WASHINGTON -- At the time, James Madison described it as the "least likely" of any power a future Congress would abuse.

"But," he warned fellow members of the first House of Representatives in the summer of 1789, "there is a seeming impropriety in leaving any set of men without control to put their hand into the public coffers, to take out money to put in their pockets."

To correct this minor defect in the new government, Madison proposed a constitutional amendment that would effectively prohibit members of Congress from voting themselves a midterm pay raise.

On Monday, 202 years after the First Congress sent Madison's idea to the states, U.S. Archivist Don W. Wilson formally proclaimed that, with the ratification of 40 state legislatures, the proposal had become the 27th Amendment.

Wilson's action had been expected since last week, when he announced he would certify the amendment as part of the Constitution despite concerns that it took more than 200 years for Madison's idea to win approval of three- fourths of the states.

Publication of Wilson's proclamation in today's edition of the Federal Register is the only action required by Washington officials, most of whom agree Wilson's approval is a formality. What the proclamation leaves unsettled is the amendment's impact on Congress, a number of whose members had earlier suggested that they might try to block it.

Congressional leaders on Monday considered passage of a joint resolution endorsing the amendment, but some suggested that an idea well known to every federal employee but unheard of in colonial times is threatening to cloak the new amendment in still more controversy.

The emerging furor is over the automatic cost-of-living allowances -- a COLA in bureaucratic parlance -- that Congress voted itself in 1989 in a controversial pay bill that stopped lawmakers from accepting speech honoraria.

House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash., and other congressional leaders have said that Madison's 24-word amendment will not bar Congress from continuing to accept mid-term cost-of-living adjustments, which congressional leaders have used since 1989 to boost their pay from $89,500 to $129,500 a year.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who has been a leading critic of what he calls the "midnight pay raise," and Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, a leader of a group of freshman Republicans who rallied behind the Madison amendment, argued that members of Congress no longer can accept the midterm COLAs.

The next congressional COLA is scheduled for Oct. 1 and both Nader and Boehner said the new amendment has effectively barred any salary increase until after the Nov. 3 election.

"Obviously, to continue to receive COLA's without waiting for an election of representatives to have intervened is a violation of the spirit of the amendment," Boehner said in a statement. "... The power to give ourselves pay raises, including COLAs, without the express approval of the American public has been taken away."

The two said they based their opinions on the language of Madison's amendment. It states that "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the senators and representatives shall take effect until an election of representatives shall have intervened."

NO MID-TERM RAISES

James Madison drafted 12 constitutional amendments in the first Congress. Ten were quickly approved and became known as the Bill of Rights. The one Madison intended as Amendment No. 2 has become the 27th Amendment:

"No law varying the compensation for the services of senators and representatives shall take effect until an election of representatives shall have intervened."