More and More Dollars Don’t Add Up--to a Penny

--His four children call him Scrooge and lament that “you have to pull teeth to get any money out of Daddy.” But their father, Rep. Timothy J. Penny (D-Minn.), figures with the country so deeply in debt it would be “obnoxious” to take a pay raise. Penny turned down the $12,000-a-year congressional raise in 1987 and says he has no plans to take a proposed 50% pay raise this year. “I just don’t think that it’s warranted and it’s particularly obnoxious when you consider the federal deficit,” Penny said. Even more importantly, making too much money can put lawmakers “out of touch” with the people they represent, he said, with most of his constituents in the largely rural area earning around $25,000 a year. Penny’s wife, Barbara, supports her husband’s decision to forgo pay raises but admits she wishes there were more money to set aside for college educations and unexpected expenses that crop up. “He’d work for free,” Barbara Penny said, “but I have to remind him that we’re basically living paycheck to paycheck.”

--A bad back had New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo floored again. Despite living in a mansion with a staff of cooks, butlers and chauffeurs available to attend to his every need, he still has trouble getting to sleep. The 55-year-old chief executive has been plagued with severe back pains for years and has sought virtually every treatment imaginable to cure them. He discovered years ago that the only way to get his five hours of sleep at night was to lie flat on the floor with his feet elevated on the bed. But what worked well at his old home in Queens wasn’t practical in Albany: “The mansion is kind of drafty so I can’t do that anymore.” So, he has taken to sleeping on a mattress sandwiched between two wooden boards, with a thin layer of padding protecting the sleeper from the hard board.

--In a visit being termed purely cultural, Britain’s Prince Edward is planning to go to Moscow in April, the first visit to the Soviet Union by a member of the British Royal Family in 10 years, Buckingham Palace announced. Prince Edward, the youngest son of Queen Elizabeth II and fifth in line for the throne, will be visiting “entirely in his capacity as patron of the National Youth Theatre,” a palace spokesman said. Also in April, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, are expected to meet the queen at Buckingham Palace when they visit London.