And as part of the deal to give McCarthy the speakership, the Office of Congressional Ethics, which was bipartisan and actually was doing a pretty good job policing the House in a bipartisan way for example, OCE led the charge against Madison Cawthorn’s AND AOC’s shady behaviors) has been gutted.
Likely paving the way for grift that will make the $34K increase look like chump change.
Grift is bipartisan.
If George Santos is praising this move…you know there’s something wrong with it.
Well when you read the article linked in the OP, there were some possibly good reasons for doing it. $175K seems like a lot, but you have to maintain a residence in DC and your own state, and that can be expensive.
However, it should not have been done clandestinely.
I would think past and present members and lobbiests are landlords and will know what they earn and will match it. Happens everywhere. Military housing allowance goes up so does rent ect. Government per diem goes up so do expenses. Electric car tax rebate, car cost goes up.
DC is a transitory city. A very large number of people who move there do it temporarily. More than 60% of the cities housing units are rentals - more than 200,000 (of which about 70,000 are houses, rather than apartments).
A housing allowance for 438 people isn’t going to make much of a dent in that.