Chuck Grassley: “I have offered amendments or cosponsored amendments myself that would say there should be no pay raise for Members of…”

“I have offered amendments or cosponsored amendments myself that would say there should be no pay raise for Members of Congress until we get the budget balanced. I think the Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Helms] has offered an amendment on the floor of this body before that I voted for that probably would have cut our salary a certain period of time until we got to a balanced budget. I voted for that. So I am not unsympathetic with what the distinguished Senator from New Jersey is trying to accomplish. But I can say this in regard to the underlying legislation: The underlying legislation attempts to, and I think successfully does, apply the laws to Congress that we have exempted ourselves from that presently and for, in some instances, five decades have applied to the private sector, so that we no longer have a system of a double standard in America: One set of laws is for Congress and another set of laws is for the rest of the Nation.”