Congress
Lawmakers are primed to get a pay bump. Some aren’t happy about it.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are primed to get their first pay bump since 2009 in the new spending bill. Many of them aren’t happy about it.
Members in competitive districts have long-feared political blowback for voting to give themselves a raise. But language blocking an automatic pay increase that has been included in past government funding bills is absent from the stopgap bill. That legislation, known as a continuing resolution or a CR, is needed to avoid a government shutdown that would kick in on Friday. And some lawmakers are now threatening to vote against it unless language to block a pay raise is restored.
“Members of Congress earn more than 90 percent of Americans. If any of my colleagues can’t afford to live on that income, they should find another line of work,” Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) said in a statement Wednesday morning.
“Mainers can’t wave a wand and give themselves a raise, and Congress shouldn’t either — especially when most voters would tell you our job performance is poor at best. Until the pay freeze is reinstated, I will not vote for this CR,” he added. Some Republican members oppose any pay increase as an emblem of overzealous federal spending.
It’s not the first time this has come up. For 15 years, lawmakers have included language in spending bills and CRs to explicitly ban member pay increases tied to cost of living increases that would otherwise be automatic under a 1989 statute. Other leaders have tried to bring up a pay raise before, but tend to get shouted down by lawmakers wary of political blowback from constituents.
There are vocal advocates on both sides of the aisle for reinstating these automatic bumps. Many cite the high cost of maintaining two residences and say the stagnant pay rate discourages working and middle class candidates from running for Congress.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a longtime champion of the cost of living increase, called the bump “de minimis,” a Latin phrase that means something is too small to be considered or taken into account, and that “we don’t change the law, we’re following the law.”
Hoyer, a former House Democratic leader, acknowledged that some in his caucus are “not happy in some instances” but he expects general unity in voting for the stopgap.
Rank-and-file lawmakers in both chambers earn $174,000 annual salary, with those in leadership earning more. The maximum potential member pay adjustment in January 2025 under the stopgap spending bill would be 3.8 percent, which would result in a salary of $180,600, an increase of $6,600.
The bill would also allow lawmakers to opt out of the Obamacare health insurance marketplaces and use the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The lawmaker mandate was a dramatic element of the fight over passage of the Affordable Care Act on Capitol Hill back in 2009 and 2010, and Republicans have been trying to overturn the transformative health care bill since then. However, the bill does not release congressional staff from the requirement that they seek health insurance on the exchange.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
Sen. John Cornyn said Monday he will not support Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general absent a written modification to the settlement agreement President Donald Trump entered into with his own administration.
Opposition from the Texas Republican could sink Blanche’s nomination in a highly anticipated Judiciary Committee vote scheduled for Thursday.
While Cornyn said he is in talks with Blanche and others at the Justice Department, he has not secured changes he has demanded to the settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS. Those include formally rescinding a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” and restricting the scope of tax audit immunity granted to the president and his family.
Cornyn told reporters he needs the document to be signed by Blanche but did not specify whether Trump also needs to sign it.
“We’re talking about that. That hasn’t been fully resolved yet,” Cornyn said in a subsequent interview when asked if Trump needs to sign the modification as well. “We’re still talking. I mean, there’s different ways to approach it.”
Time is running out for Blanche to meet Cornyn’s demands ahead of Thursday’s committee vote, where any one Republican’s opposition could be fatal to the nomination. The senator said Blanche and the administration have been so far “reluctant” to follow through.
At his nomination hearing last week, Blanche testified that plans for the payout fund were dead and that the audit agreement was more limited than set out in the settlement. But Cornyn honed in on the text of the agreement, which states that it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the Parties.”
Blanche acknowledged during the hearing that, without a written change to the agreement, the anti-weaponization fund could still be revived.
“That’s what we’re trying to get them to agree to, which is again what his sworn testimony was,” Cornyn said. “So I don’t know why they’re so reluctant to do that.”
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Jay Clayton is on the verge of becoming President Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence — though Democrats won’t be helping him get there.
The news: The Senate on Monday voted 51-43 in a party line vote to move forward with Clayton’s nomination, teeing up a final vote as soon as Tuesday to confirm him as the next head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. No Democrats joined their GOP counterparts in support of Clayton.
Clayton, the top prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and a former SEC chair, will take over from acting spy czar Bill Pulte and join Trump’s Cabinet when he’s confirmed by the full Senate.
Why it matters: At some level, that’s a win for Democrats, who have been eager to replace Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no background in national security, since the president named him to the post last month. But after an up-and-down confirmation process for Clayton, Democrats have new reservations about the incoming intel adviser, as Monday’s vote underscored.
During his Senate confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Clayton refused to say that Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 vote, leading Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Panel to vote against his nomination. That marked a reversal from June, when Senate Democrats worked with their GOP counterparts to fast-track Clayton’s confirmation in exchange for renewing a powerful spy law. That deal fell apart after Trump intervened, alleging on social media that Democrats weren’t delivering on their end of the deal.
Open question: Though Clayton’s confirmation now looks imminent, Senate action on the spy statute that was supposed to be part of the deal — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — is not.
With the House already gone for the August recess, the Senate appears unlikely to vote on Section 702 until September.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will meet with lawmakers in Washington to discuss American leadership on artificial intelligence, the company said Monday.
A spokesperson for the chipmaker said Huang would hold talks with both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to talk about latest developments with the technology.
“Jensen is in DC to meet with leaders on both sides of the aisle to discuss American leadership in AI, including leading in open source,” the spokesperson said.
Huang is scheduled to sit down Tuesday with Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has expressed serious concern about security threats following last week’s OpenAI autonomous cyberattack.
The senator’s office confirmed the meeting. Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It comes as Huang defended open-source AI on X, writing that such models “strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.”
Huang’s visit comes as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also expected to meet with Warner, although a spokesperson for the senator said the talks were separate. Earlier Monday, Open AI announced it was in talks with Nvidia, a technology company that makes chips to use artificial intelligence, for a data center project.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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