WASHINGTON -- Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell says the GOP-controlled chamber won't go along with a bipartisan plan by House leaders to have lawmakers receive their first cost-of-living pay increase in a decade.
McConnell said in a statement Thursday that "we're not doing a COLA adjustment in the Senate," a position that likely kills the $4,500 pay raise. Lawmakers are supposed to get an automatic inflationary increase each year but it has been blocked since 2009.
House leaders in both parties, led by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have been trying to orchestrate a maneuver to pass the cost-of-living increase.
On Thursday, however, McCarthy sent out statements attacking Democrats for proposing it.
"My position is the same. I do not believe Congress should only be a place for millionaires," McCarthy told reporters. "I've seen what Leader McConnell has said and his opposition and that does complicate the path for this to become law."
Rank and file lawmakers make $174,000 per year, a healthy wage, but rising housing and college costs are making it more difficult for members who aren't well off to remain in Congress.
McConnell has supported the annual increase in the past. But the practice of blocking the pay increase became regimented after the tea party-fueled 2010 GOP takeover of the House. The Kentucky Republican is up for re-election next year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is skeptical of the idea. She said it's not even worth talking about going forward with the pay raise unless the effort is bipartisan. By that standard, McConnell's opposition should be sufficient to kill the pay adjustment.
The annual cost-of-living pay increase dates to a 1989 law in which lawmakers traded pay increases for giving up paid speeches called honoraria that attracted great criticism.
Information for this article was contributed by Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 06/21/2019