Put this in a different thread, I'd like to see your comments since that one died.

In the mean time, there are 123 morons in our State House Anyone who abstained is counted as a "yea" because they knew it would pass, hence a no-vote is a yes.<br><br>I put this data into an Excel Spreadsheet if you want to do any more cross referencing. Rep/Dems who voted which way, where they are from.<br><br>File
is compressed because I can't upload the original to Talkback and
50megs.sux won't let me link directly to a .xls file. You either need
something that can decompress the file or I'd recommend you download WinRar.

Yes they do. Plus add in all those other little perks--gifts from corporations/business owners that somehow get lost in the shuffle and some of these people are making more than you would ever imagine.

I also think that people would be shocked if they saw how some of these people voted in December on this same issue and how they voted now. It wasn't about virtue it was about political appearances. And I'm not talking about True, Hickernell, Boyd or Denlinger.

They get all that to work 70 hours a week, give up their personal lives, and put up with people who do not respect their privacy (or do not understand how demanding the job is. Most of those guys left $150,000/year or more jobs to serve the public, and even with the raise and the perks, they don't make what they did before. I would give myself a raise if I could.

Please. If they can do so much better in the private sector, then they should just go back there. In the private sector, companies can only pay what is within the company's "budget". Many times, pay increases result from downsizing other positions in the company and the "wealth" gets spread to those remaining, along with the additional responsibilities.

This pay raise was just greedy. And the way that it passed through was very shady. Add to that the fact that the increases voted for and passed should not have been paid for another 18 months according to law. So what do our lawmakers do? They pass a law allowing for them to be paid for 'unvouchered expenses' immediately, so they won't have to wait for 18 months to pocket the taxpayer money for themselves.

And guess how much these unvouchered expense checks are for? The same amount as the pay increase the lawmakers just voted for.