Last week, Congress addressed the Constitutional problems with Hillary Clinton’s nomination as Secretary of State by reducing the salary for the position to get around the Emolument’s Clause.
Now, it looks like they’ll have to do it at least twice more:
Sen. Ken Salazar is poised to see a bump in salary as the country’s next Interior secretary, but he won’t be making as much money as his predecessor, Dirk Kempthorne.
The same holds true for Rep. Hilda Solis, Barack Obama’s choice for Labor secretary.
Kempthorne and other Cabinet secretaries rake in $191,300 annually, higher than the $169,300 the junior Democratic senator from Colorado and the California congresswoman each pull in every year.
But Congress is going to have slice the Interior and Labor secretaries’ pay in order to comply with the obscure emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits sitting lawmakers from being appointed to positions that saw a pay increase during their terms.
The provision was designed to prevent lawmakers from enriching themselves. But Congress has repeatedly circumvented the legal hurdle by reducing an appointee’s pay through legislation known as the “Saxbe Fix,” named after Congress made the change for Richard Nixon’s nominee for attorney general, Sen. William Saxbe
As I’ve noted before, there’s a fairly good argument that even the Saxbe Fix is insufficient to get around the Emoluments Clause problem, but it’s likely to be considered sufficient by any Court that hears the matter.
