The Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1992, says that whenever Congress gives itself a raise an election must intervene before it takes effect. This turned out to be a solution in search of a problem, because poor-mouthing demagogues usually keep Congress from giving itself any raises. The last one, which increased salaries to $174,000, was way back in January 2009. Since then, inflation has whittled down congressional pay by one-third.
What Congress does instead is vote itself tax cuts. That isn’t especially helpful to nonwealthy members (there are a few), but it is to the richest members, whose net worth is often in the hundreds of millions.
Granted, some of these rich legislators are Democrats—Nancy Pelosi, for instance, is worth $274 million, according to the “alternative data” firm Quiver Quantitative, which tracks congressional stock trades. But not a single Democrat voted in July for the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts contained in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill. The only legislators who voted themselves tax cuts were Republicans; not a single Republican voted against the bill.
The nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP, and Accountable.US took these facts as a cue to examine how much tax 10 of the wealthier congressional Republicans will recoup from the One Big, Beautiful Bill. For most of this sample, it’s in the five figures or more. That dwarfs the $5,600 maximum pay raise that Congress denied itself last December—and these members won’t have to wait for the next election to collect their windfall.
Representative Rob Bresnahan, Republican of Pennsylvania, refuses to accept his paycheck during the government shutdown, in solidarity with his district’s 10,000 federal employees, Social Security recipients, and recipients of housing and food assistance. The longest government shutdown in history (late 2018 and early 2019, prompted by then-President Trump’s hissy fit over funding for his border wall) lasted three weeks. In the unlikely event the current shutdown lasts that long, Bresnahan will be out about $10,000.
But it’s unlikely he’ll notice. Bresnahan’s net worth is about $48 million, according to Accountability.US, and his tax bill next year will drop by up to $23,600 thanks to the One Big, Beautiful Bill. Perhaps half of that savings will come from the “pass-through” provision in the bill, which, as I explained in July, is both eye-glazingly boring and very necessary to understand because it was the oligarchs’ big prize. The short description is that it’s a 20 percent deduction on income that goes untaxed as corporate income and instead is taxed as personal income. Bresnahan’s income last year was up to $1.97 million, and his pass-through income was up to $715,000. (The “up-to” calculations reflect the fact that members of Congress make public their financial information only within a certain range.) Nationwide, the pass-through provision will next year reduce taxes for the top 1 percent in the income distribution by an average of $27,000, according to ITEP.
Bresnahan is a piker compared to Representative Robb Wittman, Republican of Virginia. Wittman too has arranged for his pay to be withheld during the shutdown. As with Bresnahan, Wittman’s sacrifice won’t cramp his style because he’s worth about $6 million, according to Quiver Quantitative. The $10,000 Wittman would lose in a three-week shutdown is dwarfed by the $59,000 maximum his tax bill will go down next year thanks to the One Big, Beautiful Bill. (It’s also about half the minimum amount his tax bill will go down.) The tax’s pass-through provision is doing most of the work here. Bresnahan reported earning up to $883,000 in 2024, of which $508,000 was pass-through income.
Other maximum tax savings next year from the One Big, Beautiful bill: Representative Thomas Kean, Republican of New Jersey: $17,900; Representative Nick Begich, Republican of Arkansas: $10,000; Representative Ryan Zinke, Republican of Montana: $51,000; Representative Bill Huizenga, Republican of Michigan: $50,000; Representative Ken Calvert, Republican of California: $35,000; Representative Mike Carey, Republican of Ohio: $50,000; Representative John James, Republican of Michigan: $12,400; and Representative Ann Wagner, Republican of Missouri: $18,700. The pass-through tax break plays an outsize role in the biggest of these tax reductions.
None of these legislators, incidentally, ranks among the top 10 richest House members, or even the top 10 richest Republican House members, according to Quiver Quantitative. That group’s tax bills will go down considerably more.
I’ll gladly concede that the Republicans on ITEP’s and Accountable.US’s list didn’t vote for the One Big, Beautiful Bill entirely based on how they’d benefit personally. If you’re a Republican legislator and you vote against a Republican president’s tax cut then you’re committing political suicide. That’s one of many reasons why Republicans long ago—well before Donald Trump—ceased being a party that’s able to govern. They’re even less able now.
Still, rather than cluck over the paltry raises Congress never seems able to grant itself, we’d do much better to focus on the much larger raises that the wealthier congressional Republicans granted themselves in last summer’s tax bill. It likely benefits Trump even more, but that assumes—perhaps rashly—that he’ll pay any tax at all on his huge run-up in net worth in 2025.
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