Palin vs. Congress on pay raises

Sarah Palin said no to a pay raise.

Gov. Sarah Palin didn’t ask for a pay raise and won’t accept one during her current term, a spokesman said Wednesday.

[…] But if the commission pushes ahead with a pay raise, Palin won’t accept the money, said spokesman Bill McAllister.

“Her view is, it’s just not appropriate to accept a pay raise in the middle of the term.”

Congress said yes.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

Not only that, Congress has gamed the system so that they get pay raises automatically unless they vote to change the law.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.

And we don’t need to go into all the perks that our Congressmen get—even leaving out what happens to them after they leave office.

Time to dig up some old Mark Twain commentary on Congress.