Congress Gives Themselves More Money While Cutting YOUR Benefits

New rules are being prepared for members of Congress that will dramatically change how much money our elected officials to get be reimbursed for in their expense reports. The new rules will allow members to write off the cost of an apartment, food, and all transportation while they are in Washington, D.C. - expenses that could total into the millions every year. This comes at the same time that Congressional Republicans are working to cut benefits for veterans, low-income Americans, and retirees. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Right now, Republicans in the House of Representatives are working on a debt ceiling package that cuts pretty much every kind of benefit that average struggling Americans need. It cuts benefits for the Veterans Administration so veterans won't be able to get the same kind of care they've been getting. It adds work requirements to the SNAP benefit program, which will kick 10 million people off of the program, including 3 million, uh, uh, children. It includes potential cuts to social security and Medicare. So while Congress is trying to take away your money, it should not come as a surprise at all that they implemented a new rule that allows them to get more money from the government. It's not a pay raise, but it's a change in the way that, uh, lawmakers get reimbursed for their expenses. Here's the way it used to work. Up until now, members of Congress were required to have two work sites, one in their district, and then of course the one in Washington dc And because those were mandated work sites, they were not able to be reimbursed for those expenses.

But this new rule change, again, not a pay raise, because that would require having both houses vote on it and it wouldn't go into effect until next session. So they changed the rule to say that the Washington DC area is not technically a work site. And because it's not technically a work site, then suddenly that means you're allowed to get reimbursed for your expenses, for rent, all your food, and of course all your transportation in Washington DC you don't get, you don't get to reimburse yourself for what's back in your district, of course, cuz that's where you live, but you don't live in DC So your rent, all your food, transportation expenses and any other expenses that you incur while in Washington DC members of Congress can now be fully reimbursed for all of it. So they're trying to take money out of your pockets right now and put more of it into theirs. Like that part's actually already done. Like that new rule has been implemented. And it should be noted that this rule change was first kind of put in place but not yet implemented on December 30th of last year when Democrats still control the chamber. So we have bipartisan support for putting more money into the pockets of our elected officials. This is disgusting. It's even more disgusting because again, they're cutting your benefits while increasing their own. Now they swear they're not increasing the budget. You

Know, they've got a congressional fund that they use to reimburse members for their expenses. So this isn't gonna add any new spending until it runs out because now you can, uh, get reimbursed for every single thing. And then in that case, they will have to raise the budget. So just because they're not raising the amount of money in that fund right now does not mean that that's not gonna come in the very near future. It will, but they also point out, let me read this. This is from, uh, Republican representative Jay Oberti Nty, who said a third of the Congress slept in their offices. That is not a healthy situation. Oh, these poor members of Congress making $174,000 a year when the average median household income for the United States is 70,000. So you're making $104,000 more than that each year. And oh, they had to sleep on their couch and their office.