Shocking news: Congressional leaders demand to be paid just one dollar a year! Thus they acknowledge their own flagrant irresponsibility in causing the economic crisis.
According to congressional leaders (and I quote), “Our mammoth fiscal irresponsibility is the single biggest culprit in all this, not counting the easy-credit policies of the Fed. We pretended we could spend and tax and regulate like there was no tomorrow, demand easy-loan terms to bad credit risks, etc., with no bad consequences. Just get something for nothing. Boy, were we wrong! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!”
Yeah, right. That’ll be the day. Congress may demand that CEOs schlepping to Washington for handouts get paid just a dollar a year, but the congressmen themselves won’t even freeze their own pay.
Of course, many of them should be resigning. Instead, they have quietly, not to say furtively, allowed an automatic pay raise to go forward, the so-called Cost of Living Adjustment.
Representative Harry Mitchell sponsored a bill to prevent the automatic pay raise from happening in 2009. But it never escaped committee. As Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense points out, things are “wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise.” So add another $4,700 to the average congressional salary. Meaning they’ll make $174,000 beginning this January.
Because they’re doing such a swell job, right?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.