Clinton's future paycheck cut
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/12/11/getty.hillary.clinton.jpg caption="Hillary Clinton's salary will drop to pre-2007 amount."]
(CNN) - Hillary Clinton's pay check has officially been cut.
Congress voted Wednesday night to reduce the Secretary of State's salary back to its pre-2007 level of $186,000 to conform to a clause in the constitution stipulating a member of congress cannot be appointed to a government job if the position's salary has increased during the lawmaker's current term.
Clinton's second term began in January 2007.
The conservative activist group Judicial Watch circulated the clause in question, Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution, soon after President-elect Barack Obama announced he was nominating Clinton to the top diplomatic post. Noting the clause, Judicial Watch said it was illegal for Clinton to be nominated to the post since President Bush authorized a nearly $5,000 pay raise for job last January.
"There's no getting around the Constitution's ineligibility clause, so Hillary Clinton is prohibited from serving in the Cabinet until at least 2013, when her current term expires," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
But lawmakers have gotten around the clause before in the same fashion they have now: with Congress changing the salary of the office in question back to what it originally was.
It happened when Ohio Sen. William Saxbe was named President Nixon's attorney general in 1974 and again when Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen became President Clinton's Treasury secretary in 1993.
While Clinton is missing out on the nearly $5,000 pay raise, she still stands to make about $10,000 more as secretary of state than she currently draws as a U.S. senator.
It's ok. She wasn't planning on making the bulk of her money from her paycheck – LOL!
Who cares.......she's already rich!
This is a story? I hardly doubt Sen. Clinton is taking the Secretary of State job for the $10k dollar pay raise. It seems like there are more important things going on that should make your front page.
Now maybe she can pay off her own campaign debt.
Hillary Clinton should have been the president.
Some of those people in DC should try to live on 6.50/hour like some of the people out here in the real world.
IT LOOKS LIKE THERE ARE SOME MORE SERBIANS IN ALASKA.
Great!. Now make sure she is confirmed.
Back on the speakers circuit...
How petty for Judicial Watch. I'm sure Clinton won't be missing the extra 5k a year since she is a multi-millionaire. Don't we need to worry about other things rather than this?
im suprised but glad they did this. Hillary will be a great secretary of state.
Is it sharing the wealth, in a socialist nation everyone contribtues in the form of high-tax so everyone else can enjoy well-fare, and even abortion will be paid for with tax-payers' money?
Hillary will hardly miss $5000, this is the woman who loaned her campaign a couple million dollars!
That's All?
To Robert Move on the Race Is OVER !
Is she going to apply for gov. hand outs now?
Agreed, Obama is not qualified, Hillary Clinton or anyone else, anyone, should have been a better president.
Amen, Robert.
Did she give back all the extra pay as well?
So, It can be raised again! 🙂
But she is not, Robert NYC she should have not been so DUMB.
To Robert NYC..Yes and Obama should have been the janitor.
QUIT YOUR WHINING. LIVE IN THE NOW!!! ITS PRESIDENT OBAMA, SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON. I LIKE THE RING OF IT!!!
Robert from NYC, you should have not been so DUMB!
The Clinton's are uber rich, I don't think a paycut will make a dent in Hillary's pocketbook.