Give the Bums a Raise!

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Public Citizen has a new report out today about the revolving door between Congress and K Street: “Forty-three percent of members of Congress [including fifty percent of all Senators] who left office since 1998 and were eligible to lobby have become lobbyists.” Now Public Citizen recommends sticking a foot in the door and enacting a bunch of “tough love” measures—like implementing a “cooling-off period” of two years after a legislator retires—that, while nice, have no chance whatsoever of passing. Members of Congress may have cut their own pay twice during the Great Depression, but they’re not about to back away from the goldmine now.

A better compromise would be to raise Congressional salaries to fairly high levels, maybe even boost their pensions, combined with a series of measures to clog up the revolving door, which would make members of Congress less likely to seek out lucrative lobbying jobs. Egad, right? Expand congressional salaries in a time of staggering deficits? Well, it’s either that or waste money on lavish government subsidies for big businesses that have hired former Senators to lobby for them. Giving the bums a raise isn’t quite as noble as Public Citizen-style austerity measures, but it has a better chance of working, no?

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate