House members forced to face pay raise issue head on

The bipartisan House leadership will seek to get out in front of any debate on the automatic member cost-of-living increase, by bringing up the issue during today's vote on the rule for the fiscal 2000 Treasury-Postal spending bill.

Specifically, some member, either one designated by the leadership or a member who opposes the cost-of-living adjustment, will ask for a recorded vote on moving the previous question on the rule, framing the vote as a referendum on the COLA.

After the politically charged debates over the COLA in previous years, Treasury-Postal Appropriations ranking member Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the leaders of both parties want to "stop playing politics" with the issue.

"What we want is to preclude having the assertion made that [approving the COLA] is being done in the dead of night" by ensuring that members can vote specifically on whether to let the increase go through, he said.

At Wednesday's GOP Conference meeting, Speaker Hastert spoke in support of the COLA, and encouraged members who oppose it to register their opposition by giving the money to charity or returning it to the Treasury.

But he did not ask members not to oppose the increase, instead telling them to vote their conscience.

A vote to approve the previous question would be a vote against rewriting the rule to allow someone to offer a floor amendment blocking the COLA from taking effect, making a "yes" vote on the previous question a de facto vote for the COLA. Hoyer predicted a majority of both party caucuses would support the COLA.

For FY2000, the COLA would increase members' base salary of $136,700 by 3.4 percent, to $141,300.

While conservative Republicans have previously led the charge to deny themselves a pay increase in the name of fiscal responsibility, no one had stepped up Wednesday evening to spearhead a move to kill the COLA again. Members did not take their COLA in FY99, nor in FY97 and FY96.

Conservative Rep. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., freshman class president, said: "Most of the freshmen feel that we don't need to be voting for a pay increase, although we'd prefer not to have to vote on it. ... A lot of us want to pick our battles, and win the ones we pick."

Like many members, DeMint assumed someone will ask for the previous question vote, but did not know who that would be. If the vote is requested, DeMint said he would vote against the COLA.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., a veteran House member, also would prefer not to have a previous question vote, saying, "There are some battles not worth fighting" because of how the issue can get politicized.

Bartlett said even though he gives more money to charity annually than the COLA amounts to, he supports the COLA to ensure members' pay keeps pace with inflation.

While some conservatives such as Bartlett do not oppose the COLA in principle, some are disturbed that Social Security recipients are slated to receive a 2.7 percent COLA this year, compared to the 3.4 percent member COLA.

Also Wednesday, the White House weighed in with its opposition to elements of the Treasury-Postal spending bill, but did not threaten a veto.

In particular, the administration opposes the cuts to IRS programs, saying the reductions would jeopardize IRS modernization efforts, and the cut to the federal building fund.