Political Quotes

“I just want to give a little history. The gentleman from Arizona spoke about performance and that we at this time should not receive any kind of a cost-of-living adjustment. I think it is worth the time for Members to understand where we have been legislatively with this. It goes back before some of the Members who will speak on this were here. Because of the very great difficulty that we had with the issue of the pay raise, in 1989 this Congress passed a provision to permanent law, which took it out of the hands of Congress so that we would not engage in the kind of demagogic debate that sometimes goes on in this body over this particular issue. And we said that there would be a committee that would survey private sector wage rates for the previous year and the Federal employees would get an increase, a cost-of-living adjustment equal to that and that those at the very top of the scale, Cabinet officers, SES judges, executive service judges, and Members of Congress would get a cost-of-living adjustment that was half a percent below that.”