Did the Congress deserve their raise in salary?
Asked by
josie (
30934
)
December 31st, 2012
The President just gave himself, federal workers, Joe Biden, and the members of Congress a pay raise.
By executive order.
The Congress created the so called fiscal cliff with an enthusiastic bipartisan vote. It is being regarded as a serious problem if and when goes into effect (tomorrow). It is New Year’s eve, they have had well over a year to work on this and they refused and continue to refuse to fix it. I guess, since they know everybody’s taxes are going to go up tomorrow, they figure they might as well get busy spending this new found money while they have the chance.
My cynicism aside, since the raise is clearly is NOT for a job well done, how is it justified?
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11 Answers
Are you kidding me? I haven’t seen this news yet. What a crock of shit. I didn’t know incompetence paid so well.
“Deserve” has nothing to do with it.
I think the point of paying Congressional representatives, the President and Vice President “high” salaries is to attract the best people to the job.
Maybe we’re not paying enough.
No.
It’s supremely irresponsible to raise any salary while we’re in this economic cesspool.
What I understand is that people who get social security aren’t getting their usual COL increase. And those fatcats get a raise?
I can’t think of one reason to justify it.
Wish I could give myself a raise.
Seems it’s the least that these brilliant people deserve. They clearly need the extra pay to motivate them to do the sterling work they do, and to attract the best people to the job.
It also reminds me of why CEOs and corporate executes give themselves regularly pay rises and bonuses. It’s because they’re so brilliant and competent, and if they didn’t pay themselves so much, they’d leave to do something else and their incredible talents would go amiss.
Would you want your skilled and competent politicians to lose motivation or to find other work? Think of the consequences! They’d probably work as consultants or lobbyists! You get what you pay for, and if you want the best, you have to pay for the best. It’s their market value, and it’s what they deserve.
It looks like the pay raise for a Congress critter went from $174,000.00 ot $174,900.00. Not much in the overall scheme of things (Lobbyists spend more than this on them for dinner) but more than I have gotten. Don’t they know that the Federal Government has a spending problem?
No, they did not deserve it and if they had a modicum of moral character they would turn it down.
For some reason this post reminds me of the year that my employer laid off a significant number of workers as a belt-tightening measure and then issued new BMWs to all the executives. Justified or not, deserved or not, it was in very poor taste.
Actually Obama did not give himself a raise, but he did give raises to VP Biden & to Congress and he did this by unfreezing the federal wage restrictions. I do not think that Congress has earned any sort of raise, but you know that Congress will always take what they are given.
@Linda_Owl Ok, that sounds more like Obama, but I must admit I am surprised to hear Biden took it, if he did.
Probably, actually. But it was extraordinarily bad timing and even worse politics.
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