Sherwood Boehlert: “as I rise in opposition to this amendment, I would say to my colleagues that this is just pandering to base instincts.…”

“as I rise in opposition to this amendment, I would say to my colleagues that this is just pandering to base instincts. Quite frankly, what we should learn from the lessons of the past is that we should treat ourselves and treat judges and Cabinet-level and senior executive service members and other high-level officials of the Government the same way we treat the custodians of the building, the custodians of every other building. We should have the same cost of living adjustments on a regular basis as they do. What we do, we defer it year after year after year, thinking we are appealing to everybody, and then we say we are going to play catch-up ball and we propose 15- or 20-percent increases and everybody gets upset about it and rightly so. This is an ill-advised amendment. We have already saved $53 billion in spending, $53 billion in a year and a half in this Congress. That is movement in the correct direction.”