Democrats Retreat on a Pay Raise for Congress

Plus, the rising fiscal risks of climate change

Democrats Retreat on $4,500 Congressional Pay Raise

It looks like lawmakers may have to wait another year for a pay raise. The nearly $1 trillion spending package moving through the House this week had included a $4,500 per year salary increase for representatives, but the specific bill containing the pay hike has been withdrawn following complaints from House Democrats who are worried about the political implications of the move.

Congress has voted to block its own annual cost-of-living adjustments ever since the recession began in 2009, freezing pay for House members at $174,000 a year. The Congressional Research Service said that representatives would be earning $210,900 a year in 2019 if the annual pay hikes had been in effect. Factoring in inflation, lawmaker pay has fallen by 15% over the last 10 years, CRS said.

A group of more than a dozen House Democrats said Monday they were concerned that the issue could be used against them in the 2020 election. Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee mocked Democrats as “socialist elitists” for including a pay raise in the 2020 spending package, Politico reports. "Nobody wants to vote to give themselves a raise. There's nothing good about that," said Rep. Katie Hill, a freshman Democrat from California.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said he hopes to reach an agreement with Republicans that would allow the cost-of-living adjustments to begin again without becoming a political issue. "I don't want any of my members who are in tough districts subjected to that. So we're not going to ask them to be subjected," Hoyer said Monday. "We want to make sure we have a bipartisan agreement."

No Border Wall Funding in $63.8 Billion House Homeland Security Bill

The House Appropriations Committee advanced a $63.8 billion Homeland Security bill Tuesday, setting up a potential confrontation with Republican lawmakers and the White House over money for the border wall.

“The bill provides no funding for new additional border barriers and prohibits the use of any other federal funds for border barrier construction other than those explicitly appropriated by Congress in prior years,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), chair of the Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security.

President Trump’s budget proposal for 2020 requested $8.6 billion for the border wall, and Republican lawmakers warned Tuesday that Trump could close the government again if lawmakers don’t provide the funds he wants. “This could set us up for yet another government shutdown,” said Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee.

Separately, the Senate Appropriations Committee will take up a supplemental spending bill next week related to the surge of Central American migrants arriving at the southern border. The White House has requested $4.5 billion to address the situation, with $2.9 billion of that to be used to care for unaccompanied migrant children. “It’s far past time to get serious about this to solve this problem,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Tuesday.

Budget Meeting Between Senate GOP and White House Postponed

A planned Tuesday meeting between top Senate Republican and White House officials to discuss budget negotiations was postponed due to scheduling conflicts, The Hill’s Jordain Carney reports.

Quote of the Day

“We’re not going to cut our way to balance. … There is no center of gravity to reduce spending in this town. Period. End of story.”

– Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s annual Fiscal Summit, explaining that the Trump administration’s plan to shrink the deficit involves reducing the growth rate of spending while increasing revenues through economic stimulus.

Tweet of the Day: Revenues or Spending?

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee and one of the authors of the 2017 Republican tax overhaul, told The Washington Post’s Heather Long Tuesday that the budget deficit is driven by excess spending, not a shortfall in revenue in the wake of the tax cuts.



The Wall Street Journal’s Kate Davidson provided some inconvenient facts for Brady’s claim in a tweet, pointing out that government revenues as a share of GDP have fallen significantly since 2015, while spending has remained more or less constant.

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Former "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart lashed out at Congress Tuesday during a hearing about reauthorizing the 9/11 victim compensation fund. Stewart criticized lawmakers for sparse attendance at the hearing, which he called "an embarrassment to the country and a stain on this institution." He also reportedly tore into them for failing to ensure that the fund set up after the 9/11 attacks never runs out of money. Watch his emotional remarks here.

Send your tips and feedback to yrosenberg@thefiscaltimes.com. Follow us on Twitter: @yuvalrosenberg, @mdrainey and @TheFiscalTimes. And please encourage your friends to sign up for their own copy of this newsletter.

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The Fiscal Risks of Climate Change Are Rising

The House Budget Committee held a hearing Tuesday looking at the risks posed to the federal budget and the U.S. economy by climate change — or at least that’s what the hearing was supposed to be about. It became, at least in part, a debate on the Green New Deal.

“Climate change is an environmental issue. It’s a public health issue. It’s a national security issue. And, as we’ll talk about today, it’s increasingly an economic and fiscal issue,” Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) said in his opening statement.

Yarmuth noted that the country spent an average of $36 billion a year responding to extreme weather and fires between 2005 and 2014 — but that Congress appropriated more than $130 billion for disaster relief in 2018. “Without serious action to address climate change,” he said, “federal spending will continue to rise on everything from federal disaster response, to flood insurance, crop insurance, and federal facility preservation and repairs – not to mention the increased public health costs.”

But the hearing unfolded along predictably partisan lines, with Yarmuth criticizing the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers while Republicans took the opportunity to slam the Green New Deal advocated by some on the left and knock Democrats for not passing a budget.

“The only people who fail to understand the seriousness of climate change are the Trump administration and some of our Republican colleagues,” Yarmuth said. “If they are not moved by environmental, health and security consequences, I hope the economic costs and the impact on the federal budget will get their attention — because we cannot afford to wait for them to catch up.”

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) criticized Democrats on the panel for not discussing the Green New Deal as part of the hearing.

“How can we have a serious discussion about climate change on this committee without addressing the primary plank of the platform that you and your colleagues have offered — the Green New Deal — to resolve climate change?” he asked Yarmuth. The Democrat had indicated that 11 committees have jurisdiction over the Green New Deal legislation but the House Budget Committee is not one of them. He added there are many other proposals to address climate change, and that the Green New Deal does not have the support of a majority of Democrats.

The bottom line: The Green New Deal proposal has clearly shifted the climate debate, raising the importance of the issue and establishing a benchmark for Democrats while offering a new target for Republican attacks. At the same time, the fiscal risks posed by climate change are rising.

“[T]he effects of climate change have already and will continue to pose risks that can create fiscal exposure across the federal government and this exposure will continue to increase,” J. Alfredo Gómez of the Government Accountability Office told the panel. “The federal government does not generally account for such fiscal exposure to programs in the budget process nor has it undertaken strategic efforts to manage significant climate risks that could reduce the need for far more costly steps in the decades to come. To reduce its fiscal exposure, the federal government needs a cohesive strategic approach with strong leadership and the authority to manage risks across the entire range of related federal activities.”

You can watch the hearing and find the prepared witness testimony here.

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