By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau
U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica, has introduced legislation that would reduce congressional salaries and office budgets next year.
``Congress can't seriously talk about reining in spending in Washington and working to decrease our nation's debt if we don't step up and lead by example," Arcuri said in an e-mail to The Daily Star on Monday.
"During these tough economic times, American families have been forced to cut back and tighten their financial belts; we should expect Congress to do the same and set an example for the rest of the federal government."
"The Congressional Belt Tightening Act of 2010," a bill authored by Arcuri, would reduce congressional members' salaries and their office budgets by 5 percent next year and require votes to raise salaries.
The bill would hold congressional office budgets steady in 2012.
U.S. senators and representatives are paid $174,000 a year.
Majority and minority leaders in both houses are paid $193,400 a year, and the House speaker is paid $223,500, according to www.Answers.com: U.S. government info.
Under the present system, members' salaries are automatically raised each year to keep pace with inflation, unless Congress votes not to accept the raises.
Senators and representatives also have benefits, such as being able to opt into the federal employees' health care plan, and their pension plan permits retiring at age 50 with 20 years of service, or at 62 for all vested members.
Within hours of Arcuri's
e-mail, his Republican opponent, Richard Hanna, also e-mailed The Daily Star to criticize Arcuri's bill as ``pure hypocrisy.''
Hanna, a building contractor who lives in Barneveld, stated that Arcuri ``voted for the largest single bill in history "" the stimulus bill, for the two largest deficits in history and for a trillion-dollar health care plan.'' Hanna called Arcuri's bill ``a cynical and transparent effort to rebrand himself.''
Arcuri, who is in the second year of his second term,
noted he has voted for other deficit-reducing measures, including an omnibus appropriations bill that would have stopped congressional pay raises in 2010.
Arcuri also stated he returned ``over $120,000 (over 8 percent) of his official office budget to the U.S. Treasury in 2009 for federal budget deficit reduction.''
