NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday April 16, 2008
Bennett: six-figure salary not enough
Ken Bennett, a likely candidate for Congress, wants to know if ethics rules allow him to keep his stock in fuel companies before he decides to run for office.
“I can’t believe that the people of the 1st Congressional District are paying record high prices for gas, housing and medical bills, but Ken Bennett is so out-of-touch that he thinks earning four times the salary of hard-working Arizona families is a hardship,” said Emily Bittner, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party.
Median household income in the 1st Congressional District is about $38,000 a year. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey) The current Congressional salary is $169,300, more than four times higher than household income in the district. (http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa031200a.htm)Still, that wouldn’t be enough money for Bennett, who told Arizona’s Yellow Sheet Report that “he would be reluctant to run if getting elected means he would have to sell his stock in the companies.”
“That stock is my investment for my family,” he said, adding that early indications are he would have to resign from the boards of those companies…But [even] if I [could] keep those investments, I can’t vote on anything related to energy…It’s unfortunate. Congress was originally intended to be a part-time job where real people left the real world for a few months a year, went back and did what they did and went back and lived in the real world like everybody else. Now, we’re to the point where you really have to give up almost everything else to get back there and do it.”
According to Congressional rules, members’ earned income is severely restricted, both by allowable type and by amount. The cap on earned income is $25,830 annually.
Sitting on corporate boards is permitted, but members cannot receive compensation from those boards or allow the organization to use their names in that capacity.