Government is one of the few places you can work where even if you are doing a terrible job you can get a raise! With Congressional approval ratings lower than those of President Bush, Congress gets their 2.8% while many Americans are struggling and businesses are having to cut back:
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.
Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.
“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”
However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.
Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.
I would argue that 95% of the members of Congress should actually get a pay cut! How do they justify this pay raise? It is simple really – they are entitled to it because they are special. That is the depth of the argument they make.
Are you pissed off yet America? If you are not then wake up!
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