AOC Says If No Raise For Congress, It Forces Members To “Exploit Loopholes” On The Backend!

Here's what Business Insider reported:

In a rare instance of bipartisan agreement, both Democratic and Republican leadership think members of Congress should get a raise. 

But Democratic leaders were forced to remove the pay hike from a big spending bill Congress is set to vote on this week after a host of swing-district Democrats revolted against the measure. 

"Nobody wants to vote to give themselves a raise. There's nothing good about that," Rep. Katie Hill, a California Democrat who beat an incumbent Republican in 2018, said during a Monday caucus meeting. 

A Democratic strategist told Politico the plan is "political suicide" for vulnerable House Democrats. 

But congressional lawmakers haven't gotten a raise in a decade, and their salaries are currently 15% lower than they were 2009 when adjusted for inflation. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter on Tuesday to make her case for a congressional salary hike. The New York progressive, who campaigned on raising the minimum wage, argued that denying lawmakers a raise incentivizes "self-dealing." She pointed to the GOP's massive 2017 tax cuts as an example of "legislative looting" designed to benefit members of Congress and the wealthy. 

"Voting against cost of living increases for members of Congress may sound nice, but doing so only increases pressure on them to keep dark money loopholes open," she wrote. "This makes campaign finance reform *harder.*"

Hannity confirmed the quote below in bold is accurate:

House Democrats Monday considered advancing a controversial “living pay adjustment” that would increase the average salary of lawmakers by $4,500 per year; halting the amendment if it failed to secure Republican support.

“Members of Congress generally make $174,000 per year, with senior leaders earning more, and no cost-of-living adjustments have been made in the past nine years. However, vulnerable swing-state Democrats, concerned how the proposed $4,500 pay hike would look if it didn’t also have Republican support, had signed onto amendments rejecting the measure,” reports Fox News.

“It needs more discussion,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., told Fox News.

“It’s not even like a raise,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She called opposition to the pay increase “superficial. … This is why there’s so much pressure to turn to lobbying firms and to cash in on member service after people leave, because precisely of this issue.”

“It may be politically convenient, and it may make you look good in the short term for saying, ‘Oh we’re not voting for pay increases,’ but we should be fighting for pay increases for every American worker,” she added. “We should be fighting for a $15 minimum wage pegged to inflation so that everybody in the United States with a salary with a wage gets a cost of living increase. Members of Congress, retail workers, everybody should get cost of living increases to accommodate for the changes in our economy. And then when we don’t do that, it only increases the pressure on members to exploit loopholes like insider-trading loopholes, to make it on the back end.”

And from the horse's mouth:

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