Republicans vote to reduce Pete Buttigieg's salary to $1

[tallslenderguy]

"House Republicans moved to reduce Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s salary to $1, as lawmakers debate spending bills ahead of the government funding deadline next week.

The salary cut for Buttigieg was put forth by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and adopted by voice vote as an amendment to the 2024 Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill.

“Pete Buttigieg doesn’t do his job. It’s all about fake photo ops and taxpayer-funded private jet trip to accept LGBTQ awards for him,” Greene posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I’m happy my amendment passed, but he doesn’t deserve a single penny.”

The underlying bill needs to be approved by the full House and is unlikely to be approved by the Senate."

[think before following links] https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/4298685-house-gop-attempts-to-cut-buttigieg-salary-to-1-via-spending-bill/

[hntnhole]

I still have my "Boot-Edge-Edge" shirt.  If I were about to get outta here, I'd put it on, and go kick her homely ass.  

Let's get the Dems to introduce a bill to reduce her check to a nickel.  She could stand to lose some weight off that overtaxed excuse for a brain.

[tallslenderguy]

"The Department of Transportation announced in February that it was reviewing Buttigieg’s use of FAA aircraft at the request of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican. It is also looking into the use of FAA planes by Elaine Chao, who was Transportation secretary during Donald Trump’s administration and is married to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

When the review was announced, Buttigieg had flown on FAA planes 18 times out of 138 flights for official trips since becoming secretary early in 2021, according to The Washington Post.He takes commercial flights most of the time, and when he uses FAA aircraft, it’s usually because it’s cheaper than commercial flights, a Department of Transportation spokeswoman said.

The review will “put some of the false, outlandish, and cynical claims about the secretary’s mode of travel to rest,” spokeswoman Kerry Arndt told the Post.

Transportation officials also said the total cost of Buttigieg’s flights on FAA planes up to that time was about $42,000. Chao took 15 FAA flights early in the Trump administration, and the cost of just one of them, which was international, was nearly $69,000, the Post reports.

When Buttigieg, the first out gay Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, received the award in Canada, he was representing the U.S. at the International Civil Aviation Organization General Assembly last year in Montreal. While he was there, Quebec LGBTQ+ organization Fondation Émergence presented him with the Laurent McCutcheon Award, which goes to someone who has contributed significantly to the advancement of LGBTQ+ rights. Laurent McCutcheon was the founding president of Fondation Émergence and the creator of the National Day Against Homophobia, now known as the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia."

[think before following links] https://www.advocate.com/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-dollar-buttigieg

 

[BootmanLA]

44 minutes ago, hntnhole said:

I still have my "Boot-Edge-Edge" shirt.  If I were about to get outta here, I'd put it on, and go kick her homely ass.  

Let's get the Dems to introduce a bill to reduce her check to a nickel.  She could stand to lose some weight off that overtaxed excuse for a brain.

Unfortunately, a series of court cases interpreting the compensation of elected officials would preclude that.

First, the Constitution itself says that Congress shall set the pay of representatives and senators. There's no provision allowing one representative or senator to be singled out for a pay increase or a pay decrease. (The leadership (Speaker, President Pro Tem, and Majority/Minority leaders in each chamber), make more, but it's because there's a salary supplement tied to those specific offices, not because they voted to give Mike Johnson or Mitch McConnell any extra money.) They've set the pay by statute (ie by law).

Secondly, the 27th amendment to the Constitution says that any law varying the compensation of senators or representatives (either increasing or decreasing) doesn't take effect until after an intervening election. So, for instance, if this Congress passed a law giving all members a $25,000/year pay raise, it would only take effect once the next Congress were sworn in, in January 2025 (by which time Greene and Boobert may both be gone). 

 

[BootmanLA]

Incidentally, the 27th amendment holds the record for the longest time between adoption by Congress and its ratification by the required number of legislatures. It was originally proposed as one of the first twelve amendments to the US Constitution in 1789. Ten of those were ratified in short order and became what today we call the Bill of Rights. But two other amendments were passed by Congress and submitted to the people, including this one.

Six of the original states approved this amendment in the 1790's (but the threshold for approval was 10). After admission to the Union, Kentucky ratified the amendment, but the threshold was continuing to grow with the admission of new states. Ohio ratified it in 1873, and there it stalled for more than a century.

In the 1970's, as public concern over Congress voting itself pay raises while the rest of the country struggled economically, some clever folks "rediscovered" the amendment, and realized it had no deadline for ratification. (More recently proposed amendments have set a deadline, typically 7 years or so, for ratification or else they're considered dead.) 

Wyoming (that bastion of anti-federal sentiment, even though GOP control of Congress at the time is the only reason it's a separate state) ratified in 1978. Shortly after, in 1983, a national movement was born to push states to ratify the amendment. Less than ten years later, enough states had signed on to put the amendment into the Constitution, more than 200 years after it was first proposed to the states. Two states that ratified early (New York and Kentucky), in an abundance of caution, ratified the amendment a second time. Subsequently, most of the rest of the states have ratified, with only four holdouts at present: Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, and Pennsylvania, not that their holdout makes the amendment any less valid.

[hntnhole]

3 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

Unfortunately, a series of court cases interpreting the compensation of elected officials would preclude that

Well, maybe I'll just accept the pleasure of wearing the shirt and giving her a Dehner right where it surely doesn't belong.  It's almost always too hot in SoFl for Full Dress anyway.  

Edited November 8, 2023 by hntnhole
speed-editing the text just doesn't work well ....

[bihairy]

6 hours ago, tallslenderguy said:

"House Republicans moved to reduce Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s salary to $1, as lawmakers debate spending bills ahead of the government funding deadline next week.

The salary cut for Buttigieg was put forth by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and adopted by voice vote as an amendment to the 2024 Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill.

“Pete Buttigieg doesn’t do his job. It’s all about fake photo ops and taxpayer-funded private jet trip to accept LGBTQ awards for him,” Greene posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I’m happy my amendment passed, but he doesn’t deserve a single penny.”

The underlying bill needs to be approved by the full House and is unlikely to be approved by the Senate."

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/4298685-house-gop-attempts-to-cut-buttigieg-salary-to-1-via-spending-bill/

We should reduce Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green's salary to $1.00.

[hntnhole]

1 hour ago, bihairy said:

We should reduce Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green's salary to $1.00.

That'd be letting her off really cheap - but then, that's probably appropriate in her case.  

[PozBearWI]

1 hour ago, bihairy said:

We should reduce Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green's salary to $1.00.

If we could, I would.

[Guest]

I thought the attack on ol' Booty-judge was down to his incompetence and misuse of the federal airfleet, or something like that. If both accusations are true, he deserves to be axed, while not deserving of any money from the US taxpayers.

[hntnhole]

He went from mayor of Studebaker-town to Sec'y of Transportation.  That hardly reflects incompetence,  

[BootmanLA]

16 hours ago, Yorksub said:

I thought the attack on ol' Booty-judge was down to his incompetence and misuse of the federal airfleet, or something like that. If both accusations are true, he deserves to be axed, while not deserving of any money from the US taxpayers.

The part about the "federal airfleet" is the fact that he took a certain number of flights - FOR HIS JOB - aboard FAA-owned aircraft. The FAA is one of the agencies within the department he oversees.

1. To my knowledge there is no law or regulation prohibiting that kind of thing.

2. His predecessor, Elaine Chao (wife of Senate GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell), also took such flights. One such flight of hers cost more, by itself, than all of Buttigieg's FAA flights added together.

3. Sometimes, a federal official needs to get from point A to point B by a certain time and a government flight is the only way to do that short of a private charter plane (which is far, far more expensive).

4. It's been well documented that for most of his flights, the Secretary has flown commercially, not on government planes, and in coach.

This is nothing but a bunch of GOP bitches trying to concoct a scandal over a practice that is widespread and blatant in GOP administrations but somehow only a problem when a Democrat does it.

Maybe instead of opining that it's "or something like that" you might use that powerful tool at your disposal called the Internet and read what the actual controversy is, instead of belching out nonsense.