Salary Commission Is Also a Casualty; Alternative Sought to Bring Home the Bacon
The rejection on Tuesday of a pay raise for top government officials was also a defeat for the 20-year-old system of setting executive, legislative and judicial pay scales based on the recommendations of a panel of prominent citizens.</br></br>The reliance on quadrennial commissions to recommend pay rates for judges, Cabinet secretaries, other departmental officials and members of Congress attracted ferocious opposition across the country during the past month.</br></br>Consumer activist Ralph Nader and radio talk show hosts fanned the scorn toward the nine members of the Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries for recommending a 51 percent pay increase to make up for the costs of inflation since 1969.</br></br>"The commission is an excellent design that can never work," said James Ferguson, chairman of the executive committee of General Foods and head of the commission in 1987.</br></br>The commission makes recommendations to the president, who can raise or lower them. The president's proposed salary scale goes into effect automatically in 30 days unless both houses of Congress reject it.