Word: congressmen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Like most people, highly placed public servants yearn for fatter paychecks. Unlike most people, some of those public servants -- namely, Congressmen -- are in a position to vote raises for themselves. Or cuts. In the Depression year of 1932, a politically prudent concern for seemliness prompted Congress to slash its salaries 10%. That is not likely to happen in 1987. But as members of the 100th Congress weigh the very real financial needs of officials in all branches of Government, including themselves, they are painfully aware of how public sentiment is running. During a call-in poll last month, ABC television...
...ever to the nation's best and brightest. Some 40 federal judges have left the bench since 1980 for want of better pay. In Washington, public officials are surrounded by serious money. Senators are regularly interviewed by network correspondents who make ten times their salaries; $77,400-a-year Congressmen are under steady siege by Washington lawyers and lobbyists making $200,000 or more...
...House might have found it more difficult to stand by in silence if Ronald Reagan had not pared down the even steeper increases recommended by a presidential commission. Those proposals, initially favored by Reagan, called for raises as high as 74% for Senators and Congressmen, probably well beyond the level of public tolerance. Unfortunately, the slimmed-down proposals gutted pay increases that would have helped stop talent from seeping out of the federal judicial system. Many judges feel betrayed by the cutback in their expected raises...
...hall a stealthy step or two from the President's office, an aide ) wonders aloud, "Can the Gipper get back the old magic? That's the question." It happens to be the same question they ask a mile away at the Capitol end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Senators and Congressmen clear their throats, look over their shoulders and mutter that the emperor has no clothes now -- and with the threads went the magic. Nobody is quite certain of the answer, but the Washington world is clearly divided...
More and more economists and Congressmen believe the current Gramm-Rudman target for fiscal 1988 is unrealistic and needs to be revised. If Congress made too drastic a cut in the deficit, they argue, it could throw the sluggish economy into a recession. Says C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Washington- based Institute for International Economics: "I don't think anybody believes that it is either possible or desirable to meet the Gramm-Rudman target." Admits Chiles: "There is nothing magic about $108 billion. But I think you have a problem if you abandon it without something better...