2d ago

Members of Congress still get paid during a government shutdown

www.nbcnews.com Members of Congress still get paid during a government shutdown

Some House and Senate lawmakers are requesting that their paychecks be withheld as millions of federal workers prepare to go without pay.

Millions of federal workers won't get paid during a government shutdown. But the people who could prevent or end a shutdown — members of Congress — will still receive a paycheck.
That’s because their pay is protected under Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, which states: “The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”
The Constitution “says members will be paid,” Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, explained to reporters Tuesday.

politics @lemmy.world

Members of Congress still get paid during a government shutdown

www.nbcnews.com /politics/congress/members-congress-still-get-paid-government-shutdown-rcna234676

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69 comments

It should be noted that not getting paid during a government shutdown would disproportionately negatively affect Democrats in the House, many of whom rely on that income. More House Republicans are independently wealthy.
- And, in theory, they are actively working to restart the government.
  Like most things with the US (and, honestly, most countries) government, it is all based upon people acting "honorably" and in good faith.
- And besides party lines, you really don't want policies that only really punish politicians who haven't grifted.
- It really varies by state and department.
  Plenty of red states have stacked their bureaucracies with loyal Republican apparatchiks. They'll be hit as hard as anyone else.
  More House Republicans are independently wealthy.
  Vanishingly few Congresscritters are anything resembling poor. You need a certain excess of free time and wealth just to attempt to run. And you need a large body of wealthy friends to finance your campaign.
  The idea that Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin can't weather this storm because they're Democrats is absurd.
  
  You'll notice I said "many" and not "all."
- many of whom rely on that income
  Keep in mind, it's a 6-figure salary and they'd rather live a higher quality of life than save or invest that money for later.
  It's not about needs, it's about wants. These people are all richer than us.
  
  for those curious it's $174,000 per annum for members of the House and Senate. according to rentcafe and numbeo the average price for an apartment just under 800 sq ft a month is about $2500. Other cost of living expenses are on par with other major cities.
  They're fine. This doesn't include other benefits and kick backs and what have you which I imagine they all get plenty of.

This is how it's always worked.
If members of congress were not paid, the richer members could use a shutdown to coerce the poorer members, knowing that they have enough saving to survive the payment stop longer than poorer members. In a government where shutdowns are possible, continuing to pay representatives is necessary.
In a proper country, a shutdown would result in an immediate recall and disbarment of every elected official. But we don't live in a proper country.
Continuing to pay those responsible for the shutdown is a bad thing. Punishing every other government worker for someone else's ineptitude is bad. But on balance not paying congress would probably be just a bit worse.
- In a proper country there are no government shutdowns.
  
  A government shutting down is a failed state. That never should happen, and if it happens, safeguards should be implemented ASAP so it can’t happen again.
  
  You're right. The US already has the solution under the NLRA. If a union contract cannot be negotiated by the deadline, the old one remains in effect.
  A proper government could do that, but I prefer kicking everyone out and starting anew.
- This is 100% correct. In most civilised countries, if a yearly budget cannot be approved, the whole cabinet gets disbanded.
  Usually this leads to a new president (usually, a PM) getting appointed, but ultimately would lead to new elections.
- Yeah. If they were not getting paid or it was disbared (non English speaker. It's the first time I've seen that word so it might be wrong), then they would approve any budget, which could be arguably worse
- If members of congress were not paid, the richer members could use a shutdown to coerce the poorer members,
  Pretty sure all congresspeople get paid at least 6 figures per year.
  They can survive their entire term off of just 1 year's salary.
  But! They won't be able to waste money like idiots/most people on social media.
  Edit: Without fail, the useful idiots come out to bat.
  
  They get paid 174k a year.
  They usually end up needing 2 homes, and dozens of flights between their home district an DC.
  New congresspeople are typically very poor before they start getting bribes
  
  That's not the correct approach, brother. Especially newer congressmen will be dependent on this income to live, and this would make them even more likely to be held hostage by the guys with fat pockets.
  The problem here is that the consequences are exclusively shouldered by the people, when in fact it should be the administration who gets punished: if they're unable to compromise on a budget, then they need to get kicked out so that the country doesn't stop.
  If there's no way of passing the budget with a new administration, then call for new elections and see how the chips fall.

Some lawmakers said they can’t afford missing a pay period.
“I’m not wealthy, and I have three kids. I would basically be missing, you know, mortgage payments, rent payments, child support,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told NBC News. “So it’s not feasible, not gonna happen.”
oh so just like the thousand of workers that are being affected right now....
- Keep in mind, she's saying that while living at a higher quality of life than most of you.
  It's not an on/off switch, it's a gradient where people try to live as lavishly as possible for as little effort as possible.
  
  he's a he apparently, twice divorced. First married to the mayor phoenix and now to a lobbyist for the national association of realtors. Also went to harvard. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Gallego
  Senator Ruben Gallego has filed a new annual financial disclosure, which was parsed by Quiver's congressional net worth tracking software.
  Some of the disclosed holdings which were parsed include:
  Up to $50,000 in Aspiration Up to $50,000 in Aspiration Fund Adviser LLC Up to $50,000 in NameCoach Inc. Up to $15,000 in Aggressive Track: 80% Equity Portfolio Up to $15,000 in JFFCX - Jpmorgan Smartretirement 2055 Fd C
  We have data on up to $100.0K of trades from Senator Ruben Gallego, which we parsed from STOCK Act filings
  https://www.quiverquant.com/news/Senator+Ruben+Gallego+has+filed+a+new+financial+disclosure+-+here%E2%80%99s+what+we+see
- Millions. Not thousands. Millions of civil servants who work tirelessly and often thanklessly to make everyday life better for us all.
- Right, but you don't want him to make a bad deal just to put food on his own table.
  It's kind of a bad situation either way, but I'd prefer they keep getting paid and don't have to take bribes or a shit deal for me for his own personal gain.

Hot take: Congress should be paid during a shutdown
The wealthy members of congress don't care about their salary. They already have large amounts of money made even bigger by insider trading, bribery, and the promise of a lucrative "consulting" role when they leave congress
The honest, working class members of congress rely on their salary. Taking away their salary would give a powerful tool for the wealthy congress members to force the working class members to vote with the wealthy members. It would also incentivize more corruption. Insider trading looks a whole lot more tempting when your income suddenly disappeared and you have $3,000 in rent due tomorrow
- Cool, now use this kind of logic to protect the pay of federal employees during shutdowns.
  
  Yup. All salaries should be paid but no buying anything and all buildings shutdown with utilities off. All current equippment should be considered to have a lean on them to cover us obligations and can't be used.
  
  Why the fuck do our budgets even expire?
  This just gives the people who want to destroy everything all the cards. If they can't agree on a new one, let the old one continue. It shouldn't be as simple as not doing anything to break literally everything.

Does ICE get paid?
If not I'm all in.
- Does ICE get paid?
  Of course they do, that's obviously more important than any other public service.
- No one gets paid except Congress until the shutdown ends. Then everyone else gets back pay.
  
  Not if the resistance wins.
  
  ICE got exempted a few days before the shutdown. They forgot to exempt the military, though. Right after insulting all of them to their faces.

They get a ton of extra perks straight from the government that you don't even want to know about because it should fill you with rage. They're leeches.
- Hey, come on, there’s no need to insult leeches.
- Some of the best health care in the world.
  I've seen speculation that the health care benefits are a big reason why 90 year old Congress critters refuse to retire.

Yeah we knew this from the last 5 times this happened
- It was more subtle the last times. Normie's are catching on.

Funny how the government seemed to work fine with no shutdown during Biden's presidential tenure.
- Yeah, so weird how none of this crazy shit was happening before January.
- There was an ugly shutdown fight in March of 2024. And Biden had ample share of bureaucratic bungles, largely due to his continued reliance on private contractors at firms like SpaceX and Palantir and Microsoft and Boeing.
  That these tech giants ended up stabbing him in the back to move Trump into his seat only further illustrates how badly Biden mangled his single term in office.

They should finally just amend that paper to say "Fuck the People" instead of "We the People". The "People" no longer have any say and the ballot box is like Schrödinger's Cat.
- The “People” no longer have any say
  When did they?
  Certainly not when the document was signed.
  
  Well they wouldn't write "We, the white christian male landowning people" since they didn't consider the people outside this group as people anyway.

They should be forced to work just like the military is forced to.
Lock them all in the building, no tweeting, if they are hungry, they can eat prison food.
They stay there until conflict is resolved. Or they can resign their position and forever give up the right to be involed in politics... 🤷‍♂️

If government shutdowns shut down everything (no usps mail delivery, no social security, no ice, no border crossings, no Medicare authorization, no air travel, etc) then they would never exist because it would become significant degradation in everyones quality of life.
- So give the Republicans the government they actually want?
  
  They didn't say that.
  Edit: Sorry, thought you were implying that dems should give in to avoid this scenario. Still waking up lol
- They wouldn't dare because then people would actually do something about it.

Surprised look

Such a pathetically stupid fucking country.
If our elected officials fail to do their jobs and keep the government open, it should auto-initiate special elections to vote them out within 6 weeks.
- Would be nice, but unfortunately we can't expect much more when this practice was set up during the Nixon administration, and executed first by Reagan.
  Imagine, we made it near 200 years without such a thing as government shutdowns. Then poof, now we have only passed a budget on time 4 times in like 50 years. That would mean that Congress gets their job done about 8-10% of the time.

I think I'm ok with this. Before you lynch me, let me explain.
In the halls of Congress there are super rich, long-term, and likely lobby-fed members, and then there are those average people who ran on people-focused platforms and got elected locally. The first group are not going to be hurt by stopping a paycheck that is probably a rounding error in their actual net worth. And those individuals could use a shutdown and the knowledge that the opposition can't survive for too long without a paycheck to force capitulation. So, keep paying the opposition during a shutdown to remove some of the leverage the powerful elite have over those representing the people.
A lot of generalizations in there but that's where my head goes. Still shitty for the country and certainly for those who end up furlowed or worse, for sure. But at least the lawmakers holding out for reform aren't having their own destitution held over their heads.

They should not have retirement or good benefits. If we ever get out of this elected officials should be held to a higher standard and given the bare minimum of what they give the citizens

Among many overhauls that I would like to see, I would like political critters to have limited income, with it based on popular votes held every half-year of their term. Wiping away current standards of income, it would be four brackets for politicians: $40k, $60k, $80k, and $100k annually, initially starting their term at the lowest level. People vote for one of these four, and that is the politician's pay until the next pay vote.
This would allow voters to tangibly voice their (dis)approval of a politico throughout their term, which incentivizes the critter to actually pay attention to their constitute's interests. If a politician seems strangely wealthy despite not having high approval pay, that would make it easier to spot corruption as well.
- Your heart is in the right place, but the last thing we want to do is make them more incentivized to accept bribes.
  
  Those who are inclined to accept bribery, are not people we want to be leaders. They should be leaders because they find it interesting or want to help their communities, not to become rich.
  What I proposed is part of an economic UBI concept that I put together, where incomes from jobs are fixed and rank based, with the rank based on the effort, risk, and knowledge that a job entails. IMO, that would make it harder for employers to commit wage theft, because everyone knows how much money their job should bring in, nation-wide. That makes it easier to diagnose corruption, because outliers have less camouflage of 'circumstances' to hide behind. All leadership roles in companies and politics have employees and voters voting for the employment and pay rank of their respective critters.
  It is through complicated rules and exploits that the wealthy retain their wealth by being selfish jerks. If the Constitution is replaced by a newer model, economics deserves a section of its own.