[Free_SJersey]

"The job has perks, the job is important, but we don’t pay enough, and we demand saints in return

$174,000 a year is a substantial pay for someone who is doing something that should be done for the good of the people and out of a sense of patriotic duty. These vermin should be getting paid whatever the median income of those he represents and should live in baracks.

I am sick and tired of the poor mouthing of those who chose to serve. Those perks you mention don't even begin to explain how some mediocre lawyer goes to Congress and ten years later, they're millionaires. After their second term in the House and their first in the Senate, they've all lost touch with the people.

Politics should never be a career. That's the worst thing that's happened to this nation.

[Citizen Blade]

$174,000 a year is a substantial pay for someone who is doing something that should be done for the good of the people and out of a sense of patriotic duty

Many, if not most, Congressmen take a pay cut when elected. The costs of maintaining a household back in their home state plus one in DC is going to impose a financial burden on anyone other than someone who is independently wealthy to begin with.

A Member of the House makes less than a 2nd or 3rd year associate at a large DC law firm, to give you a point of comparison when it comes to incomes here. Low pay for Congressment ensures that people like Ted Kennedy and John Corzine will always be more likely to become Congressmen than a small business owner from rural Idaho.

[Badeye]

‘$174,000 a year is a substantial pay for someone who is doing something that should be done for the good of the people and out of a sense of patriotic duty.’

Sorry, it simply isn’t given the cost of living in DC, and the cost of living wherever the rep is from.

Its why we keep getting wealth ‘lawyers’ as House reps and Senators. Their the only ones that can afford it, because they are already wealthy/rich/very well off...call it what you want.

Yes, in ‘theory’ $174k should be enough. Problem is, we live in the real world, with all of its bills.