Why NPR wanted that congressional pay raise

Happy New Year! In 19 days, we bring back President Trump.

Now that she is in the final days of her final term, the self-appointed government watchdogs in the media finally are reporting that Congresswoman Kay Granger, 81, R-Texas, is in an assisted living home and dealing with “some dementia-related issues.”

The sleuths in the Washington Press Corps did not discover this. Instead of breaking news, they spent 2024 trying to stop Trump.

The Dallas Morning News broke the story but you had to really dig hard to find it as its headline read, “Texas Rep. Kay Granger missed majority of U.S. House votes this year.

“The retiring lawmaker missed more votes in 2024 than during the first decade of her congressional career.”

The accompanying photo showed her sharp as ever in a power red jacket talking on the phone as she headed to her next appointment.

It took the paper 4 paragraphs to tell why she missed those votes:

Granger’s family told The Dallas Morning News on Sunday that the congresswoman has been “having some dementia issues” and is living in a Fort Worth assisted living facility.

Paragraph 6 made an excuse for her.

It’s not uncommon for lawmakers to miss votes if they’re recovering from health issues or campaigning for another office.

Granger did not seek another term this year. If she did, she would have won because the Texas and DC press corps are terrible.

If you ever wonder why Congress gets away with doing so little, it is because many are the news organizations in Washington that act like they work for it. Some actually do.

Consider NPR’s report, “Congressional lawmakers almost got a pay bump this year. Then it crashed and burned.”

The base pay was set at $174,000 per year in 2009. Officers in Congress get a little more money.

NPR went out of its way to make the case for a pay raise, quoting proponents and no opponents.

Brandice Canes-Wrone, a political science professor at Stanford University, told NPR, “When adjusted for inflation, member salaries have decreased 31% from 2009, when they last received a pay increase.

“We now pay congressional members comparatively less than equivalent executive branch positions. Their salaries have gone down much more than the private sector in comparable positions.

“Members of Congress are expected to maintain two residences, or be sleeping on the floor in their office and have their residence back in their district.”

Well, to paraphrase Lee Iacocca, if you can find a better-paying job, take it.

The idea that congressmen don’t have to seek another term never entered the conversation.

Railing against a 40% congressional raise—they planned to give themselves a $66,000 raise—certainly would be popular and put the public back in public radio, but exposing this self-serving move by Congress also might hurt NPR’s bottom line.

The New York Times reported:

Elon Musk is gunning for public media.

In his new role advising President-elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Musk has floated sweeping cuts to the federal government, including the elimination of entire departments and the firing of agency leaders. One of the most concrete proposals on his list is eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding that the government funnels to PBS and NPR stations, home to cultural touchstones like Elmo, Big Bird and Fresh Air.

For decades, NPR and PBS have overcome similar threats. But this year, ‘the attention and intensity’ of the calls to defund public media seem greater, said Michael Isip, the president and chief executive of KQED, which operates NPR and PBS stations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

NPR and PBS stations are bracing for the fight. After the election, leaders of NPR’s biggest member stations circulated a report that warned ‘it would be unwise to assume that events will play out as they have in the past,’ with regard to their federal funding. PBS received an update on the situation from political consultants at a board meeting in early December. And station directors in some states are already making their case to legislators.

Internally, NPR is preparing for a variety of funding possibilities, including that government money will be clawed back immediately, according to two people briefed on the network’s planning.

And therein lies the problem with government funding news. He who pays the fiddler calls the tune. NPR is hardly an independent agency when it comes to covering Congress.

NPR has no problem taking on Republican presidents who want to defund it, but NPR was in love with Obama and joined the rest of the media in saying Biden’s brain is not dead; it is just pining for the fjords.

Public broadcasting insists that tax money is a small portion of their revenues but they sure fight hard to keep on the public teat, even though the situation compromises NPR’s independence and hence, its credibility.

Money talks. While congressmen whine about billionaires taking over DC, the fact is the 535 voting members of Congress spend like trillionaires.

Private sector media outlets are almost as bad. The coverage of Kay Granger’s dementia by the Dallas Morning News was just one example.

Politico reported over the weekend, “The House China Committee risks partisan irrelevance in next Congress.

“Dems warn that GOP control of the White House and Capitol Hill will test the committee’s bipartisan harmony and risk descent into ‘messaging and rhetoric.’ ”

Oh no. Not messaging and rhetoric. Trump is about to unleash words on them. Words!

The story said, “Already, partisan agendas have started to affect which legislation the group tries to push through. And the incoming Trump administration, while pledging to be tough on China, is expected to bring different priorities—making it difficult for the panel to get Trump-friendly Republicans on board with its proposals.

“The committee has also lost some of the mystique—and drive—that came from being the new kid in town, and which helped it rally wider support in Congress.”

Partisan agendas? That is an odd description of an election mandate.

The whole thing is odd. Politico is fighting for this obscure congressional bureaucracy, burying this gem in Paragraph 10:

The committee launched in January 2022 with a two-year mandate and quickly produced bipartisan legislative proposals on Taiwan, fentanyl, human rights and countering China’s growing military might. That turned into bills targeting everything from U.S. investment in China and the so-called de minimis import tax loophole amid partisan impasse elsewhere in Washington, which have bipartisan support and are expected to pass into law.

So its two-year mandate was scheduled to end a year ago and yet there it still is. Few things in life last longer than a temporary government agency.

Speaker Mike Johnson wants it to keep on going.

If he does, put Kay Granger in charge.

And these idiots in Congress want a raise.

And the morons covering them want them to get the raises.