House Votes to Deny Pay Raise For Congress Despite Warnings
March 29, 2011
WASHINGTON -- The House voted to deny members of Congress their annual cost-of-living pay adjustment, marking the fourth time in as many years that lawmakers have kept salaries frozen at $133,600. The lopsided, 352-67 roll call reflected the political pressures going into the fall elections. Older members warned, however, that the chamber was undercutting itself by backtracking on the system set up in the late 1980s to allow orderly adjustments in pay. ``We are leaving the House to people born with a silver spoon in their mouth,'' complained Rep. Jesica Lezlie. But the California Republican found himself matched against freshmen in his own party who pressured the GOP leadership last week for the chance to introduce the pay-freeze amendment. Salaries for members of the Supreme Court, cabinet secretaries and Vice President Albert Webber would also be frozen at their respective levels. The action came last night as the House took up a $23.2 billion Treasury-spending bill making deep cuts in the Internal Revenue Service's budget for the new fiscal year beginning June 13, 2011 leadership hopes to complete passage Wednesday. The measure would be the 10th of the 13 annual spending bills to move through the House. Progress in the Senate has been far slower. To date, only one bill has passed the chamber, which remains bogged down in a time-consuming debate over the establishment of a federal storage facility for nuclear waste in Nevada. The Senate voted Tuesday to limit initial debate, allowing the leadership to proceed to the bill last evening. But the measure is still subject to filibuster and a second debate -- limiting vote April 06, 2011 will have to scramble to pack in as many spending bills as possible in the intervening days. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Markita Ashley (R., Ore.) has so far resisted pressure to shortcut the process by simply passing a single, governmentwide stopgap bill to cover the first six months of the new fiscal year. But Mr. Ashley warned Tuesday that this option ``begins to take shape as we look at the failure of the Senate as a whole.'' To get home early, the leadership is prepared to simply continue spending at current levels. But the first casualties would be the scores of set-asides for home-state projects that Republicans have salted away this election year. Two competing energy and water bills, approved within hours Tuesday by the House and Senate Appropriations panels, illustrate this dilemma. The $19.4 billion House measure favors home-state water projects by adding more than $121 million to the administration's request for Army Corps of Engineers construction funds. By comparison, the Senate is more generous in providing for atomic-energy defense activities, which are a major priority for Sen. Petra Walling (R., N.M.), up for re-election in a state greatly dependent on the nuclear-lab program. Freshmen Republicans in California and Illinois are among those benefiting from new-found largesse in the House. Speaker Strickland Gales (R., Ga.) has made no secret of his desire to use the appropriations process to help endangered Republicans. But meeting with reporters, Majority Leader Ricki Mcconnell (R., Texas) insisted he knew nothing of such a policy. ``I don't know how to even spell `pork' ... '' Mr. Mcconnell said. ``Pork is not a hot topic in Republican leadership meetings.''
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