The Democrat-majority Virginia state Senate voted on Friday to boost their own salaries from $18,000 to $50,000, nearly tripling their pay through a provision tucked into the final budget. If the measure reaches Governor Abigail Spanberger's desk, Virginia's part-time lawmakers will collect a raise that most of their constituents could only dream of voting themselves.
The Virginia GOP wasted no time torching the move. In a social media post Friday, the state party laid it out plainly:
"Virginia Democrats are cashing in... with YOUR tax dollars! They promised affordability and instead voted to give themselves a 3x raise."
The current salaries, $18,000 for senators and $17,640 for delegates, were established in 1988. Lawmakers also qualify for a $237 per diem, mileage reimbursements, and coverage of office, meeting, and other expenses. The raise would push senator pay to $50,000, as reported by Fox News.
The timing is exquisite. Just days before the vote, Governor Spanberger delivered the Democrat Party's official response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday evening. Her message to the nation? That Trump and Republicans have made "life more expensive." She then claimed she was working to lower costs for Virginians.
By Friday, her party's state Senate was voting to nearly triple its own compensation, with taxpayer money.
This is the contradiction that defines the modern Democratic Party in miniature. Campaign on affordability. Govern for yourself. Spanberger has claimed she is working to make her state more affordable, yet on her first day in office she signed several executive orders with progressive goals. She endorsed multiple tax hikes on Virginians, including rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and creating a statewide paid family and medical leave program that increases childcare subsidies, programs that cost money somebody has to pay for.
The somebody is always the taxpayer.
Proponents of the raise argue that the 1988-era salary structure restricts who can afford to serve as a lawmaker today. It's a familiar argument: pay legislators more, and you'll attract a broader pool of candidates rather than only those wealthy enough to work for $18,000 a year.
There's a kernel of logic in there, somewhere. Virginia's legislature was founded as a part-time, gentleman's chamber, where lawmakers would return to their day jobs when Richmond wasn't holding session. The low pay reflects that original design.
But here's what the proponents never answer: if the concern is truly about opening public service to working people, why bury the raise in a budget provision rather than put it to a standalone vote with full public debate? Why rush it through on a Friday? And why does the party that just told America it's fighting to lower costs think the first order of business is padding its own paychecks?
The argument for higher legislative pay is a policy debate worth having, in the open, with voter input, not smuggled through a budget line item by the very people who benefit from it.
This vote doesn't exist in isolation. Since taking power, Virginia Democrats have moved aggressively on redistricting, set their sights on the Second Amendment, and pursued legislation that would reduce oversight of nonprofits. The salary grab is just the most personally profitable item on the agenda.
The question now is whether Spanberger will sign it. She built her brand, first in Congress, now in the governor's mansion, on the idea that she's a moderate who understands kitchen-table economics. Approving a near-tripling of legislative pay days after lecturing the country about affordability would shatter whatever remains of that image.
Then again, vetoing it would mean crossing her own caucus. For a governor who has already endorsed tax hikes and progressive executive orders, the moderate mask may not be worth maintaining.
Virginia Democrats told voters they would fight to make life more affordable. They got to Richmond and voted to make their own lives more affordable, to the tune of $32,000 per senator, per year, funded entirely by the people they promised to help.
No amount of per diem math or "citizen legislature" rhetoric changes the optics. The party that says you're paying too much just decided it's being paid too little.
