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?

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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