TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/021389/02138900.037

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 64 lines

NATION, Page 38

The Games Congress Plays

Lawmakers scheme to raise their pay while pretending otherwise


    "That's what leaders are for, to take the heat," drawled House
Speaker Jim Wright, sporting his trademark country-boy grin. It has
seldom been hotter than it has been since plans for a 51% pay hike
for top Government officials, including members of Congress,
touched off a political fire storm.

    Disk jockeys across the country broadcast Wright's telephone
number, provoking a barrage of angry calls from outraged citizens.
Republican Senator Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire juxtaposed a
bandit's mask with a portrait of Wright, solemnly intoning that "a
pay raise without a vote is stealing." Later Humphrey came as close
to blows as Senators ever do with fellow Republican Ted Stevens of
Alaska, who favors the pay hike, during a heated exchange at a
committee hearing on the subject. Some of Wright's House
colleagues, the vast majority of whom want the raise, have started
comparing him, unfavorably, with Sam Rayburn, another Texan who
once occupied the Speaker's chair.

    Unless rejected by both houses of Congress, the raise,
recommended by a salary-review commission composed of wealthy
Washington insiders, will automatically go into effect this week.
But last week Wright, who had steadfastly refused to schedule a
vote on the pay increase for Congress, judges and other
high-ranking Government officials, tried to turn the thermostat
down a notch. He conducted his own confidential poll of House
members -- with results startlingly different from those obtained
by news organizations. Nearly 60% of the lawmakers told Wright they
wanted the raise to go through without a vote. Polls in which
members were named and positions stated showed upwards of 60%
wanting to vote on, and thus kill, the measure.

    Just hours before the Senate righteously denounced and rejected
the pay raise (knowing full well that the House would ride to the
rescue), a wilted Wright reversed field, declaring that the House
would vote after all -- to reduce the pay hike, once it goes into
effect, to 30%. That would still leave the lawmakers with a hefty
increase, from $89,500 to $116,350, rather than to $135,000. (Since
Congress received its last raise, a 16% increase in 1987, inflation
has remained at an annual rate of just 4.4%.) Or as Wright and
members seeking re-election next year hope voters see it, the House
vote will reduce congressional pay, since the new salaries will be
in effect when the vote is taken on Thursday.

    In an attempt to mollify the 98% of the populace that earns
less than members of Congress do now, the House will also vote to
ban honorariums -- fees for speaking, or just showing up, at
special-interest-group functions. Wright noted that since, under
current rules, members are allowed to keep up to $26,000 a year in
honorariums, "they'll come out about the same in income" with the
30% raise. But few House members earn the maximum in honorariums,
so most will be better off. The House bill will also cut back
salary increases for Executive-department officials and judges,
even though the Constitution prohibits reducing judges' pay. "We'll
let them fight it out," presumably through a court challenge, says
the Speaker.

    Wright's disingenuous scheme is by no means certain of approval
by the Senate, where foes have abandoned hope of preventing the pay
hike and will instead try to rescind it fully some weeks or months
from now. The Senators' ardor, however, may subside once those
fatter paychecks begin landing on their desks.