THE RICHEST CONGRESS EVER
Not all politicians come into office wealthy — but many leave that way.
That’s one reason we hear a lot about the “swamp” in Washington, D.C.
Our familiarity with the term largely began when self-described billionaire Donald Trump convinced enough voters that he would be the voice of hard-working Americans who haven’t had raises in a decade and whose children have a hard time finding and keeping good jobs.
It turns out, of course, that President Trump hasn’t been the voice of hard-working Americans. But that was just the first pledge he broke. The second was his promise to “drain” the swamp.
But he didn’t divest himself of his own businesses. Instead, he and his family continue to profit, even on a federally owned vintage post office building in Washington which his company leases and operates as a hotel despite an obvious conflict of interest. As president, he is his own landlord and oversees anyone who might inspect his post office/hotel profits. Meanwhile, foreign and domestic visitors who do business with the White House often stay at this hotel and eat there, hoping to curry Trump’s favor.
Not only did Trump make no effort to drain the swamp as promised, he filled his cabinet with still more swamp creatures — more multimillionaires from big banks, big corporations and big Congress.
Yes, big Congress. A majority of our Congress members are now millionaires. In 2015, 70 percent of our 100 senators were millionaires, and 35 percent of them boasted a net worth of more than $3.1 million each.
Add to that, half of the 435 U.S. House of Representatives members were worth more than $888,508.
The salary of a typical member of Congress is $174,000. Good savers, you think?
Perhaps. But senators especially increased their net worth in 2015 — the most recent year for which we have a complete picture — at a far greater rate than Congress as a whole.
In 2015, the median net worth of Senate Republicans rose from $2.9 million to $3.3 million, a jump of 13 percent. The net worth of Senate Democrats rose 9 percent, according to personal financial disclosure data filed by congressional members and reviewed by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research group that tracks money in U.S. politics — and its effect on elections and public policy. The center operates the popular OpenSecrets.org website where this information is found.
You might wonder: How much did the net worth of all combined U.S. households rise?
Answer: A mere 4.5 percent — about half the rate of increase for Democrat senators and about a third of the rate for Republicans.
No wonder these lawmakers don’t care whether we can afford health care. No wonder they don’t understand the pressures of ordinary middle-class Americans.
No wonder they peddle a tax cuts plan that gives nearly all of them big tax breaks — on our backs.
By the way, the typical American family earned $56,516 in 2015.