No comment on raises

STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

 
STEVEN A. McCALEB
103 ALVERADO DRIVE
LONG BEACH, MISSISSIPPI  39560
PHONE & FAX: (228)-868-8428

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Cochran dodges question; Lott not available for comment
Thad Cochran Trent Lott

By MARY KAY DIRICKSON
THE SUN HERALD

Monday, April 30, 2007

Once Mississippi elects someone into office to serve in Washington, D.C., the voters keep re-electing the same people.

We bitch about how much money they make, and how they now receive annual pay raises of 4.3 percent.

They have formed their own retirement benefit system to where after serving in office for 5 years they become fully vested in their retirement system.

They do not receive social security because the do not pay into the system, but yet they will retire as millionaires, drawing your taxpayers money.

I would like to see an initiative in the State of Mississippi requiring the voters establish all elected officials retirement benefit packages.

Did you know that a senator or congressman will be paid the same annual salary when he/she retires as what he/she is being paid at the time of retirement. (example - $150,000 annually - after retirement $150,000 annually.)

We, the voters of Mississippi, elected them into office, and we the voters should have the finial say on their retirement.

Vote

 Both U.S. senators from Mississippi voted earlier this month against an amendment that would have abolished congressional pay raises for next year, but one refused to discuss his decision and the other was incommunicado for the holidays.

The amendment, sponsored by Russ Feingold, D-Wis., would have eliminated a year's worth of automatic, cost-of-living increases. The 4.3 percent raise will increase congressional salaries by $4,900 to $150,000.

Feingold attached the amendment to a defense-appropriations bill after failing to get a similar bill out of committee. Senators voted 65-33 that the amendment was not relevant to the defense bill.

Sen. Thad Cochran released a statement about the vote, but refused to answer questions.

"The Senate did not have a vote on a pay raise for members of Congress," the statement said. "A cost-of-living adjustment went into effect without a separate vote for all federal employees and senior executives based upon the rate of inflation, and I voted for final passage of the bill appropriating funds to pay for this cost-of-living adjustment."

An answering machine at Sen. Trent Lott's Washington, D.C., office told callers that the office was closed until Jan. 3. There was no answer at his Gulfport or Pascagoula offices late this week.

Spokesman Lee Youngblood said Lott was intent on passing the defense appropriations bill and was glad when unrelated amendments were dropped from the bill and the vote was allowed to go forward.

"Sen. Lott's view was that . . . we've got to get this bill done," Youngblood said. "Here we are in a war. We've got troops in the field."

However, more than 100 other Senate amendments were made to the defense bill and were passed. Fewer than 10 were introduced without making it onto the final bill.

Congress tried to take the politics out of the raise issue by making the raises automatic and linking them to the cost of living. Unless Congress acts, they go into effect every year.

Congressional leaders have been criticized in recent weeks for taking the raise while many families have been hurt by the recession and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Congressman Gene Taylor didn't get to vote on the amendment that came to the Senate, but he said he would have voted against the raise. Taylor said he would donate next year's raise to a college scholarship fund.

Mary Kay Dirickson can be reached at 896-2105 or at mdirickson@sunherald.com.

STEVEN A. McCALEB
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