Roll Call writes about the stagnant rise in congressional staff salaries.
House lawmakers are intent on giving staff members a raise in 2017, concerned that low pay and long hours are contributing to turnover and congressional brain drain.
But the money won't go very far, according to a Roll Call analysis.
Even if every penny of the $8.3 million approved by the House in May isused for staff pay and divided equally among employees in every office — a highly unlikely scenario — it would amount to roughly an extra $1,000 a year for each person. That's about what the average American worker spends on coffee every year, a recent study shows.
This comes on top of years of staff pay stagnation in part due to lawmakers who wanted to make a show of austerity during tight budget years, said Sam Farr, a retiring Democratic House member from California.