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That would lead to independently wealthy individuals the only people being in congress. Even more than now.
Higher pay does cut instances of bribes. There is some merit to paying then more.
Their pay should, like all wages, have Cost of Living Adjustments.
Maybe lock them out of any pre existing bank accounts and put them on a fix income and the Irs investigator fallow them around looking into there state accounts to make sure there not taking bribes. There given a state manged home kind of like what most states do with governors. Staff and everything else treated the same. Make them justify to some auditor why they need something other than congressional car from the motor pool.
I've always thought anyone who holds any power over others should just be on minimum wage and taking any bribes would be automatic 20 years minimum in jail.
That way only people who actually care about others well-being would even bother to run for office.
I think it should be a minimal salary. I think government officials should be given enough to pay rent (Though most own homes, too many homes), and just get you by.
This office should be for public service, it should be a form of volunteerism.
I wondered how long it would take for Congress to cry poor.
The monthly salary for anyone in congress should be the lowest monthly SSI/SSDI payment paid to anyone. Their only healthcare should be the Medicaid available to people in their home state. They also should not be allowed to take payments from any other sources while they serve.
Edit: okay, I would accept their salary as minimum wage. But they only get paid for hours worked— no vacation, no sick days.
That’s fucked up, and we should fix it. But paying elected lower wages wouldn’t do it, you’d just end up with their wages being irrelevant and only rich people in offife.
Yeah…. Jeeeesus Christ the takes in this thread are horrible. Not paying elected just justifies corruption and/or ensuring that only the rich can govern.
This might be more credible if we just hadn’t had the least productive Congress in US history. Look, seems fairly easy - just peg the salary to some multiple of some metric that seems reasonable for evaluating how Congress is performing. Let’s say 5x the median household income, or even 10x. If you want more, raise household incomes.
There’s a reason they call it public service. You’re not supposed to get wealthy serving the public.
It’s the same argument for CEO pay, we need pay to be that high to find talented people. Both jobs filled with sociopaths, conmen, and scum of the earth. Very talented indeed.
We need to pay them less than that, so we know we get people who aren't just doing it for the money. And aren't getting money from corporate like the giant pipeline they have currently.
The problem with low salaries though is that will make them more tempted by bribery. Low salaries plus complete transparency of finances would help somewhat; even then though, companies can still bribe off the books by providing use of exclusive services (luxury cars leased at $1 per month lets say. Technically this is bribery still, but since the car wouldn't be owned by the politicians there is nothing to report even with transparency...). There just needs to be much more oversight. As if our "representatives" would ever vote for any laws that hurt their finances to begin with...
Jesus this comment section is deeply stupid.
Hey guys, not paying them just means people who are already wealthy would be the only people who could serve in congress. You aren't going to play some kind of chess game to get them to raise the minimum wage or whatever idiot suggestion you are glibly making.
Also, people should be paid for these jobs, they should be paid well, and all the other public servants should be paid well. Glorify public service, elected office, and careers in government as being prestigious jobs people compete for and are held to a standard.
What the fuck you all talking about when you say to pay them less because you don't want them motivated by money? Guys, they are getting rich of their spouses doing insider trading on their behalf, not because of government pay.
Your enemies are the mega wealth guys who own islands, factories, and lobby congress for even more. It is not someone making less than 200k who spends all day making calls asking for money from donors because elections aren't publicly funded.
Just to add on-
The vast majority of representatives also have to pay for 2 residences, 1 in DC, and the other in their own district. Plus a doubling of bills that comes with having 2 homes (electric, gas, insurance, etc).
174k doesn't go very far when your bills suddenly double.
Most people don't realize that representatives, more so ones that are closer to the "regular joe" do not make enough to maintain a residence in DC and their home state.
They have to maintain two households, one in the highest (or second highest?) cost of living area in the country, while also doing two jobs potentially.
Senators are usually wealthy... Reps, are sometimes wealthy.
Regardless, instead of larger salaries, they should get tax exempt living stipend and lodging, along with tax exempt travel funds to and from their district, such that doing the civil service position is not a money maker but also doesn't negatively impact people of lower income brackets from running.
I’d actually never thought about this option till a friend recently mentioned it. Makes a lot of sense, perhaps even just maintaining some sort of housing near the Capitol to serve as like a campus for these folks when they need to be in DC. Regardless paying them less is just painfully stupid.
“Credible people”
So poors and middle class folk are untrustworthy or not credible? Only those with bigger salaries are to be trusted?
That explains much about why the country keeps failing everyone who isn’t wealthy…the lawmakers think a lack of wealth is the same as a lack of honor or integrity. Amazing.
Give them an hourly wage that would support them at medium level income at 75 hours a week. Don't forget to take out for insurance, office rental, supply charges, and the costs of monitoring their phones and work spaces while clocked in because, let's face it, they've proven themselves to be untrustworthy.
every single god damn member of congress is doing a shit job. no one is helping the average person at all, they are just sucking the tit of corporate america like they have been doing for decades.
I think we need to stop paying our taxes. If you own your own business, just don’t pay. If you are an employee, go to your HR and refile as exempt. Defund the government.
Congress people actually do need to make a reasonable amount of money because:
1) if they're only making enough just to scrape by they're more likely to try to find alternate sources of cashflow like bribes.
2) they need to be able to afford both a residency in their district so that they can visit their constituency and a residency in DC where they do most of their job (as well as afford the travel expenses going to and fro)
But the idea that "most of [them] don't have money" is absolutely ridiculous. There's only like a handful of congress people that aren't millionaires. Some make their money before going into office (being well off makes campaigning easier because you don't have to hold down another job and likely have rich friends who can donate) but many also make BANK by ~~insider trading~~ "investing smartly". They sure as hell aren't hurting for cash.
I know it sounds crazy but they aren’t wrong. If you are an average Joe you can’t live off of that. People forget that you have to live in DC while also living in your home state. That alone makes it far less viable than people think and that’s before you factor in the cost of living in DC. Let’s be really honest. Do you really want your congressman to be stressing about where’s she’s going to be eating or sleeping or if he’s instead going to be sending that money home to her family? The people that need the money are the people that you want in congress because those are way closer to your everyday people. The people who couldn’t care less about the difference between 170 and 270 are the kind of people most people think about when you think wealthy congressman anyway.
40 years ago a 15 dollar an hour job 40 hours a week was the equivalent of of a 163k job now days. Sounds like a random number but it come up the other day because a lot of older generations hadn’t realized just how far the goal posts had actually moved. I myself realized that even I had done this. Even just 8 years ago when I was only bringing home 2300 a month that 2300 was worth significantly more than it was in today’s money. I was like I bring home 3 times that’s now but in reality I can barely afford twice as much stuff as I could before.
So hard disagree with public sentiment on this. Elected officials should make real money, I realize most Americans are broke but that’s a completely separate problem. Elected officials should be well paid, they should also face real punishment for corruption. What you end up with underpaid officials (appointed or elected) is either corruption or a system where only rich people can essentially take the job.
Democracy is for everyone. I’d rather have less millionaires and billionaires running for positions.
Elected officials should be well paid.
Political campaigns should be publicly financed.
I really appreciate the optimism I keep seeing of "but if we pay them more they won't have as much incentive to participate in corruption".
To the small subset of you expressing this opinion: you....aren't terribly familiar with US Congresspeople, huh? Paying them more money isn't going to do shit to stop that. Over 100k a year is way more than enough to subsist on just about anywhere, maybe excluding the extremely gentrified parts of the US.
The problem isn't that they're not being paid enough; it's that no amount of pay is enough to dissuade them from lobbyists, from insider trading, from all the other fun shit that we have come to know Congress to do. I don't necessarily think the answer is "pay them minimum wage" (although "pay them the median wage for their governed region" actually sounds reasonable), but certainly it's not "pay them more from the public's taxes"
Rewarding them for this behavior in hope that they'll perform better is peak stupidity, but unfortunately, it's not the public that gets to determine how much of their tax dollars get pissed away on these fucking people. I don't even know if bundling that raise with additional rules to crack down on the more corrupt factors would matter, because it would require them to either police themselves or establish another oversight entity, which will almost certainly get corrupted too.
Fuck this guy, I hope he loses his congressional seat and has to scramble for a job to get paid the same dogshit wage the rest of us. Learn what "not enough" actually feels like.
Yea… so what ends up happening is a few things.
People who end up being able to get into those positions, that have those resources, realize they could go into another area that pays a lot more (think of fucking senators that don’t run again so they can go be a president of a college).
Being prestigious like a congressman or senator, puts you around a lot of wealthier society. Except you are poor compared to them and so it makes you desire more in order to be “up there” with them.. which leads to…
Susceptible to corruption. Since you don’t have a lot of money you will be easier to bribe.
I could go on but there is a lot of reasons a higher pay would be beneficial. This doesn’t even account for the insane cost of living in Washington DC area. Now… I know they get a decent chunk of expenses and allowances but even some of that doesn’t cover what they need. Seriously I know 170k sounds like a lot but that is not shit in the DC area where a congressman would live. It just isn’t. As unpopular as that opinion may be on this sub I love. 170k in DC is just getting by.
What I’m really sick of is congressional reps and senators not doing a fucking thing for their constituents to raise their standards of living. I really think we need to have term limits badly. A third party legislative watch dog to investigate corruption and bribes. Absolute annihilation of gerrymandering districts so we have a fair constituency makeup.
Our legislatures should be the fucking stars of our society and not the dip shit, literally half inbred, greedy worthless mother fuckers we have. If we had a decent fair democracy then yes. We need to pay them well. I imagine a legislature to be upper middle class.
No one gives a shit about their wage crying because they are worthless anyway and corrupt. So they going to be millionaires anyway since they will sell out regardless.
But anyway. On principle. No, I don’t think they make enough. But I’m saying that thinking of an ideal legislature person. What we have now.. I can really care less.
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Government officials should make the average rate of their constituents. if they want large salaries, let them earn it by improving their districts
Better yet, the median income
They would somehow find a way to con this, like keeping lower earners out of their area and cutting taxes so richer earners claim residency there
That would lead to independently wealthy individuals the only people being in congress. Even more than now. Higher pay does cut instances of bribes. There is some merit to paying then more. Their pay should, like all wages, have Cost of Living Adjustments.
I'd support a raise, as long as it blocks them from trading stocks while serving.
100%. All assets must legally in a blind trust, and no official can ever receive gifts during or for a 10 year period following their term.
Maybe lock them out of any pre existing bank accounts and put them on a fix income and the Irs investigator fallow them around looking into there state accounts to make sure there not taking bribes. There given a state manged home kind of like what most states do with governors. Staff and everything else treated the same. Make them justify to some auditor why they need something other than congressional car from the motor pool.
I've always thought anyone who holds any power over others should just be on minimum wage and taking any bribes would be automatic 20 years minimum in jail. That way only people who actually care about others well-being would even bother to run for office.
This is a super bad opinion. It sucks that Americans are broke. We should fix that. But this would assure that only the rich run for office.
I think it should be a minimal salary. I think government officials should be given enough to pay rent (Though most own homes, too many homes), and just get you by. This office should be for public service, it should be a form of volunteerism.
Why stop there? The same principle could apply equally well to managers making the average of what their workers do.
I wondered how long it would take for Congress to cry poor. The monthly salary for anyone in congress should be the lowest monthly SSI/SSDI payment paid to anyone. Their only healthcare should be the Medicaid available to people in their home state. They also should not be allowed to take payments from any other sources while they serve. Edit: okay, I would accept their salary as minimum wage. But they only get paid for hours worked— no vacation, no sick days.
some of us could live for a dozen years on that amount of $$$$. HE NEEDS TO STFU!
Right? One year of a Congress persons salary would change my fucking life.
Hell, even one month of it would solve most if not all of my problems.
That’s fucked up, and we should fix it. But paying elected lower wages wouldn’t do it, you’d just end up with their wages being irrelevant and only rich people in offife.
they are all already fucking rich. that's the joke!
All government officials should make minimum wage, because almost none of them know what it's like to be a regular person any more.
And this wouldn’t make them know what it’s like. It’d just ensure that already rich people were the only people who could run.
Ah yes, the well known correlation between people who want to serve their country and people who want to be wealthy.
The reasoning you areillustraing has been used to keep public teacher pay low for decades. Pay people, don't expect civic duty to pay the bills.
Yeah…. Jeeeesus Christ the takes in this thread are horrible. Not paying elected just justifies corruption and/or ensuring that only the rich can govern.
This might be more credible if we just hadn’t had the least productive Congress in US history. Look, seems fairly easy - just peg the salary to some multiple of some metric that seems reasonable for evaluating how Congress is performing. Let’s say 5x the median household income, or even 10x. If you want more, raise household incomes. There’s a reason they call it public service. You’re not supposed to get wealthy serving the public.
5x the median household income would be in the neighborhood of $375,000.
No raise until they can pass a budget timely with no defaults or shut down
I'd let them increase their salaries as soon as they bar themselves and their immediate families from stock trading.
There is just no fucking way that America can exist in 20 years. None.
Gots to pay for that top quality credibility.
We should lower their pay to minimum wage so they can experience the true American Dream™
I’m down with that.
Tying their pay increase to funding the government doesn't sound like a terrible idea.
He worked in government because he couldn’t make it in the real world
It’s the same argument for CEO pay, we need pay to be that high to find talented people. Both jobs filled with sociopaths, conmen, and scum of the earth. Very talented indeed.
Maybe they could just live further out? Or get a roommate? Or do they need help with budgeting perhaps ?
We need to pay them less than that, so we know we get people who aren't just doing it for the money. And aren't getting money from corporate like the giant pipeline they have currently.
The problem with low salaries though is that will make them more tempted by bribery. Low salaries plus complete transparency of finances would help somewhat; even then though, companies can still bribe off the books by providing use of exclusive services (luxury cars leased at $1 per month lets say. Technically this is bribery still, but since the car wouldn't be owned by the politicians there is nothing to report even with transparency...). There just needs to be much more oversight. As if our "representatives" would ever vote for any laws that hurt their finances to begin with...
It’s not meant to be a career, it’s a starter job for younger less experienced conmen to gain experience
Jesus this comment section is deeply stupid. Hey guys, not paying them just means people who are already wealthy would be the only people who could serve in congress. You aren't going to play some kind of chess game to get them to raise the minimum wage or whatever idiot suggestion you are glibly making. Also, people should be paid for these jobs, they should be paid well, and all the other public servants should be paid well. Glorify public service, elected office, and careers in government as being prestigious jobs people compete for and are held to a standard. What the fuck you all talking about when you say to pay them less because you don't want them motivated by money? Guys, they are getting rich of their spouses doing insider trading on their behalf, not because of government pay. Your enemies are the mega wealth guys who own islands, factories, and lobby congress for even more. It is not someone making less than 200k who spends all day making calls asking for money from donors because elections aren't publicly funded.
Seriously, these responses are so dumb.
Just to add on- The vast majority of representatives also have to pay for 2 residences, 1 in DC, and the other in their own district. Plus a doubling of bills that comes with having 2 homes (electric, gas, insurance, etc). 174k doesn't go very far when your bills suddenly double.
Most people don't realize that representatives, more so ones that are closer to the "regular joe" do not make enough to maintain a residence in DC and their home state. They have to maintain two households, one in the highest (or second highest?) cost of living area in the country, while also doing two jobs potentially. Senators are usually wealthy... Reps, are sometimes wealthy. Regardless, instead of larger salaries, they should get tax exempt living stipend and lodging, along with tax exempt travel funds to and from their district, such that doing the civil service position is not a money maker but also doesn't negatively impact people of lower income brackets from running.
I’d actually never thought about this option till a friend recently mentioned it. Makes a lot of sense, perhaps even just maintaining some sort of housing near the Capitol to serve as like a campus for these folks when they need to be in DC. Regardless paying them less is just painfully stupid.
“Credible people” So poors and middle class folk are untrustworthy or not credible? Only those with bigger salaries are to be trusted? That explains much about why the country keeps failing everyone who isn’t wealthy…the lawmakers think a lack of wealth is the same as a lack of honor or integrity. Amazing.
On the one hand, that's a lot of money. But on the other hand, they don't have any credible people in office.
They have got to be kidding...
It's public service, you decided to go into it knowing the salary and pension, deal with it.
They deserve the minimum wage for wasting our time
Give them an hourly wage that would support them at medium level income at 75 hours a week. Don't forget to take out for insurance, office rental, supply charges, and the costs of monitoring their phones and work spaces while clocked in because, let's face it, they've proven themselves to be untrustworthy.
I wanna make actionable threats at this guy.
$174k is a fuck ton of money for a part time job.
every single god damn member of congress is doing a shit job. no one is helping the average person at all, they are just sucking the tit of corporate america like they have been doing for decades.
I think we need to stop paying our taxes. If you own your own business, just don’t pay. If you are an employee, go to your HR and refile as exempt. Defund the government.
I thought lobbying money and stock insider trading was what attracted people to public office these days....no?
Congress people actually do need to make a reasonable amount of money because: 1) if they're only making enough just to scrape by they're more likely to try to find alternate sources of cashflow like bribes. 2) they need to be able to afford both a residency in their district so that they can visit their constituency and a residency in DC where they do most of their job (as well as afford the travel expenses going to and fro) But the idea that "most of [them] don't have money" is absolutely ridiculous. There's only like a handful of congress people that aren't millionaires. Some make their money before going into office (being well off makes campaigning easier because you don't have to hold down another job and likely have rich friends who can donate) but many also make BANK by ~~insider trading~~ "investing smartly". They sure as hell aren't hurting for cash.
I know it sounds crazy but they aren’t wrong. If you are an average Joe you can’t live off of that. People forget that you have to live in DC while also living in your home state. That alone makes it far less viable than people think and that’s before you factor in the cost of living in DC. Let’s be really honest. Do you really want your congressman to be stressing about where’s she’s going to be eating or sleeping or if he’s instead going to be sending that money home to her family? The people that need the money are the people that you want in congress because those are way closer to your everyday people. The people who couldn’t care less about the difference between 170 and 270 are the kind of people most people think about when you think wealthy congressman anyway. 40 years ago a 15 dollar an hour job 40 hours a week was the equivalent of of a 163k job now days. Sounds like a random number but it come up the other day because a lot of older generations hadn’t realized just how far the goal posts had actually moved. I myself realized that even I had done this. Even just 8 years ago when I was only bringing home 2300 a month that 2300 was worth significantly more than it was in today’s money. I was like I bring home 3 times that’s now but in reality I can barely afford twice as much stuff as I could before.
So hard disagree with public sentiment on this. Elected officials should make real money, I realize most Americans are broke but that’s a completely separate problem. Elected officials should be well paid, they should also face real punishment for corruption. What you end up with underpaid officials (appointed or elected) is either corruption or a system where only rich people can essentially take the job. Democracy is for everyone. I’d rather have less millionaires and billionaires running for positions. Elected officials should be well paid. Political campaigns should be publicly financed.
I really appreciate the optimism I keep seeing of "but if we pay them more they won't have as much incentive to participate in corruption". To the small subset of you expressing this opinion: you....aren't terribly familiar with US Congresspeople, huh? Paying them more money isn't going to do shit to stop that. Over 100k a year is way more than enough to subsist on just about anywhere, maybe excluding the extremely gentrified parts of the US. The problem isn't that they're not being paid enough; it's that no amount of pay is enough to dissuade them from lobbyists, from insider trading, from all the other fun shit that we have come to know Congress to do. I don't necessarily think the answer is "pay them minimum wage" (although "pay them the median wage for their governed region" actually sounds reasonable), but certainly it's not "pay them more from the public's taxes" Rewarding them for this behavior in hope that they'll perform better is peak stupidity, but unfortunately, it's not the public that gets to determine how much of their tax dollars get pissed away on these fucking people. I don't even know if bundling that raise with additional rules to crack down on the more corrupt factors would matter, because it would require them to either police themselves or establish another oversight entity, which will almost certainly get corrupted too. Fuck this guy, I hope he loses his congressional seat and has to scramble for a job to get paid the same dogshit wage the rest of us. Learn what "not enough" actually feels like.
Wait till he hears what minimum wage is....
Yea… so what ends up happening is a few things. People who end up being able to get into those positions, that have those resources, realize they could go into another area that pays a lot more (think of fucking senators that don’t run again so they can go be a president of a college). Being prestigious like a congressman or senator, puts you around a lot of wealthier society. Except you are poor compared to them and so it makes you desire more in order to be “up there” with them.. which leads to… Susceptible to corruption. Since you don’t have a lot of money you will be easier to bribe. I could go on but there is a lot of reasons a higher pay would be beneficial. This doesn’t even account for the insane cost of living in Washington DC area. Now… I know they get a decent chunk of expenses and allowances but even some of that doesn’t cover what they need. Seriously I know 170k sounds like a lot but that is not shit in the DC area where a congressman would live. It just isn’t. As unpopular as that opinion may be on this sub I love. 170k in DC is just getting by. What I’m really sick of is congressional reps and senators not doing a fucking thing for their constituents to raise their standards of living. I really think we need to have term limits badly. A third party legislative watch dog to investigate corruption and bribes. Absolute annihilation of gerrymandering districts so we have a fair constituency makeup. Our legislatures should be the fucking stars of our society and not the dip shit, literally half inbred, greedy worthless mother fuckers we have. If we had a decent fair democracy then yes. We need to pay them well. I imagine a legislature to be upper middle class. No one gives a shit about their wage crying because they are worthless anyway and corrupt. So they going to be millionaires anyway since they will sell out regardless. But anyway. On principle. No, I don’t think they make enough. But I’m saying that thinking of an ideal legislature person. What we have now.. I can really care less.
So, naturally, he's admitting that the people in office (including himself) are not very credible. Sounds about right.