Congress votes to accept $4,900 pay increase

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Friday night to give members of Congress a $4,900 pay raise in January as members of both parties banded together to thwart an attempt to block it.

With a 65-33 roll call, senators used a procedural vote to block an effort by Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., to keep the pay raise from taking place. Under a 1989 law, lawmakers get automatic salary increases every January unless Congress votes to block it.

Underlining the reluctance of most lawmakers to defend a salary boost, no senator spoke against Feingold and Campbell. The debate lasted less than five minutes.

Fourteen of the 30 senators running for re-election next year voted against the pay raise. Two who will retire in January, Sens. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., voted for the increase, while a third retiree — Jesse Helms, R-N.C. — did not vote.

Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both D-Wash., supported the pay raise.

The House has already passed legislation opening the door for the pay increase.

The latest boost is for 3.4 percent and will raise members’ annual salaries to $150,000.

Feingold questioned the timing of a congressional pay boost when "our economy is in a recession and hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off." He also noted that the string of four straight budget surpluses is now expected to end.

Campbell’s words were more biting.

"Every member has to live with his own conscience and decisions," he said. "But there certainly are members who fall into that category of vote no and take the dough."

The January increase will be the third congressional pay raise in the last four years. Before this period, lawmakers increased their salaries less frequently, but the political risk faded as the economy boomed and federal surpluses soared in the late 1990s.

By tradition, the annual spending bill for the Treasury Department is the battleground for congressional pay raises.

The final version of that bill, which lacked language blocking the pay raise, overwhelmingly passed the House and Senate this fall and was signed into law by President Bush on Nov. 12.