Retiring House Republican says $174,000 isn’t enough money for members of Congress: ‘Most of us don’t have wealth’
by newnemo
Retiring House Republican says $174,000 isn’t enough money for members of Congress: ‘Most of us don’t have wealth’
by newnemo
34 comments
All I hear is “Let them eat cake!”
I think I broke my tiny violin.
^
>Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican who served as the interim speaker of the House following Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, told The Dispatch that congressional pay needs to be raised in order to attract “credible people to run for office.”
>”Most of us live on the salary,” said McHenry. “And then, you know, the very wealthy few end up dominating the news because of their personal stock trades, when most of us don’t have wealth.”
…
>As of now, many members of Congress are in fact independently wealthy, and many do in fact generate significant income from stock trading. Others may make money through book sales.
article continues….
Because he wants to live beyond his means. Like most of them do.
Keeping up with the Jones’s is real, especially when you spend your time around millionaires and billionaires.
Imagine if they spent time with their constituents. I still think their pay should be based on a formula that uses the average wages of the people they represent. Want a pay raise? Make it easier for your people to live.
Seems like an awful lot of money to do very little. Not to mention the best health care and pension. Perhaps they should get what their average constituents get then we can talk about “enough money”.
I also forgot about insider trading, book deals, and speaking fees.
Just give up your Starbucks and avocado toast buddy.
Is this like the one guy in Congress not engaging in insider trading or something?
weird.
i get by on $15,000 a year.
You make more than me motherfucker and can guarantee you, I work much much harder than you.
If they get rid of all lobbying money, book deals, insider trading and any gifts from lobbyist then fine give them a raise.
Singaporean MPs make $1 million a year, they make that much so they’re not susceptible to being bribed. It’s worked out pretty well for over 50 years. But given the the greediness of our representatives I doubt that would stop them from taking money on the side
You weren’t promised wealth. You were elected to serve and represent
1) I belive the “fiscally conservative” way to do this would be to means test pay increases so we don’t waste money paying more to the reps that don’t need it.
2) I’ve seen a lot of people who get paid money to do this abuse the system and not actually do any legislation. I think some time type of work requirements are in order.
I have always battled with how much politicians get paid.
– Politicians are underpaid based on the expectations of their jobs. If you compared the same management role to the private sector, they would make significantly more.
– However, the private sector, your salary is tied to your performance and qualifications, whereas elected office isn’t.
Therefore, you have some politicians making significantly more than they could based on their skills, and some making significantly less.
(That being said this is all assuming there is no money made by influencing other policies, quid pro quo, but lets face it, it happens).
The argument then tends to be, well if you paid politicians more, you would attract better candidates. But that doesn’t mean the more qualified candidates would win.
And therefore, as it generally turns into a popularity contest, rather than qualities, I do think politicians are overpaid.
Most shameless GQP lawmakers have expressed opposition to minimum wage going up to $15-$20/hr., yet they have the audacity to publicly state they want a $75,000/yr. raise?
MAGA Trump goobers who live in trailer parks and consume a steady diet of squirrels & woodchucks think these lawmakers deserve it. smh. You can’t fix stupid.
Most people in the country don’t have wealth either, but republicans won’t vote to help them with anything.
Use better bootstraps then.
Try living on [minimum wage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States), which hasn’t been increased in *fourteen years*.
And yet they’ll be the ones who constantly push against laws being made to ensure livable wages and keep people in poverty (while also voting against all public welfare systems to help the impoverished people).
Once again it goes to show you how out of touch our representatives in congress are with reality. Most Americans live on a lot less than $174k. Plus, we have to pay for healthcare.
They make more than O7 (brigadier general/ rear admiral) rank officers in the military, these are senior leaders with decades of experience who command thousands.
“We’re unable to become wealthy while serving the people who we actively prevent from becoming wealthy via our brutal policies.”
Yeah. He can get fucked.
Make their salaries $2million a year tax free and prohibit them from investing in stocks based on inside info. I’m ok with that.
Edit: Prohibit them from investing. Period.
“Most of us don’t have wealth.”
Yeah well most of US don’t have $174,000 just kicking around.
I’m paid fairly well for what I do but it’s nowhere near 6 figures.
Frankly, at no point in my life have I seen the GOP govern effectively enough to warrant that kind of salary.
> Meanwhile, inflation has eaten away at the value of that salary over time: if lawmakers’ salaries had kept pace with inflation, they would be paid over $250,000 today.
VIRTUALLY *EVERYONE* IS IN THIS BOAT. Tie COLA increases to inflation, like people have been saying for fucking years.
Get a 2nd job then. These members of congress need to stop being lazy and lift themselves up by their bootstraps. The minimum yearly wage they need to survive is over $174,000 but they think $15 an hour is too high for the rest of the population?
You make more money than about half of your American constituents at $174k.
Oh fuck off buddy. You won’t give a raise to Americans for actually working, you don’t deserve a raise for being a professional bitcher.
We’ll trade you a higher salary for no more insider trading. See how many vote for that.
Before we all jump up in arms the guy has a point. $174,000 doesn’t go far when you need to have a residence in your home state and realistically need to have an apartment at least in the DC area. It doesn’t pay enough and that’s why it’s easy to influence them.
So I know I’ll get killed for this, but…
They generally have to have two homes. They work in DC a lot of the year, but they live somewhere else. And that place could be NYC, Boston, or some other expensive place.
It’s not like they will live in poverty, but if you have to travel a ton, and maintain two residences, one of which is in DC which is super expensive, and your other one possibly being super expensive too, you’d need more than the “average” salary. And for this very small number of jobs, don’t we want more than just the “average” american?
This is where I differ from a lot of folks.
I support almost EVERY raise politicians get!! I WANT them to be paid well. You know what happens if they aren’t? Then we are only represented by the rich who don’t need the money. Or we are only represented by those who are going to use their power/influence to get rich.
Don’t we want “regular” people to be able to take that job? Don’t we want to incentivize smart people to take it? You think someone well qualified is going to take that job when they could make a lot more elsewhere? (Because as noted, 175k isn’t 175k when you have two residences.)
I see a small version of this in my town. We are run by a board of Selectmen. You know what they are paid? Nothing.
So you know who does it? Rich people with spare time, and retired people. That’s it. Our town is ALWAYS run by the wealthy and the retired. We need to be very careful to not create a system where only the wealthy can afford to take positions of power. We are already WAY too far down that path, we don’t need to push even further.
They average about 140 days of work and making 6 figure salary, go cry me a river.
Serving in congress isn’t supposed to make you wealthy.
It’s like 12 times the federal minimum wage, that’s more than enough for the work you do compared to the work they do.
Cry me a river and drown lol. We all know they make way more than that with bribes from lobbying, and besides that, they’ve told us no multiple times on raising minimum wage and taxing the rich and instead said we should all work harder and multiple jobs. Get another job. Go work manual labor for a week and get your pristine hands dirty for a change from doing work instead of giving trump hands. I make half that and live comfortably so they can fuck right off saying 174k isn’t enough lol. They chose a job in public service, serve the public and quit whining. Don’t have wealth give me a break lmao, how many benefits also come with that job, what do they pat for healthcare lmao.