On the recordFebruary 1, 2012
I thank the gentleman. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3835, which would extend the current-year pay freeze for Federal workers for an additional year through 2013. This will be the third year of a pay freeze. Similar to most of my colleagues who have spoken here today, I do support a freeze for Congress. I have voted six times to freeze Congress' pay. While my good friend from Utah does point out that there are some high-end, high-salaried Federal employees, you have to remember that we have surgeons at the VA, very competent doctors at the VA that serve our veterans. We have scientists at NIH. We have very, very good attorneys at the SEC prosecuting very complex fraud cases. To attract those individuals, we do need to attract very competent and highly skilled individuals, and that's where those higher salaries are aggregated. But we should be reminded that the vast majority of our Federal employees are middle-income earners. Oddly enough, we could have addressed this if this bill had gone through committee, through regular order. This bill has come to the floor without going through committee. It has not been subject to amendment. We could have come up with a bill that said, okay, we are going to freeze the pay of high-income Federal employees. We didn't do that. So you've got people out there making $30,000, $40,000 a year, secretaries and other staff, that their pay has been frozen for. If this goes through, it will be 3 years.…
