New race is to be part of One Hundred Million Club in Congress!!!
Looks like it is great profession. Time to think about it. It is amazing to see how these politicians gain so much wealth during their tenure.. They get fairly decent salary (around $170K per annum) for living..
However, that is certainly not enough to make them millionaire... Somehow their gains are tremendous.. Irrespective of country.. politicians are same.. moment they are in power, somehow their investment decisions are great or they somehow inherit some serious money..
I don't know... how they do it. I am sure there must be some kind of consultants to help them do it.. very special kind of consultants.. who only advise them on how to get millionaire or multi millionaire..
In general there is no issue with wealth gain.. however, problem is, moment these politicians are part of millionaire or multi-millionaire club, they simply can't empathize with the mass population they represent.. which is still mostly part of non-millionaire club..
Here is the news detail about it.. little older but still relevant..
Dec 27th 2011
Capitol Hill millionaires club
Economic pain not felt by lawmakers as wealth gap grows
By Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
WASHINGTON — When Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., was first elected to Congress two decades ago, he was comfortably ensconced in the middle class. Pastor held $100,000 or so in savings accounts in the mid-1990s and had a retirement pension, but like many Americans, he also owed the banks nearly as much in loans. Today, Pastor, a miner’s son and a former high school teacher, is a member of a not-so-exclusive club: Capitol Hill millionaires. That group has grown in recent years to include nearly half of all members of Congress — 250 in all — and the wealth gap between lawmakers and their constituents appears to be growing quickly, even as Congress debates unemployment benefits, possible cuts in food stamps and a “millionaire’s tax.” Pastor buys a Powerball lottery ticket every weekend and says he does not consider himself rich. Indeed, within the gilded halls of Congress, where the median net worth is $913,000 and climbing, he is not. He is a rank-and-file millionaire. But compared with the country at large, where the median net worth is $100,000 and has dropped significantly since 2004, he and most of his fellow lawmakers are true aristocrats.
Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” decried by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the past six years, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group.
Congress has never been a place for paupers. From plantation owners in the pre-Civil War era to industrialists in the early 1900s to ex-Wall Street financiers and Internet executives today, it has long been populated with the rich, including scions of families like the Guggenheims, Hearsts, Kennedys and Rockefellers.
But rarely has the divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent. The wealth gap may go largely unnoticed in good times.
“But with the American public feeling all this economic pain, people just resent it more,” said Alan Ziobrowski, a professor at Georgia State who studied lawmakers’ stock investments.
There is wide debate about just why the wealth gap appears to be growing. For starters, the prohibitive costs of political campaigning may discourage the less affluent from even considering a run for Congress. Beyond that, loose ethics controls, members’ shrewd stock picks, profitable land deals, favorable tax laws, inheritances and even marriages to wealthy spouses are all cited as possible explanations for the rising fortunes on Capitol Hill.
What is clear is that members of Congress are getting richer compared not only to the average American worker but even to other very rich Americans.
While the median net worth of members of Congress jumped 15 percent between 2004 and 2010, the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans remained essentially flat. For all Americans, median net worth dropped 8 percent during that period, based on inflation-adjusted data from Moody’s Analytics.
With millionaire status now the norm, the rarefied air in the Capitol these days is $100 million. That lofty level appears to have been surpassed by at least 10 members, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a former auto alarm magnate who is worth somewhere between $195 million and $700 million. (Because federal law requires lawmakers to disclose their assets only in broad dollar ranges, more precise estimates are impossible.) Their wealth has created occasional political problems for Congress’s richest.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, was challenged about her wealth, as much as $196 million, by a member of her own party a few weeks ago. Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., who is among the poorest members of Congress with as much as $464,000 in debt, attacked Pelosi at a closed-door Democratic caucus meeting for endorsing a congressional pay freeze, according to a report in Politico confirmed by other members.
Richardson told Pelosi that, unlike her, some members needed the raise. Members now make a base pay of $174,000 and would get a cost-of-living adjustment automatically unless they were to decide, for a third straight year, to pass it up.
Looks like it is great profession. Time to think about it. It is amazing to see how these politicians gain so much wealth during their tenure.. They get fairly decent salary (around $170K per annum) for living..
However, that is certainly not enough to make them millionaire... Somehow their gains are tremendous.. Irrespective of country.. politicians are same.. moment they are in power, somehow their investment decisions are great or they somehow inherit some serious money..
I don't know... how they do it. I am sure there must be some kind of consultants to help them do it.. very special kind of consultants.. who only advise them on how to get millionaire or multi millionaire..
In general there is no issue with wealth gain.. however, problem is, moment these politicians are part of millionaire or multi-millionaire club, they simply can't empathize with the mass population they represent.. which is still mostly part of non-millionaire club..
Here is the news detail about it.. little older but still relevant..
Dec 27th 2011
Capitol Hill millionaires club
Economic pain not felt by lawmakers as wealth gap grows
By Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
WASHINGTON — When Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., was first elected to Congress two decades ago, he was comfortably ensconced in the middle class. Pastor held $100,000 or so in savings accounts in the mid-1990s and had a retirement pension, but like many Americans, he also owed the banks nearly as much in loans. Today, Pastor, a miner’s son and a former high school teacher, is a member of a not-so-exclusive club: Capitol Hill millionaires. That group has grown in recent years to include nearly half of all members of Congress — 250 in all — and the wealth gap between lawmakers and their constituents appears to be growing quickly, even as Congress debates unemployment benefits, possible cuts in food stamps and a “millionaire’s tax.” Pastor buys a Powerball lottery ticket every weekend and says he does not consider himself rich. Indeed, within the gilded halls of Congress, where the median net worth is $913,000 and climbing, he is not. He is a rank-and-file millionaire. But compared with the country at large, where the median net worth is $100,000 and has dropped significantly since 2004, he and most of his fellow lawmakers are true aristocrats.
Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” decried by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the past six years, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group.
Congress has never been a place for paupers. From plantation owners in the pre-Civil War era to industrialists in the early 1900s to ex-Wall Street financiers and Internet executives today, it has long been populated with the rich, including scions of families like the Guggenheims, Hearsts, Kennedys and Rockefellers.
But rarely has the divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent. The wealth gap may go largely unnoticed in good times.
“But with the American public feeling all this economic pain, people just resent it more,” said Alan Ziobrowski, a professor at Georgia State who studied lawmakers’ stock investments.
There is wide debate about just why the wealth gap appears to be growing. For starters, the prohibitive costs of political campaigning may discourage the less affluent from even considering a run for Congress. Beyond that, loose ethics controls, members’ shrewd stock picks, profitable land deals, favorable tax laws, inheritances and even marriages to wealthy spouses are all cited as possible explanations for the rising fortunes on Capitol Hill.
What is clear is that members of Congress are getting richer compared not only to the average American worker but even to other very rich Americans.
While the median net worth of members of Congress jumped 15 percent between 2004 and 2010, the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans remained essentially flat. For all Americans, median net worth dropped 8 percent during that period, based on inflation-adjusted data from Moody’s Analytics.
With millionaire status now the norm, the rarefied air in the Capitol these days is $100 million. That lofty level appears to have been surpassed by at least 10 members, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a former auto alarm magnate who is worth somewhere between $195 million and $700 million. (Because federal law requires lawmakers to disclose their assets only in broad dollar ranges, more precise estimates are impossible.) Their wealth has created occasional political problems for Congress’s richest.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, was challenged about her wealth, as much as $196 million, by a member of her own party a few weeks ago. Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., who is among the poorest members of Congress with as much as $464,000 in debt, attacked Pelosi at a closed-door Democratic caucus meeting for endorsing a congressional pay freeze, according to a report in Politico confirmed by other members.
Richardson told Pelosi that, unlike her, some members needed the raise. Members now make a base pay of $174,000 and would get a cost-of-living adjustment automatically unless they were to decide, for a third straight year, to pass it up.
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