CLT News Release
Monday, December 5, 2016
House takes good care
of its own at taxpayers’ expense
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Chip Faulkner — 508-915-3665
Beacon Hill Roll
Call
Sunday, December 4, 2016
PAY HIKES FOR HOUSE LEGISLATIVE STAFFERS - On Thanksgiving eve,
House Speaker Robert DeLeo's office announced that 468 House
employees will receive a 6 percent pay raise that will cost $1.3
million.
―Seth Gitell, Speaker DeLeo's Director of Communications, told
Beacon Hill Roll Call, "House of Representatives employees
received salary adjustments based on a two-year annual 3 percent
COLA factor. The adjustments will be supported by existing
appropriations. The last COLA received by House employees was in
2014."
―Chip Ford, Executive Director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, responded, "Apparently they think President-elect
Trump's promise to turn around the nation's economic malaise
begins with them."
We wonder what advantageous “COLA factor” the House chose to use in
reaching its 6 percent salary increase for House staffers?
According to the
Social Security
Administration:
“The purpose of the
COLA is to ensure that the purchasing power of Social Security
and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits is not eroded by
inflation. It is based on the percentage increase in the
Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers
(CPI-W) from the third quarter of the last year a COLA was
determined to the third quarter of the current year. If there is
no increase, there can be no COLA.
“The CPI-W is determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in
the Department of Labor.”
House staffers last received a COLA increase in 2014 of 6 percent. That
same year, Social Security beneficiaries received a COLA increase of 1.5
percent.
In 2015, Social Security beneficiaries received a COLA increase of 1.7
percent; in 2016 their COLA was zero percent, no increase. For 2017,
Social Security beneficiaries are scheduled to receive an increase of
only .3 percent, three-tenths of one percent.
This latest House staff COLA increase will be 4 percent larger, 200
percent greater, than the combined 2 percent COLA increases Social
Security beneficiaries received over the past two years and in the year
ahead, based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for
Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
We wonder what advantageous “COLA factor” the House chose to use in
again reaching that 6 percent salary increase for its staffers?
This appears to be another example of a two-rules standard: One rule for
the governing; a different rule for the governed.
How are such calculations so different for our “public servants” from
those who pay their salaries?
# # #
Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪ PO
Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
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