By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A proposal to give House members up to $25,000 a year for a per diem allowance has been dropped after failing to win the endorsement of either Republican or Democratic leaders.
"I accept that, that ends it," said Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Administration Committee and a supporter of the allowance. He said he had not gained the agreement of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., or Democratic leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
The proposal, first reported in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, would have given members $165 a day, tax-free, for expenses when Congress was in session. That would be nearly $25,000 in an average 150-day session.
Ney said his committee could have instituted the per diem without a vote of the full House because it would not require new spending. He said the money would come out of the members' representational allowance, the $850,000 to $1 million each member receives every year for office expenses, travel and staff salaries.
He said the idea was backed by "a great quantity" of lawmakers.
"I know members who have six children, they are out here doing a service," Ney said. "I am a firm believer that we should not have criteria that you have to be independently wealthy to be a member of Congress."
Sue Harvey, a spokeswoman for Gephardt, said he had discussed the issue with House Democrats and Hastert, and they had concluded there was not sufficient support for the idea.
Others said there was concern among some members that the granting of a per diem would make it more difficult to win cost-of-living raises, that getting a per diem rather than a salary raise would affect their pensions and that the per diem would eventually force Congress to increase the office expense budget.
Members of Congress did not get a raise from 1993, when Republicans won control of the House and Senate, until 1998. They gave themselves cost-of-living increases last year and again this year and now earn $145,100 a year.
