Rank-and-file members of both the House and Senate are paid $174,000 a year.
That probably seems like a decent amount of money, and it is: The median household income in 2022 was $74,580, according to the US Census.
But consider that members of Congress generally have to maintain two residences — one in Washington, DC, and one in their home state — and that they haven’t gotten a raise since 2009.
Inflation, meanwhile, has eaten away at the value of that salary over time: If lawmakers’ salaries had kept pace with inflation, they would be paid over $250,000 today.
Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican who served as the interim speaker of the House following Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, told The Dispatch that congressional pay needed to be raised in order to attract “credible people to run for office.”
To be clear, most all of them can go fuck themselves. I don’t really care about any of their financial states, and I absolutely support limiting their ability to make money off the office… It’s also a few million dollars a year we’re talking about, it’s a very cheap way to make things better
What I care about are incentives and selection pressures. I want normal people with morals and idealistic people in those seats. I don’t want rich people raised to crave approval from their peers, or people with dreams of climbing higher.
I want the job to be the end goal, not a stepping stone to another end