On May 7, 1992, the Twenty-seventh Amendment was ratified, blocking congressmen and women from giving themselves pay raises during their current term.
The Twenty-seventh Amendment states:
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
The debate over congressional salary increases began centuries before the 27th Amendment was ratified. During the United States’ first session of Congress, James Madison, a Virginia congressman at the time, suggested amending the Constitution to prevent same-session pay raises for members of Congress. Madison insisted that pay raises “cannot be for the particular benefit of those who are concerned in determining the value of the service.” The amendment was one of the original 12 sent to the states for approval, but only 10 were ratified, leaving out the proposal on congressional pay.
One hundred and fifty years later, the Supreme Court ruled that amendments without a ratification deadline can remain open for approval indefinitely. Basically, it didn’t matter that the amendment was first proposed in 1789 – even in 1939, the states could choose to ratify it.
Still, the 27th Amendment was largely ignored until 1978, when opposition to a congressional pay raise spurred Wyoming to ratify the amendment. University of Texas student Gregory Watson later found the amendment while doing research and began urging states to approve it. Between 1983 and 1992, 33 states ratified the amendment.
The 27th Amendment has been the subject of multiple legal challenges since its ratification. In Boehner v. Anderson, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that automatic cost-of-living increases do not violate the 27th Amendment.
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