DeLay's Fatal Admission
Over at TPM, Josh Marshall drew attention today to Tom DeLay's defense of a new congressional pay raise as "an adjustment so that they're not losing their purchasing power." Josh suggested we file this interesting observation away for future use.
But my advice is to keep it on the desk-top.
How long, after all, will we have to wait for the next party-line GOP vote against a miminum wage increase to make sure the neediest working Americans "are not losing their purchasing power"? How long before the next administration or congressional Republican effort to cap or pare funding for Medicaid or some other safety net program on grounds that maintaining the purchasing power of beneficiaries represents a "spending increase"? And how long, for that matter, will it be before Republicans take credit for popular spending increases--say, for the military--that really just maintain the "purchasing power" of current appropriations?
DeLay has lurched into the dangerous territory of real-life measurements of money: what you can buy with it. He's done so on the most vulnerable grounds imaginable (other than the usual GOP weeping about the horrific taxes levied on the estates of billionaires): compassion for Members of Congress who are busily evading a large variety of national challenges while running up a ruinous national debt.
As Bruce Reed observed in the latest issue of Blueprint magazine: "There's another easy way for Congress to prove it understands that public responsibility comes before personal gain. Members of Congress should stop giving themselves cost-of-living increases until the federal government stops running a deficit and spending the Social Security trust fund. Responsibility begins at the top."
I think we'll have plenty of opportunities in the immediate future to toss DeLay's quote back in his face. And he'll probably respond with yet another howler. That's what makes him the perfect political enemy: a guy determined to live down to his reputation.
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I think my family and I could live quite comfortably on $160,000 with or without the pay raise. Even in the D.C. area.
June 29, 2005 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now would be a good time for a friendly D to introduce a minimum wage bill, a deficit reduction bill, a progressive health care bill, etc.: <b>"The Government Purchasing Power Preservation Act of 2005," "The American Consumer Purchasing Power Act of 2005," "The Health Care Purchasing Power Act of 2005"</b> - in fact, we may be able to solve all these fiscal nightmares created by the R's this way.
Holding my breath ... turning blue ... getting hypoxic ...
June 29, 2005 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not surprising that DeLay would use the phrase "an adjustment so that they're not losing their purchasing power."
I'll bet that's the same phrase he uses to describe the money that lobbyists funnel to his many campaign front groups before he doles out the favors of the government to the private interests they represent.
June 29, 2005 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It's not an illegal contribution," said Tom DeLay (R-TX), "it's an adjustment so I don't lose my purchasing power."
June 29, 2005 6:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is an obscenity. Wages in the U.S. have not kept up with inflation, meaning everyone is losing purchasing power. Gas prices up. A growing deficit. A war to finance.
Congress has some of the lowest poll numbers ever seen. And they reward themselves with a pay hike.
Come on, people. We've got to wake up and vote these criminals out.
June 29, 2005 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
How do the poor in the country get their adjustment so as not to lose the little purchasing power that they have?
They have written off the middle class as they move us toward becoming a third world country.
June 29, 2005 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's the most tone-deaf quote I've heard about salaries since the '94 baseball strike, when Pete Incaviglia said, "<span class="postbody">People think we make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don't realize that most of us only make $500,000."</span>
Of course, Ken Lay's wife complaining about how she had to sell their second home in Aspen was pretty good, too.
I agree with Ed. Make DeLay eat his words, over and over again.
June 29, 2005 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Percent increase of congressional payraise: 1.9
Number of congress members: 535
Per capita annual amount of congressional payraise: $3,100
Total annual cost of the congressional payraise: $1,658,500
Current federal minimum wage: $5.15/hr.
1.9% of the federal minimum wage: $0.098/hr.
Estimated per capita annual amount of a $0.098/hr. raise in the minimum wage (based on 40 hr. week and 50 wk. year): $196
Number of minimum wage workers who could receive a 1.9% raise for the total annual cost of the congressional payraise: 8,462
Where would you prefer the money go?
June 29, 2005 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course their pay doesn't include the generous array of primo benefits that Representatives and Senators get, which are much more generous than almost all private employment benefits at their salary level.
June 29, 2005 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
But to my mind, the only way the D's can benefit from this is if they vote against it. Otherwise, how can they point fingers?
June 29, 2005 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I understand it, the measure passed on a voice vote. When a democrat from Utah asked for a rollcall vote, which would have put each representative's vote on the record, he was shot down.
June 29, 2005 11:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know we think we've won that fight but thats precisely why we should keep pushing our difference from the Republicans here. Delay is concerned with his own purchasing power, but not that of folks on Social security.
June 29, 2005 11:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The obvious action here is for a member of the Senate to offer a minimum wage increase as an amendment to the bill. Traditionally, the Senate and House are supposed to ignore one another, at least at an explicit level. But this quote does seem to provide an opportunity!
June 30, 2005 12:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
The obvious action here is for a member of the Senate to offer a minimum wage increase as an amendment to the bill. Traditionally, the Senate and House are supposed to ignore one another, at least at an explicit level. But this quote does seem to provide an opportunity!
June 30, 2005 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
The obvious action here is for a member of the Senate to offer a minimum wage increase as an amendment to the bill. Traditionally, the Senate and House are supposed to ignore one another, at least at an explicit level. But this quote does seem to provide an opportunity!
Sorry about this posting's repetition above - I hope those will be deleted!
June 30, 2005 12:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think John Sununu (R - N.H.) said it best:
"When you raise the minimum wage you are pricing some workers out of the market. It is an economic fact." Link
I wonder which members of congress have now been "priced out of the market"?
June 30, 2005 4:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
i'm shocked--SHOCKED!!!--that there are democrats in utah!!!
June 30, 2005 6:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a lopsided defense of Duke Cunningham: the poor man simply couldn't afford to pay rent on the Duke Stir. And that $700K from Mitchell Wade (in the house "flip") was just a loaner until Duke can get back on his feet. Sales of Top Gun Enterprises merchandise must be flagging.
June 30, 2005 6:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
My initial reaction was to be fed up to here [points to somwhere about a foot above my head] with voice votes. But then I remembered reading Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom, which details how special interests and lobbysist have used the Congressional Record to target lawmakers based on every single, solitary vote, including committee votes.
So now I'm torn. Because it's true that some things will never get done in public, due to the pressure applied to both sides that makes compromise all but impossible.
Still, I think it likely that a majority of Dem's probably voted aye.
June 30, 2005 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink