Rep. Sanchez: I can't give up my paycheck

While some members of Congress are coming out to say that they don’t want to be paid during a government shutdown or would donate their pay to charity, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) says she’s not willing to forgo her salary.

“I have to tell you, I live paycheck to paycheck, like most Americans,” she said Thursday afternoon on MSNBC. “It's very difficult for me to say, ‘Hey, I can give up my paycheck,’ because the reality is, I have financial obligations that I have to meet on a month-to-month basis that doesn't make it possible for me.”

Sanchez, ranking member on the House Ethics Committee, said she has student loans, a 2-year-old son, and homes in her district and in Washington – expenses that mean she needs every paycheck she gets. House members’ 2011 salary is $174,000.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) wrote to colleagues Thursday morning to ask them to pledge to return their paychecks to the Treasury Department or to donate them to charity if there’s a shutdown. And the House and Senate have each passed separate measures to freeze their pay, though some opponents say it violates the 27th Amendment to the Constitution.

But to Sanchez, it’s a matter of dollars and cents.

“If you're a member of Congress who is a millionaire — and there are quite a few members of the House and Senate that are — it's really not a problem for them,” she said. “But they don’t share the experience that most Americans share, that I know, having grown up in a family of seven kids to immigrant parents, that you have to really stretch a paycheck to make sure that it covers everything. And, you know, this suggestion that it’s so easy for every single lawmaker to do that, that’s just simply not the case for a lot of us.”