Unlike Pennsylvania legislators, who have to vote themselves salary increases under the cover of darkness, Congress has a neater system worked out. They get the same raise as other federal employees - unless they vote not to accept it.

In the early years of GOP control of Congress, members did that routinely. But that fiscal discipline has been forgotten as spending continues to spiral out of control.

One member, U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, tried to get the House to decide on whether to accept or deny the raise. But his effort went down on a 249-167 vote.

The same day the House acted on its pay raise, its Appropriations Committee voted 32-27 to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. It would be boosted in three increments over two years from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour.

But the move, attached to a bill funding health and education programs, will probably be dropped when it reaches the House floor because the Appropriations Committee doesn’t have jurisdiction over the issue. The House Education and Workforce Committee does. And its chairman, U.S. Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., said he has no plans to act.

That means people who work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, for $5.15 an hour will continue to earn $10,712 a year - before taxes. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is the lowest it’s been in a half-century.

(Delaware County’s U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-7 of Thornbury, is consistent. He thinks everyone should earn more money. His office released a statement saying he supports the pay raise for Congress because members are getting the same percentage as other federal employees. But, breaking with many in his own party, the statement said Weldon also supports the minimum-wage increase approved by the Appropriations Committee.)

The fact that members of Congress can cheerfully accept a raise provided by the American taxpayers while stiffing the lowest-paid among those taxpayers is galling. It shows an elite class of bureaucrats with no conception of what hard-working people have to go through every day.Its leaders are seriously out of touch with the people they claim to represent but have apparently forgotten.

Will the voters forget come November?

Parting Shot

Former Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge Edward Scott Lawhorne died June 12 at White Horse Village in Newtown Square. The Swarthmore College and Dickinson Law School graduate had a unique career on the bench: Three times he was appointed by two different governors to fill unexpired judicial terms. And three times, when he ran for full 10-year terms, he was defeated. Why? Because he was a Democrat.

Judge Lawhorne was highly regarded by the attorneys who knew and appeared before him, routinely topping the "well-qualified" ratings issued by the county Bar Association. If he had only changed his registration to Republican, he would have had a long career in judicial robes.

But this infantry veteran of World War II was as loyal to his party as he was to his country. Judge Lawhorne was a gentleman and a class act, and he’ll be missed.