Richer than ever, mostly at very top
The people’s representatives just keep getting richer, and they’re doing so faster than the people they represent. The cumulative net worth of senators and House members jumped by one-fifth in the two years before the start of this Congress, outperforming the typical American’s improved fortunes as well as the solid performance of investment markets during that time.
The disparity becomes clear after examining the most recent financial disclosures of virtually every current lawmaker. The news is not likely to do them any good during a midterm campaign year when disapproval of Capitol Hill remains in record territory and sentiment remains strong that politicians in Washington are far too disconnected from the lives of their constituents.
The total wealth of all current members was at least $2.43 billion when the 115th Congress began, 20 percent more than the collective riches of the previous Congress, a significant gain during a period when both the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose slightly less than 10 percent.
Beyond that grand total, the median minimum net worth of today’s senators and House members was $511,000 at the start of this Congress, an upward push of 16 per- cent over just two years — and quintuple the median net worth of an American household, which the Federal Reserve pegged at $97,300 in 2016.
The financial disparity between those who try to govern and those who are governed is almost certainly even greater than that.
Members of Congress are not required to make public the value of their residences and their contents, which are the principal assets of most Americans. Nor are they required to reveal their other assets and debts to the penny, or even close — instead using 11 broad categories of value (starting at less than $1,000 and topping out at $50 million or more) that do a comprehensive job of obscuring what each member is precisely worth. Erring on the conservative side, Roll Call estimates each member’s wealth by subtracting the minimum reported value of all immediate family liabilities from the minimum reported value of all assets.
Notwithstanding the limits of the annual (and minimally policed) disclosure rules, it’s clear the Capitol remains as populated as ever with a disproportionate share of very well-heeled.
Millionaire lawmakers always been a part of the congressional story — from the landed gentry who created and first populated the legislative branch, through the industrialists who wielded outsize influence in the Gilded Age, to the corporate bosses and old-money heirs who larded the cloakrooms through the end of the Cold War.
What’s marked recent years, a time when wealth disparity has grown wider than ever in American history, is the arrival of so many of the super-rich. For every 13 members, in fact, one may fairly be dubbed a “1 percenter,” the term of derision imposed by liberal groups on the richest 1 percent of Americans.
Data from the Fed pegged the net worth threshold for these people at $10.4 million in 2016, a mark exceeded by 26 Republicans and 17 Democrats.
At the high end of that group are 10 House members and three senators worth more than $43 million, which the Fed calculates as the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of the population.
These lawmakers, plus seven others with a minimum net worth above $7.5 million, make the most recent roster of the 50 richest members of Congress, which Roll Call has been compiling since 1990.