There is no congressional pay raise in effect for 2026. Members of Congress have been frozen at a base salary of $174,000 since January 2009, and Public Law 119-37, signed on November 12, 2025, blocks any cost-of-living adjustment for fiscal year 2026.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 2 USC 4501 – Compensation of Members of Congress That makes the current freeze one of the longest stretches without an increase in modern legislative history.
What Members of Congress Earn Right Now
Every Senator, Representative, Delegate, and the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico earns the same $174,000 base salary, paid from the U.S. Treasury as Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution requires.2Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated – Compensation of Members of Congress3Congress.gov. Congressional Salaries and Allowances – In Brief Leaders make more.
The Speaker of the House sits at the top at $223,500 per year. Five other positions each earn $193,400: the Senate Majority Leader, the Senate Minority Leader, the House Majority Leader, the House Minority Leader, and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.4House Radio-Television Gallery. Salaries All of these leadership figures have held steady since 2009 alongside the rank-and-file rate.
How a Congressional Pay Raise Is Supposed to Happen
Members do not typically vote directly on their own raises. The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 built an automatic annual adjustment into the law, meant to keep salaries roughly in line with private-sector wages without forcing members to cast an obvious self-interested vote.5Congress.gov. HR 3660 – Ethics Reform Act of 1989
The formula is tied to the Employment Cost Index, a Bureau of Labor Statistics measure of wage changes across private industry. The annual bump equals the most recent ECI change minus half a percentage point, capped at 5%. A second ceiling applies too: the congressional adjustment can never exceed the base pay increase that General Schedule federal employees receive that year.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 2 USC 4501 – Compensation of Members of Congress If GS workers get 2%, Congress cannot go higher than 2%, no matter what the ECI would otherwise allow.
Left alone, the adjustment takes effect at the start of the next applicable pay period. It doesn’t need a vote to happen. It needs a vote to stop.
Why the Pay Freeze Has Held for Over 17 Years
Congress has stopped the adjustment every fiscal year since 2009. The tool is a short provision inserted into the annual legislative branch appropriations bill saying no adjustment will take effect that year. Because the freeze language rides inside a broader spending package, no member has to cast a standalone vote against a raise, and no member has to cast one for it either.
The pattern has held across both parties and every administration in that span. More than 17 separate laws have carried the freeze language, running through omnibus appropriations acts and continuing resolutions. Public Law 119-4 covered fiscal year 2025; Public Law 119-37 covers fiscal year 2026.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 2 USC 4501 – Compensation of Members of Congress
The cumulative effect has been substantial. Inflation has cut into the purchasing power of $174,000 significantly since 2009, so members are earning materially less in real terms than they did when the current figure was set. Critics of the freeze argue it discourages people without independent wealth from serving and pushes departing members toward higher-paying private-sector work. Supporters argue that a raise is politically indefensible while many constituents earn far less.
The Twenty-Seventh Amendment Delay
Even if Congress allowed the adjustment to go through, or voted an explicit raise, it could not hit paychecks right away. The Twenty-Seventh Amendment requires that an election of Representatives fall between the change and its effective date.6Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated – Overview of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment Any salary adjustment approved today would wait until after the next congressional election cycle to take effect.
The amendment was originally proposed by Congress in 1789 alongside the Bill of Rights but was not fully ratified by the states until May 7, 1992.7Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated – Ratification of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment The tension between the automatic COLA mechanism (which triggers at the start of the next pay period) and the amendment’s election requirement has never been squarely tested in court, because Congress keeps blocking the adjustment outright.
What a Raise Would Look Like If It Came Back
If Congress ever stopped inserting the freeze language, the adjustment would resume automatically under the Ethics Reform Act formula. It would apply first to the base $174,000 figure and to the leadership salaries built on top of it. Because the ECI-minus-half-a-point calculation is capped by the General Schedule increase, congressional pay would move roughly in step with the rest of the federal workforce, not ahead of it. And it would wait for the next election before showing up on any paycheck.
For now, none of that is happening. The $174,000 salary in effect today is the same $174,000 salary set in 2009, and Congress has already locked that in through the end of fiscal year 2026.