Marchand is the director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
"We want a raise!" is a sentiment that many can relate to ... up to a point. Even though congressional salaries have been frozen for a decade (at $174,000 a year plus generous benefits), taxpayers across the country are understandably outraged that members of Congress are trying to vote themselves a raise. The issue appears to have been shelved for the time being, but will surely be back on the agenda sooner rather than later.
Some supporters of a pay hike argue that even higher compensation would attract better talent and deter members of Congress from pursuing lucrative lobbying jobs at the end of their tenure. In reality, America is stuck with the same jokers whether their salaries are set at $1 or $1,000,000. The best that taxpayers can do is hold members of Congress accountable for their reckless spending. The best Congress can do is to actually do something to prove they have earned the raise.
Since enactment of a 2009 law blocking automatic cost-of-living increases for members of Congress, lawmakers' salaries have fallen 16 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. It's far from obvious that this salary slide is a bad thing, considering that members of Congress make more than thrice the median full-time U.S. worker (who earns less than $50,000 per year). This assumes that the typical American worker and member of Congress log a similar number of hours, which is far from the case. John Q. Taxpayer is expected to show up to the office around 260 days out of the year, versus almost always less than 190 days for lawmakers! And for America's representatives and senators the (potentially lifelong) health insurance benefits are great, and the free gym, parking, and million-dollar annual allowances for staff and travel aren't too shabby either.
But maybe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right, and it is just too difficult to afford to rent two apartments on a $174,000 budget. Bear in mind that median D.C. household incomes are around half that of the base congressional salary, and the median Washingtonian can usually find an affordable one bedroom apartment within a reasonable commute to downtown. A member of Congress can find a perfectly nice, spacious apartment in a pleasant building in a suburb such as Greenbelt or Deanwood, Md., for under $1,500 per month.
But maybe even $174,000 isn't enough to keep America's public-spirited defenders from falling into the clutches of K Street. A recent op-ed in this publication argues that"record numbers of legislators are now going to work for big bucks on K Street." Lobbying has inevitably increased over the past 50 years, as far more federal expenditures are at stake (outlays per person have doubled in real terms) and industries have done their best to respond to existential threats.
But, since the congressional pay freeze came into effect a decade ago, fewer retiring/defeated lawmakers have opted to go private. The Center for Responsive Politics (hardly a right-wing outfit) has found that, from the 111th Congress through the 115th Congress, the number of lawmakers going to work for a lobbying firm, advising a lobbying client, or banking a job with any other private company has gone from 59 to 33. The number continually declines year over year, election year or not.
And there just doesn't seem to be much evidence that members of Congress are getting squeezed by low salaries and jump ship in panic. Representatives typically run for office after successful careers, and spend an average of 17 years in the House before retiring from service. Besides, some of the best-known (read: notorious) lawmakers turned lobbyists – such as Evan Bayh, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and Heath Schuler – had net worths well into the millions before leaving Congress. Maybe, just maybe, these politicians like staying close to the action and wheeling and dealing, regardless of their finances.
If members of Congress really want their salaries boosted, they should make their case to the American people why they deserve it despite record debt and general inaction. But as is, the salaries and perks are more than sufficient and haven't seemed to fuel the growth of K Street. There are few bargains in this world, and raising the pay of a well-off, well-connected throng of political elites certainly isn't one of them.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.