Washington Pay Day

At the mere mention of a pay raise, members of Congress start behaving like actors in a French farce. On the floor of the House or the Senate, they make impassioned speeches saying that they don’t need a raise, though most of them privately concede that they do. They call press conferences to announce that they don’t even deserve a raise, despite the incontrovertible findings of the Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries that the lawmakers’ pay--like the salaries of Cabinet members, federal judges and top civil servants--has lost 35% of its buying power since 1969. And then, finally, the legislators find some complicated way to give themselves a raise while vowing that they never intended that to happen.

That’s exactly the script now being followed as Congress contemplates a sensible and overdue 50% pay increase proposed by the commission and fully endorsed by President Reagan. Bills have been introduced to stop the raise or at least to postpone it for two years. Alliances have been struck between showboating members of Congress and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, whose opposition to the pay raise rates attention because, novelty of novelties, it is genuine. The pay raise will go into effect automatically on Feb. 9 unless both houses of Congress reject it by a majority vote before then. Leading senators boast that the Senate will never approve such a hefty raise for itself. But, rest assured, they’ll all get their money: The House leadership has arranged to delay any vote in that chamber until Feb. 10, after the deadline has passed, when the anticipated overwhelming rejection of the raise will mean nothing.

What’s troubling is that while this farce plays itself out, Congress isn’t paying enough attention to a related issue: getting rid of honorariums, those corrupting payments that members receive from special-interest groups for making speeches or just showing up for breakfast. The pay commission recommended that, in exchange for a 50% raise, lawmakers ban the speaking fees and other payments that can add up to 40% to their salaries. So far there has been no sign that Congress has developed a sure-fire, air-tight strategy to eliminate honorariums in all their myriad forms. Outside Washington, where folks have a surer grasp on reality and the honorariums look very much like bribes, a pay raise without an absolute ban on honorariums really will arouse the voters.