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Surely this isn’t the same lawmakers that make 3x more money than the average worker while working 50% fewer days than the rest of the country….
And that doesn’t even take into account their “working days” where they do fucking nothing of value because they have interns and staff that actually do the work for them.
To be fair, congressional salaries are actually way too low. You can barely even afford to live in DC on the salary of a congressman ($174k). I make almost that much sitting in my boxer shorts fixing AWS issues. Most congressmen have to maintain two residences and if their home state is more than poverty levels of expensive then they're kinda fucked.
It's not hard to see how not paying our elected officials a wage high enough to live near their job could be an issue. Makes it way too easy to bribe them.
Or how about let stop thinking of federal politicking as a lifelong career that requires high pay. And besides the people getting bribed are the ones who have been getting bribed for years and are already independently wealthy because lobbyists know they are bribeable so raising congressional pay is no better than cutting a hig check to the wealthy again
It's a complicated job that requires political experience, and being an effective congressman is essentially a full time job. If we don't pay them well, then you'll only have rich people in office because they'll be the only ones able to afford being a congressman/senator/etc. As it stand currently, a lot of reps literally have to sleep in their offices because they can't afford to live in DC.
I'm not a huge Matt Y. fan but this article summmarizes the situation pretty well: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/3/18311810/congressional-pay-salary-decline-andrew-hall