While Fox regularly complains about the poor getting too much government money, some Fox pundits think $174,000 a year is too little for Congresspeople.
Fox regular Ben Stein recently attacked Hillary Clinton as too wealthy to champion the middle class or poor. So you have to wonder what he thinks “middle class” is, given that he would not have a problem if everyone in Congress became a millionaire.
STEIN: I think these guys work incredibly hard. They’re really on the job seven days a week, many hours each day. I think they’re very underpaid. A Congressman is paid as much as the same as a starting lawyer at a big law firm, less than a starting investment banker. …I would have no problem if they raised their pay to a million dollars a year. …I think they’re wildly starved in terms of their pay, and this isn’t a joke.
To be fair, Stein has unequivocally called for raising the minimum wage. His Fox BFFs? Not so much.
Fox’s Charles Gasparino, Dagen McDowell and Charles Payne thought a pay raise for Congress was ridiculous. Gasparino tried to stick up for some working people. “I think subway drivers work harder, and I think subway drivers, people that work for the New York City Sanitation Department, work really hard. I think they should get paid a lot more money,” Gasparino said. “These are government jobs, they have certain guarantees.”
Host Neil Cavuto who acted like a raise to $15 an hour for McDonald’s workers actually came out of his pocket, now said about Congress, “I do think they’re due a raise.”
Liberal panelist Adam Lashinsky was for a Congressional pay raise. “I would pay them a lot more money commensurate with what they can get in the private sector, and then I would do really draconian rules that make it difficult for them to make money elsewhere,” he suggested.
Later, Stein also called for “a big raise” for the military, police and firefighters.
Maybe he could hold a telethon for those poor, underpaid members of Congress.
Watch it below, from the May 23 Cavuto on Business.