Democrats break deal during campaign, Republicans respond by blocking congressional pay raises.
By paulseale Posted in Archived — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Promoted, with very slight editing, from blogs. You'd think that the new Speaker of the House wouldn't need to be told about the Law of Unintended Consequences, no? - Moe Lane
Remember all those campaign commercials about eeeeviiiiil Republicans voting themselves pay raises in the middle of the night and so forth and how Democrats were going to change all that? Well, it looks like Democrats were caught red-handed breaking another campaign principle regarding Congressional pay raises. This time, the Republicans took advantage of a parliamentary manuever to foil the plan.
Lawmakers' pay will be frozen at $165,200 for this year in a dispute fueled by the Democrats' use of the issue in last year's campaign, violating a yearslong understanding that the competing parties would not attack each other over pay raises...
That arrangement fell apart when Democrats announced last summer they would opt out of the pay raise until Congress acted to raise the minimum wage. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran ads attacking Republicans for taking pay raises while blocking numerous attempts to raise the minimum wage.
A top House GOP leader said Democrats broke the agreement last year after the pay raise-related vote had already taken place. In a 263-152 vote in June, the House blocked a bid by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to force an up-or-down vote on the pay raise.
In this particular case, House Republicans decided to use some sort of procedure to block the vote, so as a result, no pay raise for Congress!
Equally important in this story is how Democrats apparently violated an agreement with Republicans over these pay raises.
"The agreement always was that the parties would not use the COLA issue in the campaign," said House GOP Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri. "It was as formal as anything not signed is..."
"The DCCC ran their own ads attacking (GOP) members on this," Blunt said. "Because of that their members are going to suffer in terms of not being able to have a COLA."
Well good for the GOP House Leadership. Now it's time to start forcing the Democrats' hands and start making them pay for ramming legislation through without debate, committee hearings or the ability for Republicans to offer amendments.
There was a big brouhaha in the Senate a while ago because Kerry was taking money in even for the days he wasn't there, and there are rules to block that. Just goes to show that rules only apply to the Republicans and the common folk.
Fides non in bonus intentions , tamen in bonus factum
For more common sense conservatism, visit the Show Me Conservatism blog.
Show up for 30% of the session & vote on 30%, you get 70% pay.
A good day is when CongressMorons™ stay home.
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Senior Writer
Anyone want to decipher this?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/27/congress.wage/index.html
Reid claims, "No pay raises until min wage is upped!", which could be cover. Reid thinks: "Well, we're not going to get a pay raise, so I'll make it look like WE are blocking it by saying I intend to do 'anything I can' to block it." (1/28)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR200701...
WaPo claims Democrats were trying to revive the pay raise, although it's clear they wanted to "delay" it until AFTER the minimum wage issue was resolved. (1/29)
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=bondsNews&story...
Republicans "clear roadblocks", but Reuters reports it is because Democrats agreed to small business tax cuts. (1/30)
So... what REALLY happened?
"it looks like Democrats were caught red-handed breaking another campaign principle regarding Congressional pay raises. This time, the Republicans took advantage of a parliamentary manuever to foil the plan."
It doesn't appear that Paul Seal has read the article he is citing. Democrats promised not to raise Congressional pay until the minimum wage was raised. They were attempting to delay a pay hike to allow more time for the minimum wage hike to become law. The Republicans stopped them from doing that. I fail to see what campaign principle was violated. Typical wingnut misrepresentation.
...if he had left off the last three words nothing would have happened to him. Then again, being the sort of person that would use those last three words in a non-ironic fashion pretty much means that he's the sort of person who wouldn't have the necessary self-control anyway.
Pity.
Moe
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
They all should take a pay cut based on their value added to the nation.