CAPITOL HILL
National Taxpayers Union, said
many of his group’s members also
favor reforming another lush congressional benefit: pensions.
While employees around the
country are watching their retirement benefits vanish, congressional pensions remain generous—
two to three times more than what
similarly-salaried private-sector
workers typically get, according to
Sepp. After five years of service,
lawmakers who are 62 or older can
draw lifetime income. The longer
they serve, the greater the proportion of their salary they receive, up
to 80 percent if a member has put
in 32 years or more.
“It is therefore no wonder that
taxpayers, who often struggle to
provide the most meager of retirement benefits for themselves, find
Congress’s package so offensive,”
Sepp wrote in an open letter to
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in 2011.
“This is especially true since the
contributions lawmakers provide
to the system cover only a fraction
of their typical lifetime payouts.”
Where does the rest of the
money come from to fund lawmakers’ pensions? Taxpayers.
Great health insurance has long
been another perk of a job in Congress (although the health care
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08.05.12
reform law will force lawmakers
to participate in health insurance “exchanges” like the rest of
us in 2014). Until then, members
can choose from a variety of plans
available to federal employees.
They can’t be excluded because of
pre-existing conditions, and enrollment doesn’t require a waiting
period. By contrast, 74 percent of
workers with employer-sponsored
health care face waiting periods
averaging 2.2 months, according
to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
After leaving Congress, lawmakers eligible for pensions have
been allowed to keep their health
insurance, too (another perk that
will evaporate in 2014).
When all is said and done, the
biggest perk a legislator corrals is
when he or she finally calls it quits
and wanders over to K Street. An
influential former senator or chairman of an important committee, for
example, can fetch a seven-figure
salary as a lobbyist or “adviser.”
No fewer than 160 former members of Congress are registered
as lobbyists today, according to
First Street, a lobbying analytics
company. And that total excludes
the many former lawmakers, like
Tom Daschle and Chris Dodd, who
are top advisers to K Street firms