Lawmakers Have Long Rewarded Their Aides With Bonuses

Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON -- While Congress has been flaying companies for giving out bonuses while on the government dole, lawmakers have a longstanding tradition of rewarding their own employees with extra cash -- also courtesy of taxpayers.

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data. That was the highest jump in the eight years LegiStorm has compiled payroll information.

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal

Comments

[PhilipTaylor]

Lawmakers Here is a Issues List:

1. Each Congress Member receives $3.5 Million/four years (average) from WS and WS related Committees members far more? $5 Billion/ten years from WS to Congress?

2. Not "1" WS Executive (except merger/nationalized) Fired, Fined, Investigated, Prosecuted, or Convicted! Creating worst Crisis since 1929! Misrepresentation of Products/Services and Complex Schemes Skimming-Off $Trillions into Employees' POCKETS!

3. Reverse 1,000 to 1 RULE: Who gets WHAT? Main Street = $1 Wall Street = $1,000
Main Street = Tough Love! Wall Street = $TRILLION LOVE!

4. CORPORATE TAX HAVENS: 11 bailout: AmEx, AIG, BofA, Citigroup, GM, GMAC, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo. More than $227 billion to Caymans/Switzerland! Senat0r 0rrin H@tch said 0il Companies thre@tening move to
Sw!tzer1and if we raise their taxes! Move and tax the HECK out of their IMPORTS/at PUMP! Conservation/Alternative Energy reduces OIL Prices!

5. "Socialize/Nationalize" FED!

6. Largest Transfer of Wealth in World History from 99.9% of Main Street Americans to Wall Street by FED/Treasury!

7. R0BBED Americans' Pensions: 40%-100% loses!

8. WS makes between 300-400 times what Main Street people make! Can they justify 1 to 1?

9. Bankers manufactured $700 Trillion in Toxic Paper shutting down The Consumer impacting every car company in the WORLD including the Big 3. Even Japan is having to BAIL OUT TOYOTA!

[MarcInCA]

Oh who gives a frak! $9.1 million isn't even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the federal budget. I'm sure these aides worked their butts off and deserve the money. They're practically the only ones that do any work on Capital Hill these days.

It would be one thing if this was bonuses they awarded to themselves, but it wasn't.

[Solja]

I could use that money for food, a new roof, a new furnace, and some plumbing and electrical work in my house. It's more than a "drop in the bucket" in my household! My mom's dining room ceiling was leaking because she needed a new roof. She could have used this money!

But yet Congress is always complaining about how much money can't be sent to this or that program because there's not enough money. Just imagine what the Boys & Girls Club could do with 9 million dollars!

[mwilliams]

No one should get any bonuses... ever.

[swo68]

What about tipping your waiter?

[keepemhonest]

I guess it never occured to them to donate the excess taxpayer money to a charity or even education ...

[rbotos]

As far as I'm concerned, salaries for the public servants in this country are despicably low and staffers completely deserve these bonuses. The article says that not one bonus was above $14,000 and tries to make it sound shameful that some went to staffers earning over $100,000. These are the people that are running our country! Regardless of the current crisis, public servants do an incredible service to the country and they are practically punished for it with their salaries. I agree completely that teachers, police officers, fire fighters, etc. are in the same boat and it disgusts me how thoroughly their important work is overlooked. But legislators are incredibly deserving of whatever we can give them. These people are brilliant, they work hard, and they do that work on behalf of the best interests of their constituents.

What kind of message are we sending to the children of this nation if the people actively working to improve their future are skewered for $14,000 bonuses on top of $100,000 salaries while the Olsen twins and baseball players are showered with millions every year?

[swo68]

Bonuses should be purely based on performance. I'm not sure if our governement currently deserves them.

[VictoriaP]

While most every Pol is a crook, this is no comparison to the Wall Street/AIG bonus debacle. OTOH, it is unacceptable to pay bonuses to any public servants in the current economic circumstance. We can't pay our military personnel as promised but we can bonus primadonna staffers?!

I am tired of hearing about all of the so-called selfless public servants who work at the highest levels of government and receive perks that are beyond the norm. Either one wants to be a public servant or not. These "hard working" public servants agreed to the salary when they signed up for the job. Even at a lowly $25,000, it is far more than minimum wage that plenty of college graduates with professional experience WISH they could get. I didn't realize that public servants could earn a "bonus" on the public's dime.

If they don't want to do their jobs, long hours or not, for the stated salary, then there are likely hundreds of thousands of well-qualified, unemployed Americans who are willing to take their jobs, no bonus, WITH health insurance and all of the great perks.

I am sick of the whiners and hypocrites who try to justify their own hypocracy. OK, so last year, we will give you the "long hours working on TARP" but you will have to come up with additional excuses for the other bonus years. All of these hypocritical pols should be thrown from office on their faces.

[rogcd]

CLARIFICATION

More about Point 2.

So the 100 aides who earned over $100,000 per year represent exactly 1% of aides in the House. Or a whopping 2% if you think there are 200 aides who earn more than $100,000. Even 1,000 aides making more than $100,000 constitutes just 10% of the House aide workforce.

Oh, here's my source, which is from the March 31, 2009 edition of Roll Call. It's in the Heard on the Hill column under the headline:

*****

Point 2) You wrote, "Lawmakers, at their own discretion, gave the money to chiefs of staff, assistants, computer technicians, and more than 100 aides who earned salaries of more than $100,000 a year."

100 aides, huh? Shoot, let's double it and say 200 aides earned more than $100,000. Care to guess how many aides work in the House? Answer: There are 10,000 aides. Again, ten thousand aides work in the House of Representatives.

So the 100 aides who earned over $100,000 per year represent exactly 1% of aides in the House. Or a whopping 2% if you think there are 200 aides who earn more than $100,000. Even 1,000 aides making more than $100,000 constitutes just 10% of the House aide workforce.

Oh, here's my source, which is from the March 31, 2009 edition of Roll Call. It's in the Heard on the Hill column under the headline:

Another Payday? End-of-the-month ramen dinners might become a thing of the past for underpaid House staffers. . .

[rogcd]

POST THREE & THE FINAL POST

Point 3) There is a salary cap on congressional salaries. Why didn't you mention that in your article?

See http://www.thecapitol.net/FAQ/payandperqs.htm The salary cap usually increases every year, but only by a few % points. In 2005, the maximum House personal aide salary was $156,848. I can guarantee you it's not more than $174,000 for 2009.

Point 4) As you no doubt noticed when you were perusing through Legistorm, every aide who works on Capitol Hill has their salary displayed on the Internet for all the world to see. And that includes aides who no longer work on the Hill.

Ponder this for a moment: all Wall Street employees salaries and bonuses being displayed on such an Internet site. Hmmmmm.....what would the Wall Street Journal have to say about that?

I can only hope that this article catches fire and Jon Stewart takes notice. In fact, I'm going to send this to his writing staff. It would be THE BEST if he takes you on like he did with Jim Cramer and CNBC.

[RRK70]

Great posts.

While outrage over many events is justified, they must be seen in perspective.

[rogcd]

POST TWO

Which leads me to . . .

Point 2) You wrote, "Lawmakers, at their own discretion, gave the money to chiefs of staff, assistants, computer technicians, and more than 100 aides who earned salaries of more than $100,000 a year."

100 aides, huh? Shoot, let's double it and say 200 aides earned more than $100,000. Care to guess how many aides work in the House? Answer: There are 10,000 aides. Again, ten thousand aides work in the House of Representatives.

Another Payday? End-of-the-month ramen dinners might become a thing of the past for underpaid House staffers. . . House Administration Chairman Robert Brady (D-Pa.) introduced legislation on Thursday that would give his panel authority to set the House’s payday, signaling that Members are moving toward paying staffers twice a month.

Brady spokesman Kyle Anderson cautions that it’s just a first step in a long process, as committee members would need to vote to approve any payday restructuring even if Brady’s bill passes. And while ranking member Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) supports Brady’s bill, he also “strongly believes that we should survey the 10,000 House staffers who would be affected before making any changes,” spokeswoman Salley Collins told HOH.

[GeoLee]

Government empl;employees should not get bonuses no matter what level they work. Public school teachers don't and neither should congressional aides, police, firemen, etc. Taxd money should not go toward bonuses, period and taht even means in bailouts.

[rogcd]

MULTIPLE POSTS DUE TO WORD RESTRICTION

Dear Brody Miller and Louise Radnofsky,

I just read your article "Lawmakers Have Long Rewarded Their Aides With Bonuses" and I laughed and I laughed at your poor analysis. If this is how the Wall Street Journal reports stories, then there truly is no objective financial news media. This is a shoddy piece of journalism, to say the very, very least.

Point 1) According to the salary figures cited in your article, in 2008 lawmakers handed out $9.1 million to over 2,000 aides. Now, just using 2,000 staffers as a baseline, that comes out to an average of $4,550 per aide. Allow me to spell that out to you: Four Thousand Five Hundred and Fifty Dollars! And don't forget, aides get taxed just like everyone else, bonuses included.

Why didn't you mention that? Instead, you wanted to highlight "Capitol Hill bonuses provide a notable counterpoint to the populist rhetoric and sound bites emanating from Washington these past weeks." Really?!? A notable counterpoint? $14,000 for a House Chief of Staff aide vs. what? $742,006.40, (after taxes) that Jake DeSantis got from AIG? Hahahahahahaha!!!!! . . . excuse me. There's that laughter again.

[jdlund]

Let's see there's 435 representatives and 100 senators, so that 9.1m becomes 17k per congress member. I'm going to go on a limb here and guess that many of them have more than one person on their respective staff. Perhaps some of the newer representatives have a small staff, but I am willing to assume that many senators and representatives have a decent number of people working for them. If the largest bonus is 14k, as the story points out, then I kinda feel bad for these people. They work awfully hard for a bonus of only a couple hundred bucks. The AIG thing was 165m over a much smaller pool of people. Now I personally thought the reaction was severe overkill, especially with the death threats, and that many of those people who worked for AIG probably deserved that money.
They worked really hard, really long hours many of them for only $1 the last year and many of them had absolutely nothing to do with why AIG is where it is.

But still there we were talking about million dollar bonuses and up for executives who represent the brains and the financial brawn of AIG's inner workings and decision makings. Congressional staff work really hard, sacrifice a lot and they deserve every penny they earn no matter who they work for. They don't make policy decisions and none of this country's problems are their fault. Most of them make fairly small salaries.

[rf-hawaii]

Reasonable salaries and bonuses.

I hope this was directed at the undeserving crooks from banking and insurance bailout infamy that received obscene multiples of these amounts.

[brigadere]

So? Did they do their jobs? If so get over it you losers that are complaining. Bonuses are a part of compensation plans, as they should be. If they are based on performance and the achievements are met then we should all be so lucky.

[GeoLee]

Bonuses should be given only in companies in which profits made allow for the disbursement of extra money made. One's salary should be sufficient. and one should always try to do his or her best in a job. It is called a good work ethic.

[lochnessmonster]

Exactly...PROFITS is the word...a person working for the government should not expect or get a bonus. If they want the type of position that they can earn a bonus with, let them find something in the private sector. Just because they stayed within their budgets as they are SUPPOSED to do with our money, does not mean they can give the rest away willy nilly...it should go back to the people who gave it to them. How is this accounted for?

[Mattsolo]

you guys complaining about this really dont have any idea what you're talking about. Congressional Staffers make on average about 20,000- 25,000 a year. Thats hardly living in luxury. So please, enough with the bs about aides getting a little more money, they practically live in poverty for us when they could easily be working on K street for more money.

[lochnessmonster]

They are not chained to the desk. They signed up for the duty at that salary.