Bickering lawmakers in Washington, DC, raked in over $20,000 each at the expense of American taxpayers during the longest US government shutdown in history, according to official data reviewed by The Post.
President Donald Trump ended the record 43-day closure with the stroke of a pen on Wednesday night after a handful of moderate Dems finally joined Republicans to end the standoff that the White House estimates cost the economy a whopping $15 billion per week.
Members of Congress grabbed a total of more than $10 million during the shutdown that saw food stamp aid slashed, travel chaos unleashed across the US, and more than 1 million federal workers go without pay.
Kevin Hassett, one of Trump’s top economic advisers and a candidate to become the next chair of the Federal Reserve, said Thursday that 60,000 private sector jobs were lost as a result of the economic malaise from the shutdown.
Hard-left Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had pushed for the standoff to continue. She lashed out at the seven Democratic Senators and one Dem-leaning independent who worked with the GOP to reopen the government, claiming they failed to win enough concessions on healthcare funding.
The progressive firebrand said she “certainly disagreed with what just happened” when asked whether she still backed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
“We had a responsibility to develop, to deliver on health care subsidies, and the Senate failed to do that,” Ocasio-Cortez fumed Wednesday.
Lawmakers in both the 100-member Senate and the 435-seat House of Representatives were able to bag their constitutionally-protected $174,000 annual salary while federal workers — including the pols’ own staff and even senior Trump administration officials — went without a regular paycheck for over a month.
Rank-and-file members of Congress earn about $476.71 a day before tax, based on data compiled by the Congressional Budget Office.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has the highest annual salary on the Hill — $223,500 — meaning he got more than $26,330 during the federal funding lapse, or an estimated $612.33 a day.
The president pro tempore of the Senate and the majority and minority leaders in both chambers get a $193,400 annual salary, coming to an estimated $530 per day.
The lawmakers’ pay is guaranteed by Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, which states their salaries are “paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”
Some 55 senators said they refused to accept their paychecks. But one of them — Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — blocked a bill drafted by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that would have stopped the lawmakers’ paychecks for the duration of the shutdown.
A handful of members, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), said they would donate their pay to charity while the government remained shuttered.
Unlike much government spending, funding for the pols’ pay doesn’t need to be renewed annually, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the Capitol’s in-house think-tank.
That is thanks to a permanent appropriation deal struck back in 1983 under then-President Ronald Reagan.
The Bipartisan Policy Center think-tank estimates 670,000 federal employees were furloughed and 730,000 continued to work without pay.
Its research found that 1.3 million active-duty military personnel and over 750,000 National Guard and reserve personnel were also affected.
Those who saw their salaries frozen will now receive back pay after Trump signed the order to reopen the government on Wednesday night.
Joe Grogan, who served in the Office of Management and Budget during President Trump’s first term, lambasted Dem lawmakers over the funding row, accusing them of hypocrisy.
“Maybe the Democrats would have been more reluctant to shut the government down for a political stunt if they were forced to live like Americans who couldn’t get food stamps, or had their flights cancelled, or didn’t get paid for their work in a federal agency,” Grogan, who oversaw domestic healthcare spending of $1.3 trillion in the last Trump administration, told the Post.
“Maybe Members should heed the ‘No Kings’ chant and serve the people rather than treat them like peasants to be ruled,” he added.
