Chambers Split Over COLAs
Roll Call Staff
In a near-unanimous vote, Senators agreed Tuesday to forgo their annual pay hike for the coming year, setting up a potential confrontation with House lawmakers who sidelined a similar measure earlier this year.
The Senate-passed measure — authored by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) as an amendment to the fiscal 2006 Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, Judiciary and District of Columbia spending bill — passed 92-6 and drew broad support as a sign that Senators were ready to offset spending for relief efforts in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as for the on-going conflict in Iraq.
“It is true that the $2 million that this saves is hardly noticeable. ... It is symbolic, and I recognize that, but sometimes symbolism is important,” Kyl said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. “At least we have the ability to say, ‘Well, we all have to make a little sacrifice.’ The Members of Congress are also willing to make a sacrifice.”
Many Senators echoed Kyl’s arguments, such as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a co-sponsor of the amendment who said, “There are big concerns about federal spending. This is a modest but important step.”
But some suggested that outside factors also played a role in the Senate’s actions.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that a series of government blunders, such as the mismanaged handling of Katrina and Rita and the subsequent “spiraling gas prices,” made the COLA a candidate for spending reductions.
The Nevada lawmaker also asserted that the “ongoing cronyism and corruption” in Washington, D.C. — a central theme Democrats are using to bludgeon Republicans at the moment — made it important for Congress to not take a pay raise this year.
“That debate can come for another year,” Reid said of the COLA. “This is not the year.”
Under a federal law enacted in 1989, Members of Congress automatically receive an annual pay increase unless legislation is passed to block the COLA from being implemented. The increase is based on the most recent full-year Employment Cost Index, minus .5 percent.
If no pay freeze were to be enacted, Members would receive an additional $3,100 beginning next January, bringing pay for rank-and-file lawmakers to $165,200 from the current $162,100. Members of the elected leadership are paid slightly more.
Congressional lawmakers blocked themselves from receiving a pay raise from 1993 until 1997 but since then have accepted the annual raises.
While opponents to the COLA, including Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), annually seek to circumvent the pay increase, either through stand-alone bills or an amendment to the Transportation spending bill, the Senate last voted on the matter in 2003, when it tabled the amendment.
Feingold, who lambasted the annual increases as “stealth pay raises” Tuesday on the Senate floor, later credited the combination of the recent natural disasters, along with the ongoing conflict in Iraq, for the Senate’s landslide vote.
“It’s pretty outrageous for Members of Congress to think of giving themselves a raise,” Feingold said. He asserted that any Member who would vote against a freeze would need to be “very confident feeling about their political position.”
National Taxpayers Union spokesman Pete Sepp sounded a similar note.
“We need to remember that some of the worst public fallout over the middle-of-the-night pay grabs in the early- and middle-1990s was occurring against a backdrop of other ethical accusations,” Sepp said. “The two issues can feed off each other and create some major political headaches.
“House Members and Senate Members could prevent a simmering situation from boiling over,” he added.
Unlike the Senate legislation, however, the House version of the Transportation spending bill, which was approved earlier this year, does not include a provision on Member pay, setting up a likely confrontation during conference committee on the bill.
“It’s an issue that will have to be resolved by the conferees,” said House Appropriations spokesman John Scofield, noting the issue is only one of many in the legislation.
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