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House Speaker John Boehner
When House Republicans decided to fold on the debt limit they concluded that they need something to help them save face. What they wanted was to adopt a requirement that Congress must approve a non-binding budget or risk losing their pay. The problem is that such a provision would have clearly violated the 27th Amendment so the GOP come up with possible work around.
Their solution in H.R. 325 is to merely put members’ pay into escrow accounts until a budget is approved at the end of the Congressional term. When either of those happen the members get all of their back pay. This way their overall amount of compensation will not change. It is not clear though that this work around is constitutional. The 27th Amendment simply says:
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
Any member who has had their pay withheld for over a year would have a very strong case that their compensation had been “varied.” A plain reading would indicate the House bill is unconstitutional.
It is important to remember that budgets are not law. They have no legal authority and do not even need to be approved. They are basically just non-binding political documents. So this means House Republicans will knowingly potentially violate the Constitution simply to try to force a few Senate Democrats to take a meaningless, but politically awkward vote.
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their compensation is varied long before a year is up, the first varience is the length of time they wait to be compensated, other variences include that they will not be able to invest, earn interest, they might be forced to take loans they would not have taken
How did the 27th Amendment pass? Was it in the middle of the night? It says : there’s no way to cut my pay until I fail to win an election.
Chris Hayes, who these days I consider the most progressive “pundit” on tv, had 4 newly elected Democratic congress critters on his show last weekend. One the most striking things to me was their quantifying how little House reps work. They were saying that their committees haven’t even met yet. The work week is now about 2 days in Washington and even then, it’s not a full day. They are also given general instructions that they should spend 4 hours a day on the phone (fund raising), an hour to think (and breathe I guess), and I forget how the other 3 hours are “apportioned”.
I’m not saying they don’t want to work, and I realize much of this might be due to Repubs ruling the roost, but it’s apparent the House is not working much at all, and I don’t mean “not working” in a “dysfunctional” sense. So we are paying most legislators full-time for a part-time job.
Perhaps they should be paid by the hour. /s
This is potentially unconstitutional because of the way you’re posing the question. . . What the GOP is saying is if there is no budget from the Senate then they won’t vote for any bill that will pay the Senators, which is perfectly constitutional. Of course the government will probably shutdown, but they can do it.