Tucson, Arizona Friday, 19 July 2002
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - House lawmakers cleared the way Thursday to give themselves a pay raise for the fourth straight year, increasing their salaries about $5,000.
If that raise goes into effect, rank-and-file members of Congress would receive $155,000, an increase of more than $20,000 over the past decade.
Under a 1989 law, congressional pay raises, determined by a complicated formula that includes a measure of private industry employment costs, go into effect automatically unless lawmakers vote to block them.
Showdowns over pay raises usually take place during debate on the annual spending bill for the Treasury Department and related agencies, but a 258-156 procedural vote at the opening of that debate effectively prevented lawmakers from offering an amendment to kill the raise.
The only lawmaker to speak against the raise was Rep. James Matheson, D-Utah. "We can't afford it, last year's government surpluses are long gone, we are swimming in red ink, we are fighting a war. We shouldn't be asking the taxpayers to pay us more," he said.
The congressional raise is estimated to be about 3.3 percent. The Treasury bill for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 includes a 4.1 percent cost-of-living increase for civilian federal employees, equal to a raise approved for military personnel.
The 3.3 percent pay raise, which would go into effect in January, would also apply to more than 1,000 top executive branch officials, including the vice president and members of the congressional leadership. The vice president, like the speaker of the House, now gets $192,600 while House and Senate majority and minority leaders receive $166,700.
The president's salary of $400,000 a year is unaffected by the congressional increase.
America's first members of Congress were paid $6 a day.
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