The Games Congress Plays

By Hays Gorey/ Washington

"That's what leaders are for, to take the heat," drawled House Speaker Jim Wright, sporting his trademark country-boy grin. It has seldom been hotter than it has been since plans for a 51% pay hike for top Government officials, including members of Congress, touched off a political fire storm.

Disk jockeys across the country broadcast Wright's telephone number, provoking a barrage of angry calls from outraged citizens. Republican Senator Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire juxtaposed a bandit's mask with a portrait of Wright, solemnly intoning that "a pay raise without a vote is stealing." Later Humphrey came as close to blows as Senators ever do with fellow Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska, who favors the pay hike, during a heated exchange at a committee hearing on the subject. Some of Wright's House colleagues, the vast majority of whom want the raise, have started comparing him, unfavorably, with Sam Rayburn, another Texan who once occupied the Speaker's chair.

Unless rejected by both houses of Congress, the raise, recommended by a salary-review commission composed of wealthy Washington insiders, will automatically go into effect this week. But last week Wright, who had steadfastly refused to schedule a vote on the pay increase for Congress, judges and other high-ranking Government officials, tried to turn the thermostat down a notch. He conducted his own confidential poll of House members -- with results startlingly different from those obtained by news organizations. Nearly 60% of the lawmakers told Wright they wanted the raise to go through without a vote. Polls in which members were named and positions stated showed upwards of 60% wanting to vote on, and thus kill, the measure.

Just hours before the Senate righteously denounced and rejected the pay raise (knowing full well that the House would ride to the rescue), a wilted Wright reversed field, declaring that the House would vote after all -- to reduce the pay hike, once it goes into effect, to 30%. That would still leave the lawmakers with a hefty increase, from $89,500 to $116,350, rather than to $135,000. (Since Congress received its last raise, a 16% increase in 1987, inflation has remained at an annual rate of just 4.4%.) Or as Wright and members seeking re-election next year hope voters see it, the House vote will reduce congressional pay, since the new salaries will be in effect when the vote is taken on Thursday.

In an attempt to mollify the 98% of the populace that earns less than members of Congress do now, the House will also vote to ban honorariums -- fees for speaking, or just showing up, at special-interest-group functions. Wright noted that since, under current rules, members are allowed to keep up to $26,000 a year in honorariums, "they'll come out about the same in income" with the 30% raise. But few House members earn the maximum in honorariums, so most will be better off. The House bill will also cut back salary increases for Executive-department officials and judges, even though the Constitution prohibits reducing judges' pay. "We'll let them fight it out," presumably through a court challenge, says the Speaker.

Wright's disingenuous scheme is by no means certain of approval by the Senate, where foes have abandoned hope of preventing the pay hike and will instead try to rescind it fully some weeks or months from now. The Senators' ardor, however, may subside once those fatter paychecks begin landing on their desks.