It's Above Your Pay Grade

Not even House Democrats are blockheaded enough to try to pass a congressional pay raise right now, which is I guess good news considering they actually did try it and the response was exactly what you would expect to an organization polling slightly below drug-resistant gonorrhea.

House Democratic leaders are postponing consideration of a bill that would include a pay raise for members of Congress, after facing a major backlash from the party's most vulnerable members.

Top Democrats agreed in a closed-door meeting Monday night to pull a key section of this week’s massive funding bill to avoid escalating a clash within their caucus over whether to hike salaries for lawmakers and staff for the first time in a decade, multiple lawmakers confirmed.
At least 15 Democrats — mostly freshmen in competitive districts — had pushed to freeze pay after some Democratic and Republican leaders quietly agreed to the slight pay increase earlier this month.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) confirmed to POLITICO after the meeting that he "thinks" they would pull the bill so that Democrats can resolve the issue of congressional pay raises.

The issue flared up in the Democratic leadership meeting on Monday, where there was an intense discussions of whether to force members to go on the record about a pay raise, which some battleground Democrats believed would create a target on their back in 2020.

"Nobody wants to vote to give themselves a raise. There's nothing good about that," said Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.), who attended Monday's meeting.

But Hill said she also believed the issue deserved more discussion to ensure that stagnant pay wasn't deterring average Americans from running for office — particularly if they already live in districts with high costs of living. 

The potential vote set off Democratic political consultants who warned that if members were on the record supporting a pay raise for themselves it could be seen as tone deaf. One strategist called it “political suicide” for freshman Democrats in swing districts if they were made to take the vote. 

Stagnant pay in the House isn't deterring average Americans from running for office, you dolt.  It's the millions of dollars necessary to run for office that's doing that, and thanks to Citizens United, that will be the case for the foreseeable future.  If you don't have the money to play, you get buried by the guy who does 99% of the time.

I really shouldn't have to explain this to House Democrats, but here we are.