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Yet, while Congress has voted itself eight pay increases in the last nine years, the Senate has also voted down proposals to raise the minimum wage eight times in those same nine years.[iii] Indeed, last October Senate Republicans voted down Senator Kennedy’s amendment to increase the minimum wage on the very same bill where they approved their own pay increase.[iv]
If raising Congressional salaries is, in the words of Speaker Hastert, “the decent thing to do” to allow lawmakers to “provide for their families,”[v] raising the minimum wage after nine long years of inaction must also be the decent thing to do for minimum wage families who are working hard but still living in poverty.
Rep. Jim Matheson is the only member of Utah’s Congressional Delegation to fight against the Congressional pay raises. That bears repeating: Rep. Jim Matheson is the only member of Utah’s Congressional Delegation to fight against the Congressional pay raises.
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[i] Dwyer, Paul, “Salaries of Members of Congress: A List of Payable Rates and Effective Dates, 1789-2006,” Congressional Research Service, April 18, 2006.
[ii] Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2007, H.R. 5576, 109th Cong. (June 14, 2006).
[iii] See S.1301 (September 28, 1998); S. Con. Res. 20 (March 25, 1999); S. 96 (April 28, 1999); S. 1429 (July 30, 1999); S. 625 (November 9, 1999); S. 256 (March 7, 2005); H.R. 3058 (October 19, 2005); S. 2766 (June 21, 2006).
[iv] See H.R. 3058 (October 19, 2005).
[v] Congress Daily, June 8, 2001.
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Today’s minimum wage info brought to you by the Democratic Staff of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions – United States Senate
