Amendment 27

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

This amendment is to ensure that congress can not give itself a raise.


This is a political cartoon of what could happen if the 27th amendment was not adopted in 1994. The amendment ensures that aside from the political implications of changing your pay, especially in a troubled economy, the pay raise that is voted in will not even take effect until after the next election. This discourages any frivolous pay raise bills that could be brought up in congress.


This is a graph of the annual salary for US congressman from 1860 to 2000. The annual salary was increased slightly to match inflation from 1860 to around 1960, but after that the increase in salary was much more agressive.