Retiring Rep. McHenry calls for pay raises across Congress

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who will retire from the House at the end of the year, called for pay raises for members of Congress and their staff while reflecting on his nearly two decades of service.

In an interview with The Dispatch published Wednesday, McHenry was asked about major institutional challenges that the House faces. He pointed to the upper limit on staff pay as a key problem.

He suggested that members should make more money in order to incentivize “credible people to run for office that want to serve the public and to be effective legislators.”

“Most of us live on the salary,” he added. “And then, you know, the very wealthy few end up dominating the news because of their personal stock trades, when most of us don’t have wealth.”

In 2021, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced senior staffers would be eligible for higher salaries, removing the salary cap preventing high-level staffers from making more than members — whose salaries have not changed since 2009.

McHenry described this only as a first step and stressed the importance of remaining competitive with other branches of government, as well as other industries in the political sphere.

“We have to build out the committee power structure in a more significant way, which means expertise,” he told The Dispatch. “You need to have quality staff members that can be appropriately compensated, and we’ve made steps there, but I think we’ve got more work to do.”

“You especially need staff to be able to go toe-to-toe with the people they’re regulating or overseeing in the executive branch, which means you need to get the highest quality folks,” McHenry continued. “You can’t have the executive branch and the judicial branch on a higher pay scale than Congress. That is absurd, and really stupid for Congress to disadvantage ourselves in this game of checks and balances.”

The North Carolina Republican announced his retirement from Congress in December, but said he would serve out the remainder of his term.

McHenry, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, was first elected to the House in 2004.

He gained more mainstream recognition after the historic ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). McHenry served as Speaker pro tempore for a tumultuous three weeks while House Republicans struggled to find a new leader.