Pay Freeze Backers on Hill Sing Different Tune for Their Staffs

Many of the most vocal proponents of freezing federal pay on Capitol Hill have been quick to increase spending on compensation for their own staffs, the Associated Press reports.

Some examples:

• Incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has boosted his congressional office's payroll by 81 percent since coming to Congress in 2001. That's a rate of about 8 percent per year through 2009. Part of that is due to Cantor becoming House minority whip last year.
• Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has called federal salaries "unconscionable." But her staff payroll went up 16 percent between 2007, when she came to Congress, and 2009.
• Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who is in line to chair a key House subcommittee overseeing the civil service, has said of the federal workforce, "We have too many people making too much money, and we have to figure out how to do more with less." But he gave his own employees an average raise of about 9 percent this year.
• Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a longtime critic of federal pay, has increased his own office staff costs by an average of 8 percent a year 2006, his first full year in the Senate, and 2009.

"The lawmakers offered various explanations for their rising costs," the AP reports, "with many saying they were simply going along with the budget allowances that Congress sets each year for its members. Some said they were working to hire the best staffs they could to serve their districts or had new demands such as the need to hire a social media coordinator."

Those sound a lot like arguments pay freeze proponents explicitly reject when it comes to the executive branch workforce.