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Congressional Pay is based off of the median household income of the constituents they represent plus 10%.
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Housing allowance is equal to the median rent prices in the districts they represent and based off of marital/juvenile dependent status. (EXAMPLE: One bedroom appartment for single or married no children; Two bedroom for single/married w/ one child etc) Stipend for hotel room or short term rental in D.C. paid for only Mon-Fri while congress is in an active session. Stipend based off of national average nightly hotel rate plus 25%.
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Any changes to this law must be presented as a question on the ballot of any Federal election.
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Congress should NOT earn almost 90% more than the average American! They’re pay should be equal to the national average. Members of Congress cannot possibly understand/relate to their employers when they are earning more than they’re actual employers. What company in the real world has employees earning more than the boss? In what company can you vote yourself a pay raise? Congress needs to be held accountable to the people, and a great way to start is tying their pay to the national average. Their pay increases when ours does.
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If they live in NY or CA they should earn median wage of the constituents they represent. Thus incentivizing them to work FOR their constituents and improve the wage growth in their districts.
A national average is not realistic and would breed even more corruption. Median household income nationally us $80,610. Massachusetts $106,500, New York $82,905, New Jersey $91,590 California $89,870, Nebraska $89,190, Mississippi $55,060. These are literally just the difference in cost of living per geographical area.
So Anna where are you getting 90% more? You cannot compare Mississippi to New York. Its basic economics.
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That rating system is called elections.
You also didnt read my proposal at all. It appears that you stopped after #1…
If you own stock you are technically the CEO of that companies “boss” as a part owner of the company. Should the CEO only make what you make? In your local city or town you elect a selectboard or council or mayor. You are hiring your own boss that is why they make more than you. It is also one of the few instances where the “workers” hire their boss. It is almost like the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing.
That is not even remotely close to what I said…I did not say owning shares makes you CEO. Reading comprehension is not your strong suit so maybe don’t comment on posts.
Everything you said is partly true. As a share owner you get vote via Proxy. You do have a say. If you organized all the minority share holders over a common issue you could 100% make wholesale changes. Yes this is likely to never happen but that is because people think small like you.
Share ownership is an investment. You don’t invest to lose money. Well maybe you do but most people don’t. And this can apply to any company public or private. Private companies can have investors (aka stake holders/share holders).
If you don’t understand finance, it’s best to remain silent.
Owning a stock is irrelevant & means absolutely noting. I’m going to exit this toxic thread.
**a warning for anyone writing comments here, prepare for pointless arguments to anything you write 
You are exiting because you are wrong. Which is why you deleted all your posts. You are also the one that made it toxic with your original reply. You started a pointless argument, lost and are now running away from it.
Owning stock is not irrelevant. You clearly view the stock market as a sportsbook and just gamble with it. Once you educate yourself on economics and investing we can have a discussion without you immediately slinging insults.
I’m not sure if this is the system that would work for the US, but you should look into Singapore and how they have chosen to root out a long-running issue with corruption in government. They’ve chosen to pay their politicians very well, which has removed the incentive to receive kickbacks or lobbying dollars. They also have zero tolerance for corruption, so the penalties are steep.
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This could be a solution. I would add that congress is currently paid pretty well as they are close to or in some leadership positions above $200k/yr.
Which is definitely way more than the national average, even the household average. But in 2024, in one of the most expensive cities in the country, it’s not actually much. Also, I would argue that we’ve unintentionally filtered out some of the most successful people in the country as potential politicians by having their pay capped around $200k while also demanding that they divest from personal investments and even companies that they founded. That’s good for not having competing interests/avoiding insider trading, but I don’t blame someone for seeing more downside than upside there. Being more libertarian myself, I tend to believe that we would be better off, as a nation, if we praised success in the private sector and looked to those people for guidance, since they have an actual proven track record of innovation, trial and error, adaptation, etc., experience that most lifelong politicians don’t get.
This is kind of long, but I found all of it to be interesting and useful in understanding how Singapore structures their pay and how high the pay scale actually goes. This is an excerpt from the Singapore gov. website:
“ The salary formula features fixed and variable pay components which are linked to individual performance and national outcomes, i.e.
Annual Salary = Fixed (13 months)
- Annual Variable Component (typically 1 month)
- Individual Performance Bonus (3 months for good performance)
- National Bonus (3 months if targets are met)
= 20 months.
The salaries of the appointment holders are performance-linked, to ensure that the leaders are accountable for their roles and responsibilities. The salaries are also linked to the socio-economic outcomes of Singaporeans.
As of 2012, when the Ministerial salaries were last adjusted, the reference monthly salary for a MR4 Minister (mid-point of the range) was S$55,000. This works out to an annual salary of $1,100,000. The fixed salary is $715,000, and the rest is variable.
A Minister may start at the lower end of the MR4 range with a monthly salary of $46,750. This works out to an annual salary of $935,000, of which $607,750 is fixed and the rest is variable.”
Yeah, we’ve seen how that works.
To play devils advocate. You state we need more successful people from private sector with experience in creating businesses and jobs, which I 100% agree with. But, those people I would assume would have enough wealth to be able to become public servants taking a lessor salary. We need people with strong morals, ethics and convictions. We need more politicians that love this country, Veterans used to comprise a large percentage of congress. However even the military has been greatly politicized and polarized these days.
The goverment went to more competitive salaries about a decade or so ago to compete with private sector and the greed and corruption did not go away. An argument could be made that it got worse.
Ours actually are paid well. Starting pay for Congress is about $174k/yr. For comparison the average salary for American workers is around $50k. The corrupt kickbacks and insider trading is on top of that! I like your idea for stiff penalties, unfortunately the tactics most of our corrupt ones use are technically legal. And to change that, they’d have to vote on it, which obviously they won’t. For example, Nancy Pelosi and her husband have a stock trading record that outperforms the S&P500, due to using her inside knowledge of what companies or industries will be positively or negatively affected by legislation before Congress. This prompted the Pelosi act, which of course got shot down. But it would have required all members of Congress to either divest of all their stock holdings or transfer them to a mutual fund while in Congress. The problem is that as long as the change is dependent on the corrupt ones it won’t happen. Hopefully as they gradually get voted out, we can get enough willing to pass it.