So apparently Congress gave themselves a raise this year. According to the article, the folks in Congress will now receive salaries of $169,300, a boost of $4,100 over the pay they have lived with since January 2006. (italics mine).
Like $165K is tough? Like these poor, poor Congresspeople have been suffering under the burden of low pay for 9 months of work in a 12 month period. How about NOT taking that pay raise, and instead take the time to address the Federal Minimum Wage again and get it over $6/hour NOW rather than in 2009? How about NOT taking that pay raise and taking the time to figure out a way to get rid of the Federal deficit or balance the national budget?
It’s stories like these that make me like Presidential hopeful Ron Paul. From his website: (italics mine)
He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
I know I’m totally not political, but COLA raises for already rich men who only work nine months a year get me hot under the collar.
You’re a fiscal conservative like me.
It’s those nasty ol’ Democrats. Couldn’t wait to get in power to stick it to the taxpayers!
D, if you really are a fiscal conservative, run from the Democrats, ’cause they have big plans for your money.
It’s Congress. Doesn’t matter who’s in control. If they have $10.00, they’ll spend $15. Does the word “venal” come to mind?
Uncle Bill is correct. They are all the same. I don’t mind paying taxes if it goes to where it should. If we have another Republican in the White House my money will surely be wasted on some unnecessary war. Either on started by Bush or another one they will start. I’d rather let the Democrats have my money. And the majority of the country feels that way, I think.
HAVE your money? They will TAKE what you have already paid in taxes and TAKE even more, even trying to make you feel good about it! If you think you are struggling to make ends meet now, wait ’til they raise your taxes. I reserve the right to say I told you so. 🙂 But, I am earnestly praying for victory for Republican (except Ron Paul) over any Democrat.
If I wanted to be a snitty twitty, I would remind everyone that the last time we had a balanced budget, a surplus yet, was when a Democrat was in the White House.
But I don’t want to be one, so I won’t remind you.
Me again.
Not many of you will remember H.R. Gross. He was a Republican congressman from Iowa. As a freshman he voted against the Marshall Plan; a quarter-century later he opposed the bombing of Cambodia because it cost too much. In between he railed against the space program, foreign aid, congressional junkets, and every post office and bridge he could find. Gross voted against the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations so often that Minority Leader Gerald Ford remarked, “There are three parties in the House: Democrats, Republicans, and H. R. Gross.”
He was supposed to have said, “Where there’s free cheese, there’s bound to be a mousetrap.”
Would that we would see his like again.
I’m not sure what Uncle Bill is getting at with H.R. Gross, but I would vote for Ron Paul is he was my only choice as a Republican. (Don’t worry, he won’t be.)
Marmie, our U.S. budget (under Bush and becasuse of him) has never been so out of control. You are worried about the Democrats and their spending? How could any Democrat possibly out spend what Bush has during his reign? The Democrats are going to have to tax heavily to get back the money Bush has spent that he never had in the first place. Don’t go there. Clinton left him with a surplus and now look at us. Pathetic. Let’s pray that a Democrat gets in office and brings some responsibility (budgetary and in all other ways) back to the exectuive office. We’ve had a cowboy in the White House for too long, and the American public is finally realizing that.
H.R. Gross didn’t want to spend money for anything.