Paul Kanjorski On Congressional Pay Raises

Seniors- did you receive the cost of living increase that Paul Kanjorski is talking about in this video from January, 2009.



Now listen to what Congressman Vern Buchanan recently said at a town hall in Sarasota, Florida back in September, 2009 about stopping Congressional pay raises.

Did You Know There Are PA Legislators Who Refused Pay Until Budget Is Done?

Tomorrow will mark the fourth monthly paycheck passed up by midstate lawmakers who want a budget before collecting their pay.

Midstate lawmakers are in the minority for refusing pay until budget is done
By JAN MURPHY, The Patriot-News

Among those on a pay fast are: Sen. Pat Vance, R-Cumberland County; and Reps. Glen Grell, R-Hampden Township; Sheryl Delozier, R-Lower Allen Township; RoseMarie Swanger, R-North Lebanon Township; Mauree Gingrich, R-Cleona; and Rob Kauffman, R-Chambersburg.

Lawmakers’ paychecks stopped on July 1 until the “bridge” budget was passed in August and restored the pay of state workers. At that point or shortly thereafter, the legislative caucuses began paying their members.

But several dozen House members, mostly Republicans, have refused to accept their pay.

In the Senate, the chief clerk’s office said Vance was the only one to refuse her pay.

Several, including Delozier, Helm, Grell, Gingrich and Swanger, indicated at the time that it was their intent to hold off taking a paycheck until the budget was finalized.

Rank-and-file lawmakers are paid $78,312 annually, or $6,526 a month before taxes. Legislative leaders make more.

Here are three comments posted to that article:

STATESMANSHIP? How about GREED, CORRUPTION, FRAUD and WASTE?

This state's government is one of the most corrupt and incompetent bodies in the country. It is BLOATED, SELF-OBSESSED and OUT OF CONTROL.

Sorry for shouting but this is stupidity at work and being paid for by our tax dollars

I agree with you 100 percent. Its time to clean house in Harrisburg. No body cares its all about them and their greed. What about these people who need help and are not getting it. When is this going to end.

I applaud the integrity of this handful of Pennsylvania legislators. I wish them well in surviving the tsunami of public backlash over this budget fiasco.

The winds of a drastic shift are blowing. The choice is not D or R. The choice is ethics, integrity, honesty and hard working or corrupt, self serving. out of touch legislators.

Which will you chose? I am firing all of mine.

Next year's electioneering will be riddled with accolades to convince the public of the great job legislators are doing. Where you aware that as of the end of March this year not one single bill was passed and signed by the Governor? Here's the link to the information.

PA Legislator's Approval Rating Plummets

Patriot News Photo

When George Bush left office his approval rating was 31%. The liberal media plus Obama and Co. really hammered Bush to make Obama look so much like the coming of theMahdi of the century.

The problem is that perception of the Democrats in Pennsylvania are just like George Bush but they refuse to admit it. Look at the Roll Call in the column to the right. These are the leaders in their party who have disgraced themselves with their actions and their behaviors.

According to Lauren Boyer of the Patriot News the latest Quinnipiac University poll shows the legislature's approval rating is at 27 percent -- a mere percentage point higher than it was months after the General Assembly voted themselves a pay raise at 2 a.m. on July 7, 2005.

No doubt some of this is the economy spreading gloom over all incumbents, said Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac's the polling institute. But some of this may have to do, in Pennsylvania, with this summer's long slog without a state budget.

"They... don't like the fact that the people they hired to do business can't pass a budget," said Brown.

"They've called legislators every name in the book," Durgin said of his callers. "They're just very very angry. I don't blame them."

The 2005 pay hike episode was particularly bloody for lawmakers, leading to a turnover of a full one fifth of the General Assembly's 253 seats in the 2006 election cycle by retirement or defeat at the polls. While political scientists aren't predicting a similar mass exodus in November 2010, they say the 98 percent re-election rate once customary in Harrisburg is likely a thing of the past.

"Legislators will run very scared next year," agreed political analyst G. Terry Madonna, of Franklin & Marshall College. "There will be deep concern by legislators in certain districts. They'll be looking over their shoulders."

In Dostoevsky's The Idiot Hippolite describes a dream that features a horrific monster about to devour him. This ugly monster fills him with terrible fear. On a psychological level, the monster represents nature as Hippolite sees it—a force that is about to devour him through a death from consumption. On a broader scale, however, the monster represents the ugliness and corruption within the society(and our government.) The moral decay we see everywhere threatens to devour the characters in within the novel much as the monster threatens to destroy Hippolite in his dream.

The legislative pay raise plus their pension grab of 50% in 2001 is starting to set in with voters. In the present economic crisis the lack of a paycheck will surely resonate in the voting booth this November.

The extreme lack of leadership by Todd Eachus is tearing the Democratic party apart. He rules by initimidation. I know for a fact he uses his title to initimdate and threaten lobbyists into submission to try to win on any issue. It is a known fact that persons in his own party are not satisfied with his lack of leadership. But it is more than that. He fails to emulate statesmanship. He wants to win at all costs. He forgets that the opposing side on any issue is not all wrong.

The problem for the Democrats will be told this fall when Eachus's hegemonious style cost them at the polls. He believes in monopolies not republics. His meteoric rise to the Majority post will be met with an equal precipitous fall. He may have paid off Mike Veon's debt but he didn't learn one lesson from it.