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U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine is right about at least one thing: Members of Congress don’t deserve a pay raise right now, not even a modest cost-of-living adjustment.
Golden cited that potential pay bump, which would amount to a roughly 3.8 percent raise of around $6,600 per year, as a reason for opposing a proposed bipartisan deal to keep the federal government open and funded through March. He also opposes how the proposal approaches health benefits for members of Congress.
“Congress should be working to raise Americans’ wages and lower their health care costs, not sneaking new member perks into must-pass legislation behind closed doors,” Golden said in a Wednesday press release. “If members can’t get by on our already generous salaries and benefits, they should find another line of work. As long as these provisions are in the CR, I will vote against it.”
Golden, a longtime opponent of Congress giving itself a raise while much of its important work goes unaddressed, has good reason for this opposition. Congress can’t even complete its budgetary work on time, year after year going from one last-minute funding deal to the next, blowing past the deadlines it should be adhering to and failing to make the difficult but necessary decisions about targeted cuts and long-term investments. So no, they don’t deserve a raise, even a small one.
Is this enough of a reason to let large parts of the federal government shutter after Friday night’s deadline, however? We don’t think so. Congress doesn’t deserve a raise, but more importantly, Americans don’t deserve a government shutdown.
A CR, or continuing resolution, is a fiscal liferaft that Congress too often relies on when it hasn’t otherwise done its job to approve funding in what should be the normal budgetary and appropriations process. Sadly, however, continuing resolution chaos has become the new normal, with Congress punting from one short-term patch to the next and essentially keeping the government on autopilot. It is better than a costly shutdown, to be sure, but that is still a lousy way of governing.
Even with encouraging bipartisan work from senators including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress is still struggling to get back to a process resembling regular order.
Enter this newest continuing resolution agreement, which was forged between Republicans and Democrats as a necessary way to prevent a shutdown on Friday, and would extend federal funding through mid-March. It would also include new funding for hurricane and farm relief, among other items. It certainly isn’t a perfect document or a perfect process, as highlighted by Golden’s concern about a congressional pay raise.
But the caricature of this bill created by Elon Musk and other opponents has been misleading, if not downright false — as highlighted by reporting from Politico. Despite claims amplified by Musk, it does not include a 40 percent raise for Congress. That is a ridiculous magnification of the actual 3.8 percent proposed increase. It does not include $3 billion to build a new Washington, D.C., NFL stadium. That misrepresents the bill’s provision to transfer ownership of the existing — and dilapidated — RFK stadium to the D.C. government so it can be redeveloped.
Sadly, Musk’s opposition seems to have won out, not necessarily because he has the best ideas — or even accurate information — but more likely because he has the biggest megaphone. There is a legitimate need to review government efficiency and target wasteful spending, as Musk plans to do as part of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting and government-shrinking efforts. But for the results of that review to be legitimate, it can’t be fueled by false and misleading information.
As Politico reported, one online post that Musk responded “YES” to urged a month-long shutdown until Donald Trump takes office in January, insisting that, “We will be fine for 33 days.” Past experience tells a different story, with a five-week shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019 estimated to have cost the U.S. economy around $3 billion. There was a very real price to that extended federal shutdown, and it is not a price that Americans should pay again.
Federal lawmakers should strip the congressional pay raise from the negotiated continuing resolution, and pass that proposal, or pass a “clean” version that extends current funding only through March without the other additional aid. Either way, they must act expediently to prevent a shutdown.
