My thanks to Pauline at Perennial Student for catching this. One of the more fun stories in recent years for those interested in the Constitution is the 27th Amendment, which was originally proposed as the 11th Amendment back in 1789; it wasn’t ratified at the time, but no deadline was set for ratification, so when a student at the University of Texas discovered it, the states were still able to consider it, and it was ultimately ratified in May 1992. The Amendment states,
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
The problem is, Congress is cheating, and the judiciary is letting them get away with it. Congress has continued to vote itself pay raises, it’s just called them COLAs (cost of living adjustments) instead, and the courts have refused to call them on it. Never mind that COLAs still “vary the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives,” the D.C. circuit of the Court of Appeals has ruled that the Amendment doesn’t apply to them—a flatly unreasonable and illogical reading of the text—and the Supreme Court has refused to hear any challenge to it.Why? Because Congress sets their pay. Congress can’t cut their pay, but only Congress can increase it. Our federal judiciary is letting Congress circumvent the Constitution and keep voting themselves pay raises to ensure they’ll keep raising the judges’ pay, too. In the larger scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal—but you know what? It’s still unconscionable.