No, the proposed Congressional stopgap bill doesn't give lawmakers a 40% pay raise

On Dec. 17, congressional leaders introduced a stopgap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, to fund the federal government through March 14.  The bill needs to pass before Dec. 21 to avoid a partial government shutdown.

The continuing resolution has been dubbed a “Christmas tree bill,” a political slang term for legislation packed with amendments or provisions designed to satisfy various groups, like ornaments on a Christmas tree. 

Among these so-called ornaments, Elon Musk and others on social media claim, is a significant pay increase for members of Congress. Posts with millions of views allege lawmakers would receive a 40% raise, increasing their salaries from $174,000 to $243,000 per year. 

VERIFY reader Gabrielle texted us asking whether the claims about pay raises for lawmakers are true.

THE QUESTION

Does the proposed continuing resolution give members of Congress a 40% pay raise?

THE SOURCES

• Further Continuing Appropriations and Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2025, the current continuing resolution
• Congressional Research Service (CRS)
• Employment Cost Index (ECI), a statistic published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Spending bills from 2024, 2023 and 2022 

THE ANSWER

No, the proposed continuing resolution doesn't give members of Congress a 40% pay raise.  If passed, it would give them a 3.8% salary increase.

WHAT WE FOUND

Claims that members of Congress would receive a 40% pay raise with the passage of the proposed spending bill are false. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the spending bill would grant members of Congress only a 3.8% increase, raising their salary from $174,000 to $180,600, an increase of $6,600.

Current law automatically gives members of Congress a pay raise based on the Employment Cost Index (ECI), a statistic published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, Congress can block those raises from occurring and have done so every year since 2009. Since 2009, Congress has included provisions in spending bills to freeze its own pay. 

The most recent spending bill omits the language that freezes pay, which means if passed, members of Congress in 2025 would receive the 3.8% pay increase set by the ECI, making their new salary $180,600. 

Members of Congress would not receive any raises they skipped. 

The misinformation about the purported 40% increase in salary appears to be stemming from a misinterpretation of the CRS data, which states that had members of Congress received every cost-of-living raise they were eligible for since 1992, their 2024 salary would be $243,300. But the pay raise allowed by the proposed continuing resolution would not be retroactive to 1992 so their salaries will only increase to $180,600.

According to the CRS data, when adjusted for inflation, congressional salaries have actually decreased 31% from 2009, when they last received a raise.