On December 21, the President signed an executive order raising congressional pay from $165,200 to $168,800. Since filing fees in many states are calculated as a percentage of the salary of the office being sought, this will cause a 2% in filing fees for candidates for Congress in those states.
Earlier Congress passed a resolution saying that their pay raise won’t be effective until mid-February 2007. Otherwise it would have been effective January 1, 2007.
It’s my understanding that an annual congressional pay raise tied to the inflation rate is automatic– unless Congress votes it down.
Therefore, why is an executive order necessary?
Google this site with my name for my previous postings on why filing fees should be zero (abolished) and petition signature requirments zero, as well as other in-kind taxes on First Amendment political speech.
I suspended my 2006 congressional candidacy in Oklahoma because litigation has thus far been unable to mitigate political repression in Oklahoma elections. Active candidacy in 2008 is still possible.
I made an informal survey of several high school level textbooks (major publishers) to see how they described candidates and election access rights. The explanations were abysmally superficial. Public school students do not receive the kind of instruction in ‘democracy’ that Thomas Jefferson seemed to favor by advocating tax support for schools.
Since the Progressive era of the early 20th century political participation has been ‘progressively’suppressed. Tieing candidate filing fees to ‘inflation adjustment’ of salaries seeks to further obscure the nature of political repression in the U.S.
Happy politically incorrect holidays!