Congressional COLAs

The premise for Social Security should be evaluated. The benefit schedule should be examined in the context of recipient need and the solvency of the system. That’s clear enough to most Americans.

Unfortunately, not only do some members of Congress lack the will to open the national debate on this issue, two years ago they put through the shredder their moral credentials to get into the dialogue.

The COLA system, as an automatic entitlement of employment, is a creature of the federal government. No other employer can afford to make its workers the promise that wages will increase with inflation, regardless of economic conditions.

And guess who’s near the top of the heap when the COLAs are handed out in Washington?

Congress.

After wilting from the public heat on its proposed raise two years ago, the Senate later snuck in a $23,200 pay increase to its members, and thoughtfully built in a COLA for both houses with a customized index for an annual wage boost. They didn’t want to run the public-relations gantlet again.

As a result, for 1993, while many Americans scrimp, deal with recession and pray, not for higher wages, but that their job will be there the next morning, members of Congress will get a raise, via their COLA, of more than $8,000.

Such unwarranted generosity illustrates one reason that taxpayers were so upset in the bitter debate over the pay raise: It makes Congress part of the problem.

Can people who will accept that much money in this national economy courageously examine a social-security system that sends out an average check of $653? Possibly, but only with great difficulty. By accepting this money, members of the Senate and House add to their burden.

The federal government’s routine dispensing of COLAs, its lavish retirement system, which builds in debt, and other entitlements of the bureaucracy, must go on the table with Social Security in this national debate.

Unfortunately, members of Congress have had neither the wisdom nor the courage to place themselves above issues of federal largess — they are buried in them, up to their necks.