Musk Falsely Claimed Spending Bill Included 40% Salary Increase for Congress. Here's the Real Number

Each year, the U.S. federal government must allocate all the money that it spends. It does so through budget bills. If those bills don't pass, the flow of money through the government effectively stops and the government (largely) shuts down. In December 2024, the budget bill came knocking again, with a deadline of Dec. 20.

As the deadline loomed, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, met with Republican and Democratic lawmakers to craft the massive bill, sometimes called an omnibus bill, to keep the government running for a few more months. 

According to some social media users, including Elon Musk, owner of the social media site X and a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, the bipartisan spending bill contained a provision to raise salaries for members of Congress by 40%. 

That was not true. In reality, the proposed salary increase was much lower — just 3.8%, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Members of Congress are paid a base salary of $174,000 per year, with more money given to those in leadership positions. However, many members of Congress understand that voting on bills to increase their salaries isn't likely to make their constituents happy. As such, Congress has voted to keep its pay the same for more than a decade — members last received a pay raise in 2009, according to Bloomberg Government.

The false claim that the 2024 bill included a 40% pay increase appeared to stem from a line in the CRS report about lawmakers' salaries had they increased in accordance with the Employment Cost Index (ECI), a metric for hourly wages, over the decades. The report says (emphasis ours):

If Members of Congress had received every adjustment prescribed by the ECI formula since 1992, and the statutory limitation (2 U.S.C. §4501) regarding the percentage base pay increase for GS employees remained unchanged, the 2024 salary would be $243,300. 

In other words, the $243,300 figure — which is roughly a 40% jump from lawmakers' current base salary — was based on a hypothetical scenario in which increases had taken effect since 1992. It was not a prescription for future increases.

Musk railed against the omnibus bill on X. He called all forms of government spending taxation, shared a post calling for any Republican voting for the spending bill to face a primary election challenge and suggested that no bills should be passed until Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025. His tactics apparently worked. Trump voiced his disapproval late on Dec. 18, influencing lawmakers to kill the bill.

On Dec. 19, Trump endorsed a separate Republican-backed spending bill, which Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House leader, called "laughable." That proposal failed in the House, where Republicans hold a tiny majority. 

That meant, as of this writing, a government shutdown was a possibility. It's unclear whether the funding bill that eventually passes will contain the pay raise provision.