Congress reduced Obama’s Secretary of State salary

Hillary Clinton

Congress voted Wednesday night to reduce the Secretary of State’s salary back to its pre-2007 level of $186,000 to conform to a clause in Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution which stipulates that a member of congress cannot be appointed to a government job if the position’s salary has increased during the lawmaker’s current term. Clinton’s second term began in January 2007.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is constitutionally ineligible to serve as Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

According to the Ineligibility Clause of the United States Constitution, no member of Congress can be appointed to an office that has benefited from a salary increase during the time that Senator or Representative served in Congress. A January 2008 Executive Order signed by President Bush during Hillary Clinton’s current Senate term increased the salary for Secretary of State by $5,000 thereby rendering Senator Clinton ineligible for the position.

Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution states:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time: and no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office.

"There’s no getting around the Constitution’s ineligibility clause, so Hillary Clinton is prohibited from serving in the Cabinet until at least 2013, when her current term expires," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

But lawmakers have gotten around the clause before in the same fashion they have now: with Congress changing the salary of the office in question back to what it originally was.

Similar problem happened when Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen became President Clinton’s Treasury secretary in 1993 and when Ohio Sen. William Saxbe was named President Nixon’s attorney general in 1974.

While Clinton is missing out on the nearly $5,000 pay raise, she still stands to make about $10,000 more as secretary of state than she currently draws as a U.S. senator.

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