That didn’t take long. She’s been on the job not quite three months, and already Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is demanding a raise. Not that her salary, which at $174,000 a year is probably ten time as much as she was making as a bartender, is anything to sneeze at. Besides, what ever happened to all her talk about sharing the wealth? As a member of Congress, she is being paid more than three times the median U.S. household income of $56,516.
In a recent tweet, Ocasio-Cortez ourlined her grievances, lamenting that the job of being a Congress member requires two residences,” which is not entirely true. Back in November, shortly after she was elected and harped on a “flaw of the electoral system,” which makes no provision for paying members of Congress until they are sworn in, LU’s Howard Portnoy observed:
She could of course do what many neophyte and even some seasoned members of Congress have done for eons and take up residence in her congressional office.
She could also choose not to live in a “luxury apartment building with a wide array of amenities where rent for even a studio apartment exceeds $2,000 a month.” But that, according to the Washington Free Beacon, is where she has taken up residency in the District of Columbia.
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Ocasio-Cortez may have trouble winning the support of her constituents since, Business Insider reports, 55% of Americans think Congress should get a cut in pay, not an increase.
