27th Amendment limits Congressional salary raises

The last amendment to the Constitution also took the longest to pass: just over two hundred year from first proposals to final adoption. James Madison of Virginia first took up the cause, proposing it as one of twelve amendments to the state constitutions, ten of which would go on to form the Bill of Rights. The debate centered on whether the federal government or the states should pay legislator’s salaries, and eventually was decided that Treasury would pay, but the amounts would be taken up by some other future session. But it was left alone and largely forgotten until its accidental finding in the 80s.

On this day, May 19, in 1992, the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting the ability of Congress to raise their own salaries, was ratified. It reads: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. “ Meaning salary increases voted in would take effect only after the next election.

The amendment wallowed in obscurity for 200 years until Gregory Watson, an economics student at the University of Texas at Austin, ran across it in the course of his research. Watson wrote a paper arguing for the bill’s passage, and that its viability, more than two centuries later, because there was no expiration clause written into it. Watson received a C grade for his work.