Question: When did Congress go under the radar and enact a law that gives them automatic pay raises each year?

Answer: Your answer comes from a report issued on Sept. 21 of this year by the Congressional Research Service.  The web page is

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/97-1011.pdf

Here’s a summary of that report:

Congress is required by Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution to determine its own pay. Prior to 1969, Congress did so by enacting stand-alone legislation. From 1789 through 1968, Congress raised its pay 22 times using this procedure. Congressional salaries initially were $1,500 in December, 1815. By 1968, they had risen to 30,000. Stand-alone legislation may still be used to raise Member pay, as it was most recently in 1982, 1983, 1989, and 1991, but two other methods— including an automatic annual adjustment procedure and a commission process — are now also available.

The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 changed the method by which the annual adjustment is determined for Members and other senior officials, based on a formula using changes in private sector wages and salaries as measured by the Employment Cost Index.  Under this revised method, annual adjustments were accepted 11 times (those scheduled for January 1991, 1992, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006) and denied six times (those scheduled for January 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2007).

Under the annual adjustment procedure, Members are scheduled to receive a 2.7% increase in January 2008, unless modified by Congress, or limited by the rate of increase in the base pay of General Schedule(GS) federal employees. Members last received a pay increase (1.9%) in January 2006, increasing their salary to the current rate of $165,200.

Linda Niemi

Filed under: Uncategorized