Yet legislation to curb Congress’s outlandish pay and perks rarely gets far on Capitol Hill. Russ Feingold, the former Wisconsin senator, once told me he got “the coldest stares’’ whenever he introduced legislation to block congressional pay hikes from kicking in automatically.
Feingold left Congress last year, but other lawmakers have taken up the cause. Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado — who is as conservative a Republican as Feingold was a liberal Democrat — last month introduced a bill that would ban “stealth’’ pay hikes by preventing any congressional pay raise from taking effect unless members of Congress first cast a recorded vote. Another Coffman bill would cut congressional salaries by 10 percent.
Coffman’s top priority for reforming Congress, however, is H.R.2913, which would end the gold-plated congressional pension plan enjoyed by members of Congress. Of all the ways in which members of Congress reward themselves, none is as lucrative as their defined-benefit pensions, a perk more lavish than anything most private-sector workers will ever see.
Under the current system, senators and representatives can collect an annual pension worth 1.7 percent of their present salary for every year they serve in Congress up to 20 years, plus an additional 1 percent for each year beyond that. With congressional pay now at $174,000, a member of Congress who retires after just six years can thus look forward to receiving more than $17,700 a year for life beginning at age 62. (That doesn’t include the generous cost-of-living adjustments - another benefit unavailable to most private-sector retirees.) A 20-year congressional veteran would collect more than $59,000 a year — and the payments begin at age 50. For members elected before 1984, there is an even more generous setup.
