Congressional Pay Freeze and Fiscal Responsibility Act
by Former Representative Michele BachmannPosted on 2013-01-01
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BACHMANN. I thank the gentleman from California. I thank Mr.
Fitzpatrick for his bill as well.
I, too, was shocked when I saw that the President of the United
States, out of nowhere, at no request from any Member of Congress, had
issued a unilateral executive order, which means he decided to take the
law into his own hands and, in effect, become his own Congress and
decide unilaterally, at the height of the fiscal cliff debate, that he
would throw a new wrench into that argument, and it would be this:
When there is massive uncertainty, unfinished business, he would
decide that he would unilaterally give a pay increase to the United
States Congress exactly when the public is uncertain and doesn't know
what is going to happen. Will their taxes go up? Will they no longer be
the recipient of a spending program?
And so now Congress is going to get a spending increase?
This was a cynical planned move, Mr. Speaker, on the part of our
President. He brought great drama to this effort, unnecessary drama.
Because, you see, this House of Representatives already did this job to
avert the fiscal cliff. We did this work. It was completed last August.
We said that no one's taxes need to go up, and we were able to offset
any spending cuts. The work was done. The problem is the Senate never
took up the completed work of the House, and the President of the
United States spent the last half of this year continually castigating
the House of Representatives for not having this work done when we did
our work.
And so out of nowhere, again, not at the request of Congress, the
President decided to make a very unlovely party to this conversation--
the Congress--even less palatable by putting upon us the idea that we
wanted to raise our own salary when we had nothing whatsoever to do
with that. That's why over the weekend I directed my staff that we
would put forth a bill to take away this unilateral increase in salary
for Congress at the President's hand. We put our bill together. Mr.
Fitzpatrick put his bill together. We both introduced bills yesterday.
And I'm very happy to be a part of this bill, as every Member of
Congress is happy to be for this bill, because, after all, this had
nothing to do with the conversations. This was a cynical effort on the
part of the President--and I believe nothing more cynical than the fact
that the current agreement with the fiscal cliff was agreed to, we're
told, somewhere around 11:30 last night. The bill was voted on at 2:00
in the morning. Again, this is New Year's Eve. I don't know how many
Senators between midnight and 2 a.m. in the morning had a chance to
thoroughly read this agreement that's 157 pages long.
You see, this is not how we should run our government. This is drama,
unnecessary drama. And President Obama bears the responsibility for his
failure to lead and his intentional effort, it appears, to mislead the
American public with this cynical bill. That's why we are here this
morning, to clarify the President's action. This was not at our behest,
and we are rejecting this measure today to increase Congress's salary.
