Hill hypocrites chug COLAs

From Advertising Age’s Web site comes the “try to spin this one” challenge of the day: “Pretend you work for Congress … and have to spin congressional pay raises in a positive light. No cheating: You can’t have your pretend client opt out of the pay raises.”

“A serious public relations professional should welcome a challenge, something almost impossible to paint in a positive light,” reads the Ad Age “homework” instructions for Dec. 17.

Is this why “communications directors” earn the big bucks? You’d have to be a slick, head-spinning 2 a.m. “infomercial” to sell congressional pay raises even to insomniacs.

In case you missed it last week in the midst of Oprah and her celebrity pals offering $50,000 for VIP treatment at the 44th inaugural, there was a little story buried on the back pages about 535 members of the House and Senate receiving automatic pay raises in January to the tune of $4,700 apiece.

Yes, you read right; that’s $2.5 million more of taxpayer dollars to raise congressional salaries to a meager $174,000 annually after their 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase.

In fact, they get these raises every year. But when so many of their employers are hurting, shouldn’t this year be different?

No. Congress already voted down freezing their pay.

“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense told the Hill newspaper. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Well, you might say that our dedicated public servants are worth $4,700 more in 2009 for watching the U.S. economy tank in 2008 and still doing little to help their taxpaying constituents.

Our congressional members work so hard pontificating into the wee hours of the morning about all manner of minutiae to forge a $700 billion bailout package that is as transparent as the Washington Monument.

Mind you, the cost of living in the nation’s capital is one of the highest in the country. Congressional representatives have to maintain two households and constituents services in those home districts. And, those haircuts, manicures and Guccis don’t come cheap. Oh, don’t forget their travel expenses and business lunches. (Oops, we pay for those too, don’t we?)

Well, $4,700 isn’t really that much money is it? Except for someone who hasn’t even earned that much income in months, or hadn’t seen an increase in the minimum wage for nearly a decade because, you guessed it, Congress wouldn’t approve it.

Isn’t it interesting how politicians, many of whom are millionaires, are able to rail with righteous indignation about the need for everyone else’s salary to be cut? Asking corporate executives to slash their outrageous compensation packages is one thing, but forcing blue-collar union workers to take a cut or minimum-wage moms to weather furloughs for the common good is hypocritical.

I know of a Falls Church family with a half-dozen multigenerational members who have worked for the same government contractor for decades. They were forced to take either a one-week or two-week furlough on Christmas Eve. They did so without complaining in hopes that none of them would be laid off.

In Baltimore mayor and council members received $3,700 pay raises, and after some wavering, accepted the increases because — get this — the increases were mandated by law. However, these lawmakers pledged to give them to charities after the public outcry.

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