Congressional Pay Cuts Undermine Dignity of Job, Pelosi Says

Congressional pay cuts undermine the dignity of the job, Pelosi says.

"The current salary for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year."[1]

About 70% of Marines hold the rank E4 or lower[2], and they each earn less than $30,000 per year[3].

You wanna compare retirement plans next, Representative?

To rate any sort of pay after exiting the services, one must serve on active duty at least 20 years (with certain exceptions based on combat injuries). At that point, they rate 40% of the base pay of their highest rank. After 30 years on active duty, they rate a maximum of 75% of their highest base pay.[4] The highest enlisted base pay is less than $65,000, making the maximum retirement pay less than $49,000.[5] But it is incredibly difficult to stay in service that long. Promotion and retention are performance-based but restricted numerically annually by law; less than 1% of enlisted Marines reach the rank of E9.

Those who serve in Congress also must serve 20 years to rate retirement pay (with certain exceptions based on age). A typical congressman earns $55,012 in retirement pay after 20 years. There is no maximum, however, it would take about 60 years of service to rate the 75% of base pay rated by 30 years in the military.[6]

The point is, Representative Pelosi, that all congressmen are already paid significantly more each year than the large portion their counterparts serving in the military, and only a small number of military servicemen come close to the level of congressional pay. Similarly, fewer military servicemen rate retirement pay, and when they do, they still aren't paid as much as congressional retirees.

And I sincerely hope I don't have to explain to you which of the two jobs is ACTUALLY more dignified.

Sources:
[1] http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm
[2] http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/marinepromotions/a/marineprom.htm (A little old, but the percentages align with what I've been briefed officially within the past 12 months.)
[3] http://usmilitarypaychart.com/2013-military-pay-chart/ (Highest E4 base pay * 12 < $30,000.)
[4] http://militarypay.defense.gov/retirement/ad/04_redux.html
[5] http://usmilitarypaychart.com/2013-military-pay-chart/ (Highest E9 base pay * 12 < $65,000.)
[6] http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30631.pdf

Note:
I used the enlisted servicemen for the comparison because most servicemen are enlisted. Although it occurs to me now that perhaps a comparison with officers would be relevant as well since the numbers would more closely math the number of congressmen as well as the fact that officers are more likely to be college educated. However, the pay systems are the same for officers as enlisted.

Ways to Save Online - Deals Sites

I want to share a couple links that I think will be helpful for people who like to shop online AND save money. I posted both of these on Twitter, but I wanted to have another record of the links on here, too.

Note on navigation: These sites utilize www.krunchd.com's toolbar feature. This lets you visit only one URL (the krunchd link I provide) and that page will load all the other sites. You can sequentially navigate among the sites in my list using the arrows that will appear in the top right of the krunchd page, or you can select a specific site from a drop-down box and jump to that one.

www.krunchd.com/dealtrackers
This first page has a bunch of deal trackers. To clarify, these are sites to which other users submit deals that they find. For example, my roommates saw that KFC had a deal going on where the Famous Bowl was about 40% its normal price, so they took a picture of the sign and reported the deal to slickdeals.net (which is one of the sites on the list). Then users on slickdeals, or other site, rate the deals that people post and indicate if they can confirm them in their area, too. Other deals you might find could be great savings on TVs; laptops; computer accessories such as RAM, hard/optical drives, or mice; apparel; jewelry; and more.

www.krunchd.com/deal-a-day-sites
This page has a bunch of deal-a-day sites, or ones close enough. Woot.com updates every day at 0100 Eastern, and 1saleaday.com updates at midnight Eastern; but steepandcheap.com puts up a new product whenever the current one sells out. On the other hand, spyoptic.com has an "Unreal Deal of the Week" which of course only updates once a week. I've also included a few sites that track even more deal-a-day sites with which I'm not very familiar, but may have good deals, too.

If you know of other websites that would fit well with one of my categories here, post a comment on this blog entry and I can add it to the list.


//C