Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed Democratic leaders Tuesday after they killed legislation late Monday that would have given them a $4,500 pay raise after strong backlash from vulnerable legislators.
"Yep," Ocasio-Cortez began in a four-post tweetstorm. "Voting against cost-of-living increases for members of Congress may sound nice, but doing so only increases pressure on them to keep dark money loopholes open.
"This makes campaign-finance reform harder," she said. "All workers deserve cost of living increases, including minimum-wage workers."
Top Democrats agreed to strike part of a government funding bill that would have given Congress members the $4,500 raise next year, the first since 2009.
Currently, legislators make about $174,000. The raises are guaranteed by a 1989 federal ethics law, Politico reports.
But Republicans — and as many as 15 Democrats, mostly newcomers in swing districts — argued against the raise, saying it would make them vulnerable in next year's elections, according to reports.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told Politico after the stormy session he "thinks" top Democrats would pull the pay raise plan for further discussion.
But Ocasio-Cortez told reporters afterward outside the Capitol that the pay raise was not really an increase in compensation and bashed the delay as "optics" and "superficial."
"Members of Congress, retail workers, everybody should get a cost-of-living increases to accommodate for the changes in our economy," she said.
"That's my issue is that it's superficial," she added, referring to the postponement. "You can vote against pay increases all you want.
"In my opinion voting against a pay ... it's not even like a raise, it's a cost-of-living adjustment."
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