Salaries of Members of Congress: A List of Payable Rates and Effective Dates, 1789-2008

Congress is required by Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution to determine its own pay. Prior to 1969, Congress did so by enacting stand-alone legislation. From 1789 through 1968, Congress raised its pay 22 times using this procedure. Congressional salaries initially were $1,500. By 1968, they had risen to$30,000. Stand-alone legislation may still be used to raise Member pay, as it was most recently in 1982, 1983, 1989, and 1991, but two other methods — including an automatic annual adjustment procedure and a commission process — are now also available. Under the annual adjustment procedure, Members were scheduled to receive a 2.7% increase in January 2008. The increase was revised to 2.5%, resulting in a salary in 2008 of $169,300, to match the percent increase in the base pay of General Schedule (GS) employees. By law, Members may not receive an increase greater than the increase in the base pay of GS employees. Congress voted to deny the scheduled January 2007 adjustment. Members last received a pay increase (1.9$165,200

Ensuring Continuity of Congress

Throughout its history, the U.S. Congress has had several brushes with catastrophe that threatened to prevent it from functioning or to change its balance of power. This report advances reforms to ensure that Congress can continue functioning if many of its members die or become incapacitated or if lawmakers\u27 ability to meet at the Capitol is challenged. It recommends procedures for (1) rapidly replacing members of Congress in the event of mass death or incapacity; (2) declaring members of Congress incapacitated during an emergency; and (3) implementing emergency protocols.https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/rule_of_law_clinic/1001/thumbnail.jp

Korea Rediscovers Organic Agriculture

Korea will host the next Organic World Congress in 2011. The early pioneers of organic farming looked to the East for both evidence and inspiration. Korea now appears to be in the process of rediscovering its organic farming heritage. It is now seeking recognition as an organic producer. South Korea has 46 members of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) and North Korea has two members. South Korean organic agriculture increased ten-fold from 2004 to 2009 with 9729 hectares now certified. South Korean organic farms increased six-fold in the period 2004 to 2009, from 1237 to 7507. Substantial further increases in Korea’s organic area seem likely in the immediate future. With Korea’s new-found commitment to organics comes the privilege of hosting the next triennial IFOAM Organic World Congress in 2011. In a further shift towards Asia, the new IFOAM World Board, elected at Modena in 2008, has four board members from Asia. Hosting the Organic Congress is expected to stimulate the Korean organic movement and be an opportunity to display local organic know-how, including organic rice cultivation techniques. Korea’s 17th IFOAM Organic World Congress has the theme “Toward an Environmentally Benign Community”, and the dates are 27 September to 5 October 2011. The Governor of Gyeonggi Province, Moon Soo Kim has a vision of making Korea “the world's most environmentally friendly country by 2011”

Congressional Gold Medals, 1776-2007

[Excerpt] Senators and Representatives are frequently asked to support or sponsor proposals recognizing historic events and outstanding achievements by individuals or institutions. Among the various forms of recognition that Congress bestows, the Congressional Gold Medal is often considered the most distinguished. Through this venerable tradition, the occasional commissioning of individually struck gold medals in its name, Congress has expressed public gratitude on behalf of the nation for distinguished contributions for more than two centuries. Since 1776, this award, which initially was bestowed on military leaders, has also been given to such diverse individuals as Sir Winston Churchill and Bob Hope, George Washington and Robert Frost, Joe Louis and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Most recently, a Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to internationally recognized physician and surgeon Dr. Michael Ellis DeBakey. Members of Congress and their staff frequently ask questions concerning the nature, history, and contemporary application of the process for awarding Gold Medals. This report responds to congressional inquiries concerning this process, and includes a historical examination and chronological list of these awards. It is intended to assist Members of Congress and staff in their consideration of future Gold Medal proposals, and will be updated as Gold Medals are approved

Congress and Asia-Pacific policy: dysfunction and neglect

Examines the role of the US Congress in policy toward the Asia-Pacific region. Key findings While partisan gridlock in Congress has hindered the execution of US foreign policy overall, it has disproportionately affected US policy towards the Asia Pacific because the region has had few champions in either house in recent years. To the extent individual members have focused on the region in recent years, it has often been in pursuit of narrow objectives focused on a single country or issue area, without reference to a broader strategy. Though there are signs of increased interest in the region among more junior members of the current Congress, the nature of that interest and whether it can be sustained will depend on how the Obama administration and its partners in the region engage them

Sexual Misconduct and Congressional Self-Governance

[Excerpt] Over the past year, a number of prominent politicians (including President Donald Trump) have been publicly accused of serious sexual misconduct and abuse of power. The question therefore has arisen: Can these politicians either be barred from taking office or removed from office on the basis of these accusations? There is only way to remove a sitting president: impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate. But the topic of impeaching and removing a president warrants its own column. This column will instead focus on what Congress may do when its members and members-elect face charges of wrongdoing

Tabled Labels: Consumers Eat Blind While Congress Feasts on Campaign Cash

As the Senate prepared to vote on its version of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) budget, Public Citizen released an investigation to illustrate how big agribusiness used millions of dollars in lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions, and a network of Washington insiders with close connections to the Bush administration and Congress, to thwart a consumer-friendly provision mandating country-of-origin labeling, popularly known as COOL.Mandatory country-of-origin labeling would require beef, pork, lamb, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, fish, and peanuts to be labeled with where they were raised, grown or produced. Although the 2002 Farm Bill stipulated that the new program be implemented by September 2004, mandatory COOL has been postponed by Congress -- where lawmakers are under intense pressure from the meat and grocery industries -- for two years. In June, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to once again delay COOL's implementation for meat until 2007. Industry is strongly lobbying the Senate to either delay the funding for the USDA to work on COOL or turn it into a "voluntary" program.Public Citizen analyzed donations from 19 companies and trade associations, each of which has announced opposition to mandatory country-of-origin labeling and has registered to lobby against COOL. They have contributed a total of $12.6 million to candidates for Congress and in soft money to the Republican and Democratic parties since 2000.These companies have focused their giving on 64 members of Congress who have sponsored a bill to replace the mandatory country-of-origin requirement with a voluntary one, which is considerably weaker and does not empower consumers with the right to know where their food is from. Instead, it offers industry a way to hide critical information from the public. These 64 members, accounting for only 12 percent of Congress, have received 28 percent of contributions to candidates from the COOL foes

The Continuity of Congress

The Continuity of Government Commission was originally formed after 9/11 to address how our key institutions can reconstitute themselves after a catastrophic attack. A new version of the commission, including previous members and new ones, who have experience in all three branches of government, met in 2021 and 2022 to consider continuity-of-government issues in light of the recent pandemic and other developments. In this report, the commission issues its recommendations on the continuity of Congress.The core continuity problem for Congress is that if many members of the House of Representatives were killed in an attack or other catastrophe, the House would likely have no quorum and be unable to meet for months after the event. Unlike the Senate, the House can fill its vacancies only by special election, and those elections are likely to take months to conduct.The key recommendation is for a constitutional amendment to allow for temporary replacements to be appointed to fill the seats of deceased members until special elections are held to elect a permanent replacement. With immediate successors to fill the seats of deceased members of Congress, a Congress with nearly full representation could be reconstituted within days to work with the president to face the challenges of the present emergency.The commission makes several other recommendations that deal with other continuity-of-Congress issues:Creating a limited provision for allowing remote proceedings when members of Congress cannot meet in person in Washington,Allowing temporary replacement members to fill in for incapacitated members in the extreme case when deceased and incapacitated members number more than a majority of the House or Senate, andAdopting procedures to ensure that a new Congress could commence, perhaps even remotely, if a catastrophic emergency prevented the regular opening of a new Congress

The limits of transnational solidarity : the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Swaziland and Zimbabwean crises

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the main union federation in South Africa, was instrumental in ending apartheid. This paper evaluates COSATU's post-apartheid role in working for democracy elsewhere in Southern Africa through deepening transnational solidarity, focusing on its role in Zimbabwe and Swaziland. Although the federation successfully mobilised trade union members to oppose the contravention of human and labor rights, its ability to affect lasting change was limited by contradictory messages and actions by the South African government, the dualistic nature of institutional formation in these countries, strategic miscalculations and structural limitations on union power

The Tweet Delete of Congress: Congress and Deleted Posts on Twitter

Since 2006, increasingly more politicians have joined , and are active on, social media networks, in order to reach out to constituents. However, politicians, such as Anthony Weiner, have started to find themselves in the middle of Twitter scandals and criticism, since their posts are openly available to the public. These ramifications may be leading politicians to delete their tweets, but thanks to the Sunlight Foundation and its website Politwoops, deleted tweets by politicians are now archived and ripe for political research. This raises the question Which members of Congress are deleting tweets and why? Thus, I conduct the first known qualitative study on Congress and deleted tweets, to determine what members may be trying to delete. An empirical analysis on raw data, including 500 deleted tweets by Congress members, was used to discover which posts, and by which members, are deleted more often. I hypothesize that Congress members, specifically Republican Senators, are more likely to delete negative tweets, such as posts that are unprofessional, against their constituents\u27 views, or contain controversial issues, in order to ensure public support and avoid backlash