Utah's Rep. McAdams joins fellow moderate Democrats to halt congressional pay raise

Washington • House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy struck a deal recently to give members of Congress a pay hike, the first in a decade.

And then moderate Democrats balked.

Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland, and McCarthy, a California Republican, had pitched the plan that would tie an increase to members’ salaries to inflation, adding about $4,500 to their take-home pay next year and rising more each year. Rank-and-file members of Congress now make $174,000 a year.

But members, like Rep. Ben McAdams, a Utah Democrat who won his seat in one of the closest races in the country, pushed back. It's not good optics to raise your own salary, after all.

"The federal budget deficit is $738 billion for the first eight months of this fiscal year, putting us on the unbelievable path of digging a nearly $1 trillion budget hole by the end of September," McAdams said in pushing an amendment to block the pay raise. "Borrowing any money to give members of Congress a pay raise would add insult to injury and it is nowhere on my list of legislative priorities."

Read more: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/06/12/utahs-rep-mcadams-joins/
(Salt Lake Tribune)