(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Before Republicans took control of the House this year, Democrats quietly voted to give themselves a $34,000 pay raise, according to a Thursday report in the Washington Free Beacon.
The Free Beacon reported that Democrats inserted the pay raise into internal House rules, granting congressional lawmakers an optional $34,000 annual subsidy to pay for their Washington DC housing and meal expenses.
The housing subsidy was reportedly passed in response to complaints from lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who say that skyrocketing rents make living on a $174,000 salary untenable.
According to the Free Beacon, 113 Democrats and 104 Republicans have taken advantage of the program for a combined $1.4 million.
Partakers of the program include Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the “squad.” AOC has received $8,700, while Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has billed taxpayers over $14,000 and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.. has received $6,800.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who was fined $1,000 last week for intentionally pulling a fire alarm during a House session in September, has received $6,200, according to the Free Beacon.
However, the person who’s received the most money from the new program is reportedly a fiscal conservative. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., reportedly billed taxpayers nearly $17,000 from January through May.
“I’ve complied with the law, and my cooking is often with discount [buy one, get one] products. I try to do the best in the kitchen from the BOGO life,” Gaetz told the Free Beacon. “During my time in Congress, I’ve returned over $860,000 to taxpayers from the Members’ Representational Allowance.”
In a January New York Times article about the program, critics blasted Congress for sneaking in the pay raise, which allowed them to avoid public backlash.
“You can have a good public policy debate on whether congressmen should be paid more in order to attract a better bunch, and you could have a reasonable debate on inflation adjustments, but it really ought to be done in public,” former congressman Mo Brooks told the Times. “That’s my biggest beef, that it was a clandestine secret.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
