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97-1011 — Salaries of Members of Congress: Recent Actions and Historical Tables

Reports · published 2026-05-06 · v97 · Active · crsreports.congress.gov ↗

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Authors
Ida A. Brudnick
Report id
97-1011
Summary

Congress is required by Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution to determine its own pay. In the past, Congress periodically enacted specific legislation to alter its pay; the last time this occurred affected pay in 1991. More recently, pay has been determined pursuant to laws establishing formulas for automatic adjustments. The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 established the current automatic annual adjustment formula, which is based on changes in private sector wages as measured by the Employment Cost Index (ECI). The adjustment is automatic unless denied statutorily, although the percentage may not exceed the percentage base pay increase for General Schedule (GS) employees. Member pay has since been frozen in two ways: (1) directly, through legislation that freezes salaries for Members but not for other federal employees, and (2) indirectly, through broader pay freeze legislation that covers Members and other specified categories of federal employees. Members of Congress last received a pay adjustment in January 2009. At that time, their salary was increased 2.8%, to $174,000. Subsequent adjustments were denied by P.L. 111-8 (enacted March 11, 2009), P.L. 111-165 (May 14, 2010), P.L. 111-322 (December 22, 2010), P.L. 112-175 (September 28, 2012), P.L. 112-240 (January 2, 2013), P.L. 113-46 (October 17, 2013), P.L. 113-235 (December 16, 2014), P.L. 114-113 (December 18, 2015), P.L. 114-254 (December 10, 2016), P.L. 115-141 (March 23, 2018), P.L. 115-244 (September 21, 2018), P.L. 116-94 (December 20, 2019), P.L. 116-260 (December 27, 2020), P.L. 117-103 (March 15, 2022), P.L. 117-328 (December 29, 2022), P.L. 118-47 (March 23, 2024), P.L. 119-4 (March 15, 2025), and P.L. 119-37 (November 12, 2025). The Member pay freeze has generally been included in a larger bill—usually an appropriations bill—with no separate votes held on that provision. The maximum potential 2027 Member pay adjustment is 2.8%, or $4,900. The draft bill released by the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch on April 29, 2026, would prohibit any adjustment. The cumulative impact of all freezes since the implementation of the Ethics Reform Act, and since the current Member pay freeze began in 2009, is calculated below. If Members of Congress had received every adjustment prescribed by the ECI formula since 1992, and the statutory limitation (2 U.S.C. §4501) regarding the percentage base pay increase for GS employees remained unchanged, the hypothetical 2025 salary would have been $247,400. Salaries in this scenario would be $249,900 in 2026. Applying the same methodology to the Member pay rate since 2009 of $174,000, if Member pay had not been statutorily frozen in the subsequent years, the hypothetical 2025 salary would have been $221,600 (assuming the GS base limit remained in place, and including rounding). Salaries in this scenario would be $223,800 in 2026. These freezes have compounded over time. When adjusted for inflation, Member salaries have decreased approximately 33% from 2009—when Member pay was last adjusted—through 2025. Both the automatic annual adjustments and funding for Members’ salaries are provided pursuant to other laws (2 U.S.C. §4501)—not the annual appropriations bills—and a provision prohibiting a scheduled adjustment could be included in any bill, or introduced as a separate bill.

Bills cited (61)

Curated by CRS — every bill listed in this report's relatedMaterials. Edge type cited_in_report, gold confidence.

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