House Gives Itself a Raise : Yearly Pay Would Go to $120,000

WASHINGTON — House members today voted to raise their pay more than $30,000 a year over the next 13 months while overhauling ethics rules in a move one congressman called a “game--we come with ethics reform and we sneak in a pay raise.”

The bill was passed 252 to 174, just 10 months after intense public criticism forced the House to reject a larger pay increase. The measure would increase members’ pay from the current $89,500 a year to more than $120,000 in 1991.

Comparable increases would go to top-level executive branch employees and to federal judges.

The new proposal sped through the House with strong support from the leaders of both parties and an endorsement from President Bush. A slight majority of Republicans voting opposed the bill despite Bush’s stance.

The Senate is expected to consider it Friday.

“I can understand and sympathize with people in my district who make $15- and $20- and $30,000 a year who would have trouble understanding why this kind of pay level is needed,” said House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

“But,” he told his colleagues, “in your heart and in your mind you know it’s the right thing to do.”

Rep. James A. Traficant (D-Ohio) took a different view.

“I understand the game--we come with ethics reform and we sneak in a pay raise,” he said.

Traficant said members of Congress should have a pay increase, but not until they deal with serious economic problems confronting the nation.

But Rep. Frank McCloskey (D-Ind.) expressed the feeling of most members, saying: “This is a very difficult vote--one of the most difficult votes we will ever face. But a yes vote is the right vote. A pay raise is justified. There is a definite need to reduce stress--the financial stress--both on members and throughout the federal system.

“Unless the situation improves . . . this Congress is ultimately in danger of becoming a body comprised almost exclusively of Mother Teresas, Donald Trumps, Ralph Naders and idle rich kids. We cannot allow this to occur.”

Rep. Lynn Martin (R-Ill.), co-chairman of the task force that drafted the bill, said the new ethics code “removes the stigma that this House, this noble body, can be misused by outside interests,” and should “restore faith between those those who govern and those who are governed.”

The ethics reforms in the bill stem in part from the case of former Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), who resigned from the House in June after the House Ethics Committee charged him with evading limits on honorarium income and with accepting improper gifts.

The package would prohibit House members from accepting speaking fees and other honorariums, and limit all sources of outside income to 15% of their congressional pay.

The Senate and House have paid their members different salaries in the past. In 1982, the House accepted a 15% increase, which the Senate rejected and allowed unlimited honorariums. A year later, the Senate took the pay raise and set a cap on speaking fees.

The ethics rules approved today apply only to the House. The Senate will vote on its own version of the new rules.