On June 8, 1789, James Madison of Virginia proposed an amendment to the Constitution which read: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”
It was one of a series of proposed amendments to the new constitution which the House debated and passed on August 24, 1789. The proposed amendment went next to the Senate, where on September 9, 1789, it was included in a package of approved articles of amendment.
On September 21, 1789, a conference committee resolved differences between the House and Senate proposals and on September 25, 1789 the proposed amendments were sent to the states for their consideration. Most of these proposed amendments seemed straightforward enough, and ten of them were quickly ratified are now well-known as the Bill of Rights.
For whatever reason, the “Congressional Pay” amendment enjoyed only lukewarm support among those members of the citizenry who had been called to a life of “public service”. By June 1792, only seven States (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Delaware, Vermont, Virginia, and Kentucky) ratified the “Congressional Pay” amendment.
After that, nothing happened…
…Until 1873, that is, when on the day before the second inauguration of President Ulysses S. Grant, Congressmen voted themselves a 50% pay increase, retroactive to the beginning of their just-ending term. In protest against the “Salary Grab Act”, Ohio ratified the long dormant “Congressional Pay” amendment.
Nothing happened again for the next 100 years…
…until Congress again voted itself in 1978.
Indignant at the new salary grab, Wyoming became the ninth state to ratify the amendment.
Then it seemed the proposed “Pay” amendment was doomed to be forgotten again.
…until a student at the University of Texas, Gregory Watson, wrote a paper in 1982 on reviving the amendment process. His instructor deemed his idea ‘unrealistic’, and gave his paper a “C”, but Watson was undeterred and started a letter-writing campaign to state legislatures.
His campaign started to find receptive ears in certain state legislatures. The Maine legislature ratified as a result of Watson’s campaign in April 1983, followed by Colorado in 1984.
Five more states followed in 1985, three in 1986, four in 1987…
Every year a handful of state legislatures followed suit, until with the ratification by Michigan on May 7, 1992 the required three-quarter majority had been met – and the “Congressional Pay” amendment was finally certified as law.