WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today said today that the Senate rejected an amendment he cosponsored that would have required the Senate to have a roll call vote on any future pay raise. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 52-45. Grassley first worked to stop the automatic pay raise in 1975, as a freshman member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“If we are going to have a vote on a pay raise for a Member of Congress, we ought to have guts enough to stand up and cast a vote, yes or no,” Grassley said.
In speaking in support of the amendment on the floor of the Senate, Grassley said, “At a time when many Americans are being forced to tighten their belts, this sends a very bad message. It makes Americans cynical about government. Congress seems totally out of touch, taking a pay raise when the people who pay our salaries are struggling to make ends meet. I completely understand the frustration because I hear it from my own constituents. That is why I support this amendment.”
Grassley spoke about his first attempt to stop the automatic pay raise in 1975. At the time, he objected to a provision that was snuck into a postal bill providing for future automatic congressional pay raises.
Here is a copy of Grassley’s remarks as printed in the Congressional Record, March 9, 2009.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I rise in support of the Vitter amendment. Just so colleagues of mine don't think I am a latecomer to this battle on pay raises, I want to refer to a debate that went on in the House of Representatives, July 30, 1975, my first term in the House. There was a noncontroversial bill that came up, referred to on page 25824, -825 and -826 of the Congressional Record for that day, a little noncontroversial postal safety bill came up for postal employees. Attached to that bill were the provisions of the law that have been a little bit changed in 1989 but go back to this postal bill in 1975, when included in it was a provision that is referred to here as section (c)(2):
Effective at the beginning of the first applicable pay period commencing on or after the first day of the month in which an adjustment takes effect under section 5305 .....
And I will not read the whole legislative language from the debate, but it essentially said that Members of Congress were going to get an automatic pay increase just as civil servants were already getting.
The stage on that day was set so that everybody was going to be on the floor of the House of Representatives. The idea of the Republican leadership and the Democratic leadership--and the Democrats were controlling the House at that time, with only 140 or 141 Republicans, as I recall--the idea was to get everybody on the floor so when unanimous consent was asked to bring up this bill, there would be unanimous consent and there wouldn't be a vote because everybody, even 34 years ago, didn't want to take a vote on raising pay; particularly, you didn't want to take a vote on the automatic increase in pay. So they had the stage all set. There are two words I want to refer you to after my name, ``Mr. Grassley.'' This is after unanimous consent was asked for. I said:
I object.
My point in objecting wasn't knowing whether I could kill that piece of legislation at that particular time. It was that I thought, as Senator Vitter thinks and as I think yet today, 34 years later, that if we are going to have a vote on a pay raise for a Member of Congress, we ought to have guts enough to stand up and cast a vote, yes or no.
Eventually, the bill passed that very day by just a 1-vote margin, 214 to 213. I remember after that vote there was a Mr. Hays, a Representative from Ohio, who was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It is still called the same thing today. He was chairman of it. He came up and he pointed to me and he said: We are going to get you. In other words, he was going to do everything he could as chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee to defeat me in the next election. Well, he didn't defeat me in that next election, and I haven't been defeated since. That has nothing to do with it except I think I was reflecting what the attitude of the people at the grassroots of America was then, and I think Senator Vitter is expressing that same thing today. My colleagues at that time were not happy with me, and they probably aren't happy with what Senator Vitter is doing today. I thank him for going out in front.
Then, in the 1980s, I sponsored legislation to reform the system where the President could recommend a congressional pay increase and have it go into effect without a vote of Congress because that system needed to be reformed further. I worked with several of my colleagues who felt letting pay raises take effect without a vote was wrong. The system did get reformed as part of the 1989 ethics reform bill but not in the way we had proposed at that particular time. That act just put congressional pay raises on autopilot. The congressional pay raise now takes effect every year unless Congress specifically rejects it.
I have consistently voted for measures to deny all the congressional pay raises. However, in recent years Congress has not considered the annual spending bills on time or under regular order. This has denied us the typical opportunity to consider amendments as Senator Vitter is offering now.
This massive omnibus bill we are now considering is a result of the failure to consider any of the fiscal year 2009 appropriations bills separately and on time. As a result, Congress gets a 2.8-percent pay raise without a vote. At a time when many Americans are being forced to tighten their belts, this sends a very bad message. It makes Americans cynical about government. Congress seems totally out of touch, taking a pay raise when the people who pay our salaries are struggling to make ends meet. I completely understand the frustration because I hear it from my own constituents. That is why I support this amendment.
I am not saying Congress should never consider increases to keep pace with inflation. We don't want only people who are independently wealthy to be able to afford to serve in Congress. What we are saying with this amendment is that if Congress decides it needs a pay raise, we had better be prepared to justify it to our constituents. When it can't be justified, like now, when Americans are facing a dismal economy and Congress just voted to double the deficit, then the least we can do is not boost our own salary.
Article I, section 6, of the Constitution establishes that:
Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law.
However, to prevent the conflict of interest inherent in Congress raising its own salary, the 27th amendment stipulates that:
No law, varying the compensation for services of Senators and Representative, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
This amendment was submitted to the States in 1789 as part of what became known as the Bill of Rights but was not fully ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the States until 1992. The clear intent of the wise and forward-thinking men of 1789 was that the sitting Congress not be able to raise its own salary before the people could have their say. Congress should be held accountable.
The courts have ruled that the annual automatic congressional pay increase does not technically violate the 27th amendment, but it sure seems to violate the intentions of its authors. It is time to go back to the system originally envisioned by the Constitution without pay raises for Congress when the American people are not looking. In fact, I can't think of a better time to send that message to a public that is becoming increasingly cynical about the actions of the Congress.
I urge adoption of the Vitter amendment to take us back to pre-July 30, 1975, when Congress, by a 1-vote margin on an otherwise noncontroversial bill that was selected by the leadership of both the Republicans and Democrats at that time to let Congressmen get a pay raise without having a vote on it--that 1-vote margin was a controversy at that time, and I hope at this particular time we have a massive vote in support of this amendment.