The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.
ARTICLE I, SECTION 6, CLAUSE 1
COMMENT: There
were two critical questions that the Framers attempted to solve: Would federal
legislators be paid at all? And, if so, would they be paid by their respective
states, or by the federal government?
The
first question was whether the federal legislators would be paid at all. The
Framers feared that unpaid legislators would turn corrupt in order to
supplement their very own incomes. They thought that not paying legislators might
attract candidates without a sense of duty to their country, and limit the
candidates to being wealthy – inadvertently creating a legislative plutocracy.
The
second question dealt with the source of payment. Most of the Framers wanted
the legislators to be paid by the Federal Government verses by the States,
which was the case under the Articles of Confederation. They thought that being
paid by federal funds would make them less beholden to the states since they
were being called to a national service.
Currently,
Congress has broad flexibility is designing legislative compensation schemes;
however, it is subject to the Twenty-Seventy Amendment that prevents a sitting
congress from giving itself a raise that takes effect during its term.
