dormitories and allow members to board with each other if they choose so. Maybe over time it will reduce the division between members when you’re forced to live with them and realize that they’re humans too.
Congress barely passes any meaningful legislation, they shouldn’t be rewarded with more money.
If I only shipped two features over two years at my job I’d be rightly fired. Certain members of Congress think that you can literally object to everything and grind things to halt then have the audacity to call this “government.”
Force them to do their job and maybe they can discuss an additional raise (they already got one this year).
It's not bad on average, but it skews hiring towards the wealthy, as those without wealth (self made or generational) cannot build the wealth needed to afford a high CoL city like DC.
Working 10-15 years on $30k as a staffer to end up making $150k at most as a lobbyist or maybe $174k as a House Rep while still having to pay off undergraduate and graduate school debt (and that too from private or private adjacent programs as where you studied does matter on the hill) means you have barely any savings to afford buying property or renting in most of the DMV.
> Maybe Congress should build some dormitories and allow members to board with each other if they choose so
They used to but stopped by the 90s for liability reasons.
> Congress barely passes any meaningful legislation
How do you define "meaningful"? It's the politics and PM equivalent of "Lines of Code"
The rate of enacted and passed legislation has largely remained constant since the 1970s [0].
Most legislation and work done on the Hill doesn't come up on CNN/Fox/MSNBC/NewsNation/Twitter/TikTok/FB because it's topics that are mind numbing to most people who aren't nerds.
That’s why the position tends to attract already wealthy people seeking prestige and power or normal individuals who use it as a stepping stone to million-dollar book deals or cushy jobs in the private sector.
Anyone who believes this does not understand how power works and is maintained.
I was prepared to dispute this, but now I'm not certain. According to capitoltrades.com, a site that tracks US politician stock trades, 213 politicians made trades within the last 3 years. Assuming those are senators and congress members, then it's fair to say that most aren't making trades.
That said, the GP comment that asserted "their power and insider knowledge makes them a lot more than that overall" isn't incorrect. 213 politicians take advantage of their elected positions to profit from the stock market.
Of course, it is best to couple the good pay with severe penalties for abusing power.
Plus throw in having to maintain two places to live. If you come from an area with high real estate values, that and your place in DC are going to take a big bite out of that salary.
Many freshman lawmakers live together in D.C. From what I've heard, it's both fun and productive, with the stories I've heard reminescent of start-ups' garage days.
These are senior decision makers. Going to Congress shouldn't mean not being able to build wealth by simply doing your job.
This doesn't work in a democracy. If you're talking about paid lobbying, that can be done, but it largely serves to enfranchise the wealthy: when you donate to the EFF or ACLU and they lobby the Congress, they're paid lobbyists. If you can make in-person trips to D.C. with meetings set up, or better yet, have elected fly out to meet you, you don't want paid lobbyists--they're competition.
Your other suggestions have legs. But "ban lobbying" means electeds aren't allowed to talk to anyone, which is obviously stupid.
Also, the pay for lobbyists (and also staffers) is kinda bleh tbh factoring YoE. A new grad SWE or PM can make more than a lobbyist who grinded as a staffer for a decade.
Going from $30k to $150k is nice, but doing that after earning $30k for 10 years and then earning $150k in a city where CoL is higher than SF sucks.
There are certain cases where you are allowed and not allowed to accept gifts.
Just go to the House Ethics website to get the rules.
If you mess around, you will get a knock on your door from the DoJ as plenty of sitting and past members are now learning.
Sounds like you can and they have.
Most people don't do it because being nailed by the DoJ sucks.
They have a 99% conviction rate as they only take those cases to court they know they will win.
It turns out everyone else voted for a 16 term a candidate who promised for the 16th time that they would make illegal the kind of corruption that they themselves observed first hand (and placed the envelope in their pocket) for the past 15 terms, this time they are going to bring real change.
Out of curiosity, who was this? Corruption rarely ranks as a material issue in most races. If the bread-and-butter issues aren't in play, it's usually a culture/dignity contest.
You know what smart people do? Ask questions. Use their resources.
In a day an elected might see a bill on restaurant staffing, closing a tax loophole only applicable to skyscrapers, an infrastructure project in Alaska, a military concern in Southeast Asia and a humanitarian plea from the Middle East. There is no moral fibre in pretending you can work each of those out from first principles; that’s simply hubris.
Banning lobbying effectively says that member must refuse to meet with—while weighing those measures—the head of a restaurant union, the representative of the Alaskan community proximate to the project, anyone who has written a book or done research on the foreign areas of question, perhaps, by some peoples’ definitions, even the DoD. They must decide in a vacuum. That’s not only unreasonable, it’s a one-way road to groupthink.
> You know what smart people do? Ask questions. Use their resources.
I would love to see more of this - as far as I can tell there is almost none of it going on. I am pro listening to all the voices, anti selecting based on the biggest donation. Between "vested interests" and voting along party lines I doubt many legislators could tell you what the subject of the bill they voted on 5 minutes ago was.
They would be in breach of the rules by accepting the free steak dinner [1]. I'm not saying there aren't electeds who are dumb enough to succumb to this. But they're low-hanging fruit for ambitious prosecutors.
The US Senate seems to always have been a playground for the rich, but the House shows a bit of this. AOC now has the best paid job of her life, and seems to thrive. While the Rs in the House are dominated by grievance (Boebert) and grift (Santos). The more stable Rs are busy making money and having happy lives.
AOC and Taylor-Greene are living their best lives in Congress. (Unlike Boebert, they're popular with their voters.) Closer to the centre you find cross-sector competence that is better remunerated in the private sector.
Those who stick around either really believe in their cause, have a strong following back home, and/or have invested heavily in living in DC by buying a house or have family ties (eg. Pelosi)
Fair enough, this is totally correct.
> In 2022, 78.7 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.6 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 141,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 882,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.0 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.3 percent of all hourly paid workers, little changed from 2021. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis. (See table 10.)
It has gotten significantly better, but it's still easy to forget about the other 1%.
Imagine a small town where people basically either work for the coal mine or the Walmart. The coal mine can't employ everyone, so for everyone else they have to work at Walmart and at whatever terms Walmart dictates. Minimum wage provides a floor on how bad the terms Walmart offers are.
It's also intended to prevent having people who work but can't afford to live (their labor being effectively subsidized by the state in the form of welfare). There's a lively discourse around whether it's effective at that.
You are correct that in some economic circumstances and some levels of minimum wage, prevailing wages will be higher. I think one could argue that if prevailing wages rise above minimum wage, it's a signal that low skill laborers have some level of bargaining power through high demand or unions.
Some states do have a minimum wage around $15/hr, though. Anecdotally, I'm seeing the same as you near me. The prevailing minimum wage seems to be between $15 and $20 an hour; that's what the chain restaurants and groceries around me are offering.
That will likely crash at some point as market conditions change (maybe robots take over, maybe age demographics change, who knows) and minimum wage should be there to be a stopgap on how far those wages can fall.
> As you said, states are moving past the federal minimum wage already, and it is seemingly successful.
Sure, that's basically the current system. The federal government sets an absolute minimum wage, states can set a higher (but now lower) minimum wage, and in some circumstances, cities can set a minimum wage higher than the state.
It works well in concept. I don't think we're great at adjusting the federal minimum wage for states that don't set their own, but that's more a reflection of stagnation in the political system as a whole than an indictment of the minimum wage system.
Sure, these kind of regulations feel unnecessary at times of high level of employment. But sooner or later there will be another economic downturn and a lot of people out of work.