What is the public perception of COLA-type pay adjustments for elected officials and federal judges?
I believe that a majority of the public supports compensating its government’s top officials fairly, and that includes some method of protecting the pay of those officials from the effects of inflation. Good modern government demands the sharpest minds and the sharpest talents to solve the problems of an ever increasingly complex society, and government must be at least reasonably competitive with the salaries and benefits offered in the private sector. Judges, like any other employees, do not expect to receive real salary increases annually; however, judges also do not accept judicial appointments anticipating that their purchasing power will shrink annually. I sometimes wonder how quickly those judges appointed in 1993 would have accepted their commissions if they had been told then that their real pay would be worth $22,000 less per year by 1999. We live in a society where cost-of-living salary adjustments to maintain purchasing power whether such adjustments are made pursuant to a
