Congress ran up a $38 trillion debt while America footed the bill.
Now the same career politicians who built that debt are taking taxpayers to federal court.
And if a judge sides with them, you could owe Jim Clyburn and Steny Hoyer a six-figure check.
The Congressional Pay Raise Lawsuit That Could Cost Taxpayers Tens of Millions
A small group of current and former lawmakers filed suit in federal court claiming that every time Congress voted to freeze its own salary since 2009, it violated the 27th Amendment.
The argument: congressional pay was supposed to adjust for inflation each year under a 1989 law.
When lawmakers voted to block those raises – year after year, for over a decade – they were unconstitutionally suppressing compensation that members were owed.
The remedy? Retroactive back pay.
Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is leading the legal team.
The plaintiff list reads like a who's-who of career Washington politicians: Clyburn of South Carolina, Hoyer of Maryland, Intelligence Committee Chair Rick Crawford of Arkansas, and four former members from both parties.
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation calculated what each plaintiff is seeking: $418,796 apiece for Clyburn, Crawford, and Hoyer, and $226,367 each for the remaining former members.
And that's just the named plaintiffs.
If the court certifies this as a class action, every current and former member who served during the eligible period can file for the same back pay – adding tens of millions more to the tab.
Cuccinelli told the federal judge the case is simple. Congress built a pay formula. Then Congress cheated the formula. Members were underpaid by hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
He's asking the court to make taxpayers cover that gap.
Congress Tried This Salary Grab Before and Voters Burned Them for It
This is not the first time Congress pulled something like this.
On the last day of the 42nd Congress – March 3, 1873 – lawmakers voted themselves a 50 percent pay increase, retroactive to the beginning of their term two years earlier.
Every lame-duck member who had already lost reelection walked out with a $5,000 parting gift.
The press called it the Salary Grab, and editors from Georgia to Vermont – Democrat and Republican alike – called it robbery. Voters in Georgia lit effigies of their own representatives. The backlash cost Republicans 96 House seats in the 1874 midterms and handed Democrats control of the chamber.
Congress repealed the raises at the start of the next session.
That firestorm was so severe it triggered the push that eventually produced the 27th Amendment in 1992 – the very amendment Cuccinelli is now arguing was violated by blocking raises.
Clyburn and Hoyer are trying in federal court what their predecessors couldn't survive doing on the House floor.
The 38 Trillion Dollar Debt That Makes This Lawsuit an Insult
Rep. Ralph Norman didn't mince words.
The South Carolina Republican – who introduced legislation to eliminate automatic congressional pay adjustments entirely – went straight at Clyburn by name.
"Corrupt Washington politicians, including Democrat James E. Clyburn, are suing for retroactive congressional pay raises that could cost taxpayers MILLIONS of dollars," Norman wrote on social media. "With $38 trillion in debt, Congress doesn't deserve a raise."
Then he said what every American already knows is true.
"Congress is the only place in America where you can fail the people you represent and still expect a raise," Norman said. "We've traded citizen legislators for career politicians more focused on their own paychecks than the people back home."
Congressional pay has been frozen at $174,000 since January 2009.
Members were too afraid of voters to take the raise openly – so they're asking a federal judge to award it instead.
Steny Hoyer voted for every spending bill that drove the national debt to $38 trillion. He voted for open borders, runaway entitlements, and the policies that torched working Americans' savings through inflation. Now he wants a court to hand him $418,000 – paid for by the same taxpayers who absorbed every consequence of his bad decisions.
In 1873, Americans burned their representatives in effigy and threw them out of office.
They had that option because Congress did it legislatively.
Clyburn and Hoyer went to the courts precisely because they know what the ballot box would say.
Sources:
- Nicholas Ballasy, "Congressional lawmakers are suing to try to win retroactive pay raises, and drawing scorn," Just the News, March 8, 2026.
- Demian Brady, "While Debt Soars, Some Lawmakers Seek Retroactive Salary Hikes in Federal Court," National Taxpayers Union Foundation, February 19, 2026.
- Roll Call, "Crawford, former members argue in court for back pay," August 23, 2024.
- Rep. Ralph Norman, "Congress Doesn't Deserve a Pay Raise," FITSNews / Norman.house.gov, March 4, 2026.
- Heritage Foundation, "Congress vs. America: How Congress Raises Its Own Pay," Heritage Foundation.
