Retiring lawmakers are once again complaining that their $174,000 salary is too low

Former Rep. Ken Buck said if he were still in office, his voters would “go ballistic” if he said $174,000 wasn’t enough for members of Congress to live on. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

• Retiring lawmakers are once again saying that their $174,000 salary isn’t enough.
• Several have said that there should be adjustments for inflation and cost-of-living increases.
• Their salary hasn’t changed in 14 years, and some find it difficult to maintain two residences.

It’s funny what happens when lawmakers decide to retire: Suddenly, they’re willing to say things that they wouldn’t have said when they still had to face voters.

That’s what happened when Rep. Patrick McHenry, one of many retiring House Republicans, told an interviewer earlier this year that the $174,000 salary for rank-and-file members of both the House and the Senate was not enough.

“Most of us don’t have wealth,” McHenry said at the time.

Now, even more retiring lawmakers are saying the same thing — and acknowledging that they may not be saying it if they weren’t on their way out the door.

“If I go back to my district, where the average salary in some places is $32,000, and I say, ‘I don’t make enough,’ when I make $174,000, they would go ballistic,” former Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican who resigned from Congress in March, told The New York Times. “I’d be out of office in a heartbeat.”

But Buck said it’s “very difficult” for lawmakers to live on the salary when they had to maintain residences in two places.

“When I got to Congress, I realized, holy smokes, that comes out of my pocket without reimbursement,” Rep. Tony Cárdenas, a retiring California Democrat, told the Times.

“I’ve had a roommate every time I’ve rented an apartment,” Cárdenas added, saying many members of Congress slept in their offices to cut costs.

Several other members of Congress told the Times that they believed their salary should be adjusted for inflation and cost-of-living increases, in part to ensure that a broad swath of people could serve in Congress.

“Do you want it to still be the House of the people, or do you want it to be only wealthy people?” Rep. Anna Eshoo, another retiring California Democrat, told the Times.

Though the $174,000 salary is far more than most Americans make — the median household income in 2022 was $74,580, according to the US census — many lawmakers have complained that it’s not enough money to keep up with the costs of serving.

The salary has remained the same since 2009, and if it had kept pace with inflation, lawmakers would now be making more than $250,000 annually.

Good-government experts have long said that lawmakers should get a salary increase, arguing that it’s an important measure to safeguard against corruption and ensure that the best talent can serve.

But polling has long shown that voters hate the idea, and few have been willing to make an argument that’s extremely unpopular with the public.

Yet it’s not a partisan issue.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has been one of the most vocal proponents of a salary increase, while Ken Cuccinelli — a former Trump-administration official — recently filed a lawsuit arguing that the lack of a pay increase since 2009 was unconstitutional.

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