No Experience Necessary, Pelosi Approves Pay Raises For House Staffers.

Imagine being an incoming freshmen member of Congress. Your first order of business is to build the team that will work around you ever day.

Now imagine, the person you select for your chief of staff has no experience running a government office or staff. Maybe they are a good friend, or someone that you trust to work side by side to represent your constituents.

Now, imagine that you, as a newly elected Congressperson have your salary capped at $174,000. You turn to your newly appointed chief of staff and inform him (or her) that their salary is going to be $199,300. What do you think their reaction will be, given that they will be making more than their new boss?

That is now the going rate, rate thanks to Nancy Pelosi. In a letter the Speaker of the House issued, she said:

“As Speaker, I have been proud to take steps to ensure a diversity of experience and talent among staff, so that the halls of Congress, at every level, truly reflect those who we are honored to serve.”

Pelosi also stated that the move “will help the Congress recruit and retain the outstanding and diverse talent that we need” and will help “make the House more inclusive, open, and representative of the full range of voice and values of the communities.”

In other words, we will spend more of the tax payers money whether the recipient is worth that much or not.

If every single member of the House of Representatives (435) offer the $25,300 raise to just one person, that would cost the American tax payers an additional $11,005,500 per year.

And that comes in the midst of an economy trying to rebound from a pandemic and large levels of inflation brought on by the unchecked spending of Biden and progressive politicians.

Democrats have argued that this move will not only afford these staffers the ability to survive in DC, but also to make their pay comparable to their federal civilian counterparts.

Keep in mind that the General Scale pay is capped for a GS15 (step 10) at $143,598.

That pay comes after years of experience in their roles and working to advance in positions and responsibility.

Should they argue that it isn’t the General Schedule that they are comparable to, there is also the Senior Executive Schedule. The individuals in the SES roles are the senior personnel directly under Presidential appointees, and they manage the federal agencies as the liaison between the appointee and the rest of the federal work force in that agency.

Again, the people who are filling these SES positions, also capped at $199,300, are individuals with years of experience working in the agencies they now manage.

Take for example Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley’s Chief of Staff, Sarah Groh. Her previous positions “include advocacy work at Roxbury’s Horizons for Homeless Children and serving as the Director of Advocacy at America Forward,” according to the Congresswoman’s website.

Now, none of the says she isn’t qualified to run a congressional office as the senior person to an elected official. But nothing about being in advocacy says you are.

Maybe the pay raise is needed to pay the individuals who actually do all the work in the name of elected officials…as it is obvious that many of them do not actually do anything anyway.