WASHINGTON \u2014 A bipartisan push to increase lawmakers\u2019 salaries after a decade-long pay freeze is running into predictable obstacles and could be close to unraveling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue has caused a ruckus inside the ranks of House Democrats, where freshmen in politically competitive districts are recoiling at the idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tumult prompted Democratic leaders Monday night to delay action on annual legislation to fund congressional operations, a measure that Republicans used over the past eight years to block a yearly cost-of-living pay increase that lawmakers are supposed to get automatically. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s something that everybody would have to come together on in terms of bipartisanship,\u201d House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a brief interview. \u201cUntil we have that there\u2019s no reason to even discuss it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement, the office of Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, said the legislative appropriations measure was on hold \u201cwhile we continue to discuss the issue of the cost-of-living adjustment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The annual COLA has been frozen since the beginning of former President Barack Obama\u2019s tenure, and most lawmakers have never received one, including the staunchly conservative Republicans elected since the first tea party wave in 2010. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rank and file lawmakers make $174,000 per year, a salary that doesn\u2019t go nearly as far as it used to, especially with rapidly rising housing costs in the nation\u2019s capital. Many lawmakers sleep in their offices during weeks in Washington rather than maintain two homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a terrible issue for lawmakers, especially Democrats representing tough districts. And the issue has the potential to come up in GOP primary campaigns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Handling the pay issue has always been an insider\u2019s game but fewer and fewer lawmakers are familiar with it. Most of the powerful old timers who helped smooth the controversy in the past and who protected the annual COLA over several years in the early 2000s are long gone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pay raise issue dates to a 1989 bipartisan pay reform package in which lawmakers traded a big salary increase and annual inflation adjustments for giving up paid speeches that were abused by top lawmakers. The reforms came unraveled in a mostly forgotten mid-\u201990s battle on an otherwise low-profile spending bill managed by Hoyer, D-Md., who is the chief driving force behind trying to revive the COLA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reviving the annual pay raise has to be bipartisan, and Hoyer has allies in top Republicans like Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and GOP Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana. But the GOP leaders aren\u2019t able to deliver the votes to handle the issue as it has been in the past \u2014 in which both sides deliver support on an arcane procedural tally in relation to a spending bill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hoyer is also encountering skepticism in other Democratic offices, especially after the GOP\u2019s campaign arm issued a press release attacking Democrats over the pay issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAfter campaigning on a slogan of \u2018for the people,\u2019 the socialist Democrats have accomplished a whole lot of nothing 6 months into their majority. And as a reward for their incompetence, they want middle-class taxpayers to give them a $4,500 pay raise! Apparently making $174,000 a year, which is more than three times the average American\u2019s salary, just isn\u2019t enough for these socialist elitists,\u201d read the emailed release from the National Republican Congressional Committee, an organization that answers to top GOP leader McCarthy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NRCC has since retracted the statement but it eroded trust between the two sides, which are fighting over impeachment and a variety of other issues in a toxic Washington environment. It was a comparable attack by Democrats in the mid-2000s that upset the detente over the issue. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The issue has caused a ruckus inside the ranks of House Democrats, where freshmen in politically competitive districts are recoiling at the idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":53464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":38,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[104,38,106,31,15,68,33,9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3788],"class_list":["post-17158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acquisition-update","category-congress","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-management","category-leadership","category-newsletters","category-federal-oversight"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"M7SUNFPXCVCLVEJX5HGH22ULZE","arc_canonical_url":"\/federal-oversight\/congress\/2019\/06\/11\/democrats-reevaluating-plans-to-hike-lawmakers-pay\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n