'I will forgo my federal salary until we reach an agreement,' Manchin wrote to colleagues. Manchin: Give up shutdown pay

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is calling on his colleagues to join him in voluntarily giving up his salary if the government shuts down.

“While millions of American families will be impacted by a government shutdown — whether they are serving our country’s military, whether someone in their family is furloughed or whether they are unable to use critical government services — elected officials are the one group who will not be impacted. Just the opposite, in fact: We still get paid. How does that make any sense?” Manchin writes in a “Dear Colleague” letter. “That is why, if the government shuts down, I will take this pledge, and I urge you all — from the president and vice president to all members of Congress – to take it with me: I will forgo my federal salary until we reach an agreement. I will donate my salary to charity or return it to the Treasury until the government works again.”


On March 1, the Senate voted unanimously to pass a bill drafted by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that would prohibit salary payments to members of Congress and the president in the event of a shutdown. But the House, which took its own symbolic vote in favor of stopping congressional paychecks, never took up the Boxer bill. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was a leading proponent of ratification of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits lawmakers from altering their pay in the same Congress in which they vote on it. The amendment, first drafted in the nation’s early days, was finally ratified in 1992.

Boehner said in an interview Wednesday with ABC News that members of Congress “shouldn’t be getting paid” during a shutdown, “just like federal employees shouldn’t be getting paid.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee responded by knocking Manchin for crucial votes he missed in December in order to attend a “holiday gathering.”

“This is nothing short of pure political posturing by multimillionaire Joe Manchin to cover up for the fact that he and his fellow Washington Democrats have failed to do their jobs,” said NRSC communications director Brian Walsh. “If Manchin is truly serious in his belief that politicians shouldn’t take money for not doing their jobs, he should return his salary for December when he decided to skip key votes in order to attend a Christmas party.”

Manchin’s pledge sidesteps the constitutional issue because it doesn’t involve changing payment laws. Instead, he is simply vowing to give away his salary for the duration of a shutdown.

“The bottom line is this: I can’t imagine that the president, vice president or any member of Congress — Republican or Democrat — thinks they should get paid when the government has shut down,” Manchin writes in the letter, a copy of which was provided by his office. “Finally, some in Washington will deride this as an empty gesture. To those naysayers, I say that the American people expect more of us. They expect us to lead by example and share their pain until a budget resolution is reached that reflects our values and priorities as a country.”

The website Politifact noted two constitutional angles in a recent analysis of claims made about stopping paychecks during a shutdown. “Article II, Section 1 says the president’s compensation ‘shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected.’ The 27th Amendment, meanwhile, says, ‘No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.’”