The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
Members of Congress get paid from the US Treasury and are generally exempt from being detained for legal violations while Congress is in session. While serving they aren’t allowed to be hold any other offices. I’d never heard of the word emoluments before, so I took another trip to merriam-webster.com to look up emoluments:
the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites
It’s a fancy word for salary. Good idea to not allow them to vote themselves raises for their current term.
Other Constitution posts.
4 replies on “The Constitution of the United States: Article I – Section 6”
This came up recently:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/04/clinton.eligible/index.html?eref=rss_politics&iref=polticker
Wow, very recently 🙂
This is an interesting situation. I didn’t realize that the President could increase their salaries by simply signing an executive order. I wonder if this has ever been used strategically. Say that in the next Presidential election Obama looses and Republican is elected, then the day before the new President is sworn he signs an executive order raising the salary of all Congressionally approved positions. He would then trigger this clause for any and all Senators and Representatives.
If there weren’t a precedent for this already (not once, but twice), then I’d tend to agree with Judicial Watch. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about being required to take the original salary in order to take the position, it expressly forbids it taking the position at all under these circumstances. But given that this situation has been side stepped before I’m inclined to allow the side stepping in this case too.
The right thing to do though would be to amend the Constitution to make it possible under a certain set of circumstances, like requiring them to take the original salary.
Yeah it looks like she can just take lower salary (it’s 4k a year to someone worth 9 figures) and it avoids the whole issue.
I could see the argument on the other side though, where even though she’d be willing to take the lower salary (as you mentioned, not like she needs the extra $4k) she still wouldn’t be allowed to accept the position. The triggering event for disqualification in the text isn’t the actual dollar amount to be paid after taking the position, but the fact that an increase took place at all.
In principle I’d be fine with a Constitutional Amendment that changed the wording so that they’d be required to take the original salary.