Senate Votes to Keep Congress’ Automatic Pay Raise
The Senate has voted to keep Congress’ annual automatic pay raise but is moving to skip the increase scheduled for next January, when millions of Americans are still expected to be out of work because of the recession.
For the past two decades, lawmakers have received automatic cost-of-living increases unless they vote specifically to reject them. An amendment offered Tuesday to a huge spending bill by Republican Sen. David Vitter would have forced members of Congress to cast votes when they want to increase their pay.
Their most recent automatic raise of $4,700 came in January, raising the salaries of rank and file lawmakers to $174,000.