Congress Not Proposing to Give Itself 40% Raise

Elon Musk, who has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a committee to ferret out government waste, wrongly posted to X that members of Congress are trying to vote themselves a 40% raise. A continuing resolution put forward by Republicans leading the House Appropriations Committee does attempt to allow an automatic congressional pay increase — which has drawn blowback from some members of Congress — but the maximum possible raise in 2025 would be 3.8%, not 40%. The continuing resolution, a stopgap measure to keep the government funded for three months, needs to be enacted before midnight on Dec. 20 to avoid a government shutdown. “How can this be called a ‘continuing resolution’ if it includes a 40% pay increase for Congress?” Musk wrote on X on Dec. 18. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, co-chair of the newly announced Department of Government Efficiency, arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images. Musk, the Space X and Tesla CEO who along with Vivek Ramaswamy was tapped by Trump to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, linked to a post from “Wall Street Mav” that says Congress was trying to “slip by” a...