Joe Barton: “most Americans think that Members of Congress are somehow privileged and above the ordinary everyday concerns of the…”

“most Americans think that Members of Congress are somehow privileged and above the ordinary everyday concerns of the constituencies that we represent. I think all 434 of my House colleagues know that that's not true. By normal standards, we do get a very adequate salary, $162,500 a year, but out of that we have to pay our expenses of living in our districts and here in Washington, D.C. We have the same expenses that every other American family has. This morning, before I left to fly to Washington, DC, I opened our credit card bill. We have a MasterCard. And on that bill we put most of our gasoline expenses and our routine living expenses. And my wife, Terry, has been working very, very hard this year to minimize the amount of expenses on that credit card. And we've both made an effort to make sure we only put things that we have to put on the credit card. So the vast majority of our MasterCard is now for gasoline. And I just happened to look down the list of all the gasoline expenses from the early part of last month to right now, and it added up to over $600. Now, $600 is not an extraordinary amount, but a year ago that same amount of gasoline would have been about $300, maybe $350, and 2 or 3 years ago, it would have been about $150. And now it's over $600. And that's not taking any trips. That's not driving to see our families.…”