JACKSON — Wonder why so many voters are in a throw-the-bums-out, anti-incumbent mood regardless of the actual voting record of their congressperson?
There’s a natural tendency to vote against incumbents in times of economic duress — just as there is a similar tendency to re-elect them in good economic times.
But these aren’t the average days of economic ebb and flow. These are the days of the prolonged global recession with a side order of double-digit unemployment and — for many — a large glass of Automatic COLA, that new anti-incumbent drink.
Oh, yes, that drink’s all the rage among senior citizens.
Members of Congress get an automatic pay raise — a cost-of-living adjustment or COLA. By law, they get the same pay increase as federal employees unless they vote to turn it down. In recent years they’ve voted to turn down pay raises. Their salaries will remain $174,000 for 2010 and 2011.
Of course, the congressional leadership earns more than that.
How much does that little perk cost American taxpayers? Put it this way: Ending the automatic COLA for members of Congress would save about $80 million over the next decade.
In 2009, the last time Congress officially did nothing and failed to vote to turn down the automatic COLA, congressional pay rose from $169,300 to $174,000.
At the same time, the Social Security Administration announced this week that for the second consecutive year, the nation’s Social Security recipients wouldn’t get a COLA.
The cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, are automatically set each year by an inflation measure adopted by Congress back in the 1970s. Based on inflation (or the lack of it, really) so far this year, the trustees who oversee Social Security project there will be no COLA for 2011.
That formula is tied to the Consumer Price Index. For years, senior citizens have complained that the formula is flawed in that the CPI doesn’t accurately reflect the increases in the price of things that seniors are buying, such as health care.
The 2009 Social Security automatic COLA — driven by soaring fuel and energy prices — produced a 5.8 percent COLA increase that was the largest increase since 1982.
With me so far, COLA drinkers?
Members of Congress are on autopilot to get an automatic COLA so long as they don’t expressly vote against accepting the raise.
Social Security recipients get a COLA if the CPI registers a sufficient amount of inflation. In other words, this really isn’t “Automatic COLA.”
Couple the angst of senior citizens about the foregone Social Security raises with the fears and worries of 78 million baby boomers who know that Congress has long since mortgaged the security of the Social Security program by spending the program’s supposed $2.5 trillion surplus on other government functions. The disparities in the automatic COLAs for Congress and for Social Security recipients illustrates as well as any symbol the disconnect that exists between those who govern and the governed.
Clearly, automatic COLAs for Congress were designed to take election-year politics out of congressional compensation while automatic COLAs for Social Security recipients had a political curve as well.
But more mature taxpayers struggling with rising health care costs, diminished earnings by their retirement assets and uncertainty over Social Security and Medicare makes for a large group of angry voters.
Incumbents — even those with relatively conservative voting records — are facing the wrath of voters who believe Congress to be for the most part self-serving and out of touch with working taxpayers.
COLAs, anyone? Anyone?
