NO TO AUTOMATIC PAY RAISES IN CONGRESS

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, has responded quickly to the move to grant members of Congress an automatic, $3,000 cost-of-living pay raise. The raise was buried deep in a big spending bill, but that hasn't hidden the controversy.

Emerson, who opposed the move from the beginning, is among 27 lawmakers who sponsored a bill to halt the practice. If passed by Congress and signed into law by the president before Jan. 1, the Congressional Integrity and Accountability Act would prohibit any automatic salary increases.

Emerson concedes the unlikelihood of success in this endeavor. The bill allowing the increases passed by the narrow vote of 220-207 in the House and 55-45 in the Senate after it was backed by the leadership of both parties. As things stand now, Congress will likely adjourn and go home for the year within the next three weeks.

Still, Emerson is right to make the effort, if only to call attention to the issue. Like most who voted no, Emerson is a freshman lawmaker whose short tenure in office makes her somewhat more responsive to opinion back home than those whose longer tenure makes their re-election a near certainty.

Most important, Emerson is right to direct her fire not so much on the idea of an increase, but on the nature of the mechanism for locking in automatic, annual cost-of-living increases. The days of back-door, automatic pay increases, even if they're sold as cost-of-living adjustments, should have gone by the boards with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Voters can get out a worn copy of the GOP Contract with America and search in vain for any mention of this particular reform.

Members of Congress have tough, enormously time-consuming jobs, and all Americans have an interest in attracting to these difficult positions the best talent we can find. Members of the House, especially, are non-stop campaigners who must return to their districts nearly every weekend and run every two years. Senators represent literally millions of constituents and must balance competing interests on difficult issues. It is likely that few voters stop to think that these officials must maintain two homes: one in their states and another in the D.C. area, which is one of the nation's most expensive housing markets. Given these facts, the budgets they deal with and the demands on their time, their current pay of $133,000 per year isn't out of line.

What many Americans will choke on is the idea of automatic, built-in increases tied to a cost-of-living adjustment. In this regard it is interesting, as always, to reference the Constitution. There you will find a provision that says that members of Congress may not vote themselves an increase in compensation until there is an intervening election. (Once again, the Founders foresaw possible abuses and tried to build into the system a means of checking them.)

Would the new congressional cost-of-living adjustments offend this particular section of the Constitution, begging to be struck down? Only time, and a possible court case, can tell that tale.

Meanwhile, Emerson and her cohorts are to be commended for persevering in their effort to get this one right.