For someone living in an expensive city such as New York or Boston or San Francisco, $174,000 is not too shabby. For someone in Florida, it's a lot. The fact that he's the president of an established family business, he surely has plenty of reserves so his complaints of the congressional pay during the worst economic period since the Great Depression is going too far. How many of his constituents would love to accept such a salary and benefits? Boo hoo.
"They cut me off from my small business, a business that my grandfather started 60 years ago and that I'm the president of, that I've worked my career to build," he said. He added that "if you took the hours that I work and divided it into my pay," the $174,000 salary would not seem so high.
Marty Monroe, a "recovering civics teacher" visiting her parents at Westminster Oaks, was unsympathetic.
"Why didn't he know that going in, about conflicts of interests? Would you want members to be also running a business on the side?" Monroe said.
