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While congress is complaining to financial companies that they are receiving pay and bonuses that are not based on performance, they gave themselves their annual pay raise. The raise comes out to 4700 bucks. Now with a performance rating of less then 23% from their employers, the American people, maybe they should refuse or cut their increase based on what the folks they work for think of them. The writer of the next article thinks the former.
Members of Congress will return to Washington after Christmas with a lavish $4,700 stocking stuffer in their paychecks. It’s the automatic salary increase that kicks off at the start of 2009. Surely those of us who are paying for it would agree-the raises are hardly performance-based! When Congress adjourned this month, it did so with a drab 20% approval rating. After helping spend America into a recession that’s cost millions of Americans their jobs, Congress wants more compensation for their own! Adding to the pain, Democratic leaders plan to convene in January with a “stimulus” plan that could strip another trillion dollars in debt from already struggling families over the next two years. The proposal is lined with new spending projects for roads, infrastructure, “green” building projects, school beautification, and, potentially, government-controlled health care. For a snapshot of just how “essential” the line-items are, the National Taxpayers Union combed through the wish lists and found this gem. In Alexandria, Virginia, the mayor (one of many vying for “emergency funds”) requested $2.4 million to make the trolley motors hybrid and replace the contractors who drive them with unionized city employees. Of course, Congress greased the wheels for this sort of waste with its $152 billion package in February and $700 billion bailout seven months later. Contact your leaders and tell them to stop the spending madness. If Congress doesn’t know where to start, I do. Refuse the $2,514,500 in Capitol Hill pay raises
In contrast Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin vs. Congress on pay raises
Sarah Palin said no to a pay raise.
Gov. Sarah Palin didn’t ask for a pay raise and won’t accept one during her current term, a spokesman said Wednesday.
[…] But if the commission pushes ahead with a pay raise, Palin won’t accept the money, said spokesman Bill McAllister.
“Her view is, it’s just not appropriate to accept a pay raise in the middle of the term.”
CNN’s Lou Dobbs wonders why Americans who work for minimum wage don’t get an annual increase like congress, Good Point,
Dobbs: Congress stiffs working Americans
the national minimum wage of $5.15 is not enough for a family to live above the poverty line. The annual salary for workers earning the national minimum wage still leaves a family of three about $6,000 short of the poverty threshold.
Raising the minimum wage to $7.50 would positively affect the lives of more than 8 million workers, including an estimated 760,000 single mothers and 1.8 million parents with children under 18. But even this 46 percent increase would get them only to the poverty line. Don’t you think these families just might need that cost-of-living increase a bit more than our elected officials who are paid nearly $170,000 a year?
With no Congressional action on raising the minimum wage since 1997, inflation has eroded wages. The minimum wage in the 21st century is $2 lower in real dollars than it was four decades ago and now stands at its lowest level since 1955
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