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Fact check: On legislative salaries in the Louisiana governor's race
- Above: David Vitter and John Bel Edwards
November 17, 2015
By Charles Aull
In a debate last week, Louisiana gubernatorial candidates John Bel Edwards (D) and David Vitter (R) both remarked on each other's legislative salaries.
Vitter stated that Edwards voted to raise his salary and per diem as a state representative, while Edwards claimed that Vitter, as a U.S. Senator, earns $40,000 per year more than when he was first elected and that he makes more in a month than Edwards makes in a year.
We found these statements to be a mixture of accuracy and inaccuracy. Below we look into the details of all four of them.
Background
Edwards, a third-term Democratic State Representative, and Vitter, a second-term Republican Senator and former member of the House of Representatives, cleared a field of nine candidates in Louisiana's blanket primary election in October. They will face each other in a general election on November 21.
| Governor of Louisiana, Blanket Primary, 2015 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Vote % | Votes | |
| Democratic |  John Bel Edwards |
39.9% | 444,061 | |
| Republican | David Vitter |
23% | 256,105 | |
| Republican | Scott Angelle | 19.3% | 214,907 | |
| Republican | Jay Dardenne | 15% | 166,553 | |
| Democratic | Cary Deaton | 1.1% | 11,750 | |
| Democratic | S L Simpson | 0.7% | 7,411 | |
| Independent | Beryl Billiot | 0.5% | 5,690 | |
| Independent | Jeremy "JW" Odom | 0.4% | 4,755 | |
| Independent | Eric Paul Orgeron | 0.2% | 2,244 | |
| Total Votes | 1,113,476 | |||
| Election Results Louisiana Secretary of State. | ||||
At a debate last week—their second since advancing past the October primary—the two candidates got into an exchange about their legislative salaries. It began with Vitter commenting on Edwards' voting record:
| “ | John Bel, I wanted to ask you about governing style. You often talk about shared sacrifice, particularly given the enormous challenges we face as a state. But when I look at your concrete record, and when others look at your concrete record, I don't see that shared sacrifice required of politicians, yourself, your legislative colleagues, other insiders in the system. I see something very different. I mean, very soon after coming into office you voted for yourself getting a 123 percent pay raise. In addition to that, you voted for yourself getting a per diem increase, on top of that. ... This really does go down to governing style. What real sacrifice will you ask of political insiders, the politicians, not just hard-working taxpayers who seem to have to pay more and more and more for government.[1] | ” |
Edwards responded by saying:
| “ | Senator Vitter, you've been lying sideways in the public crawl since 1992. You make $40,000 a year more now in the Senate than when you got elected to the Senate. That's more than I make, you make more per month than I make in a year. So I'm not going to take a backseat to you any of these issues that you just raised.[1] | ” |
Our focus here is on Vitter's and Edwards' statements about their compensation as legislators. We start with Vitter's comments that Edwards voted to give himself a raise and to increase his per diem as a state representative.
Louisiana state legislator salaries and per diem rates
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), a nonpartisan organization that describes its mission as "to support, defend and strengthen state legislatures," Louisiana state legislators earn a base salary of $16,800 per year. They also receive an annual $6,000 expense allowance and per diem for days when the legislature is in session and for days when they are attending to official state duties. The per diem rates vary from year to year and are discussed in more detail below.
To determine if Edwards has ever voted to raise his salary and per diem as a state legislator, we first reached out to Vitter's campaign to find out what legislation the senator was referring to in the debate. We have not yet heard back, but in the meantime we turned to the Louisiana State Legislature's website, which maintains a database of current and past legislation as well as vote records showing who voted for and against each bill.
Using Edwards' tenure in the state house—from January 2008 to the present—as our timeframe, we searched the state's database for bills pertaining to increasing state legislator salaries. The only bill we found on this issue was Senate Bill (SB) 672 from 2008. The bill sought to raise the annual base salaries of Louisiana state legislators from $16,800 to $37,000. Such an increase, as was reported by local media outlets at the time, would have moved Louisiana's legislative base salary from roughly the twenty-sixth highest in the country to the fourteenth (though see one of our previous fact checks on some of the problems associated with comparing state legislative salaries). The bill proposed no changes to other forms of legislator compensation.
SB 672 passed the State Senate 20 to 16 and the House 56 to 45. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R), however, vetoed the bill, saying in an official statement, "it is very clear that all of our great progress notwithstanding, the public is fast losing its confidence in state government because of the legislative pay raise bill. We can only effectively with the consent of the governed. If we do not have the support and confidence of the people, we might as well go home." Jindal had previously stated his intentions not to veto the bill in order "to allow the legislature to conduct its own internal affairs."
| Louisiana SB 672 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Chamber | Yeas | Nays | Absent |
| Senate | 20 | 16 | 2 |
| House | 56 | 45 | 3 |
| Sources: Louisiana State Legislature, "SB 672." | |||
According to our math, the raise from $16,800 to $37,000 offered legislators a 123.21 percent increase—just as Vitter noted in the debate—and the vote record shows Edwards as having voted for it. This claim, we argue, is true.
But what about the per diem increase? Did Edwards vote to raise it?
Answering this one is more complicated.
Legislators in Louisiana receive a per diem for every day the legislature is in session and for any other days that they are attending to state-related official duties. According to the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as a "government watchdog" and "catalyst for government reform," the number of days for which a Louisiana legislator might receive a per diem can average between 82 and 107 days each year.
The per diem rate in Louisiana is tied to a rate set by the federal government—specifically, the rate established by the General Services Administration (GSA) for federal employees traveling to Louisiana's capital, Baton Rouge. Currently that rate is $157 per day. A 2014 study by The Times-Picayune, a New Orleans-based newspaper, showed that many members received more than $10,000 in per diem payments in 2013. Edwards received a total of $9,347.
Using the same methodology that we used to track down SB 672, we searched for legislation related to raising legislators' per diem. We found one bill on this topic, House Bill (HB) 1390 from 2010. The bill would have frozen the 2010 federal per diem rate of $159 per day for Louisiana state legislators for two years. It failed in the House 51 to 31. Edwards voted against it.
| Louisiana HB 1390 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Chamber | Yeas | Nays | Absent |
| House | 51 | 31 | 21 |
| Sources: Louisiana State Legislature, "HB 1390." | |||
Does Edwards' vote against HB 1390 constitute a vote for raising the per diem?
Maybe, but it actually turned out to be a vote for a decrease.
The federal per diem rates for Louisiana in 2008 and 2009 were, respectively, $143 and $145 per day, according to data from the GSA. In 2010, the rate jumped to $159. Given this trend, some legislators—such as HB 1390's sponsor Jerome Richard (I)—considered it possible that the rate would continue to increase. HB 1390 would have prevented these increases from happening in 2011 and 2012 by freezing per diem at the 2010 rate of $159 for those two years. In 2013, the rate would have returned to the federal rate.
From this perspective, Edwards' vote could be considered a vote to increase the per diem rate, though a more accurate description would be to say that he voted not to freeze it for two years. But the larger problem with Vitter's claim is that the federal per diem rate for Louisiana actually decreased after 2010. In 2011, it was $152 and in 2012 it was $149. Had Edwards voted for the bill, one could argue that he had actually voted against a rate decrease.
Given the ins-and-outs of HB 1390 and the fact that per diem rates actually decreased after 2010, we argue that Vitter's claim was misleading.
U.S. Senator salaries
For Edwards' claims that Vitter makes $40,000 per year more today than when he was first elected as a Senator and that he earns more per month than Edwards does in a year, we turned to two reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan government organization that provides Congress with "policy and legal analysis."
The CRS reports, titled "Salaries of Members of Congress: Recent actions and Historical Tables" and "Congressional Salaries and Allowances: In Brief," show that regular members of Congress—including territorial delegates—currently receive an annual base salary of $174,000. This excludes additional forms of compensation such as office and travel allowances. Non-regular members such as the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore and the majority and minority leaders in the Senate receive more than this. The Speaker receives $223,500, while the President Pro Tempore and Senate majority and minority leaders each receive $193,400.
Congress has the option of giving itself a raise every year through a mechanism called an "annual adjustment." The last year Congress accepted an annual adjustment was in 2009, which set the current salary of $174,000, a 2.8 percent increase from Congress' previous annual salary of $169,300.
Vitter, considered for salary purposes a regular member of Congress, was elected to the Senate in November 2004. At the time, he represented Louisiana's first congressional district in the House of Representatives and earned $158,100 per year.
So when Vitter was first elected he made $158,100, and today he makes $174,000. That's a difference of $16,000, which is well below $40,000. We should stress that this is based solely on base salaries—which is what we took Edwards to mean when he raised the issue in last week's debate. We reached out to Edwards' campaign for comment, but have not yet heard back. When we do, we will update this article accordingly. But at present we consider his claim to be an overstatement.
Edwards' comment that Vitter earns more in a month than he does in a year comes closer to the mark but it too is an overstatement. As we noted above, Edwards' gross annual salary is $16,800. This excludes taxes and other withholdings as well as an annual $6,000 expense allowance and per diem payments. If we break down Vitter's $174,000 annual base salary into monthly installations, it amounts to $14,500 per month, a difference of $2,300 from Edwards' $16,800 per year. Edwards, then, actually makes more in a year than Vitter does in a month, but—at least when measured strictly by base salary—not by much.
Conclusion
In a debate last week, Louisiana gubernatorial candidate David Vitter stated that his opponent John Bel Edwards, as a state representative, voted to give himself a 123 percent pay raise and to increase his state per diem rate. We found that first statement to be true but the second to be misleading. Edwards' vote is more accurately described as a vote against freezing the per diem rate. We also noted that the bill Edwards voted against, technically, would have prevented a rate decrease.
In response to Vitter's comments, Edwards stated that Vitter, as a U.S. Senator, earns $40,000 per year more than when he was first elected and that he makes more in a month than Edwards makes in a year. We found that first claim to be an overstatement. Vitter makes $16,000 more today than when he was first elected—not $40,000. We found the second part of Edwards' claim to be less inaccurate than the first, but still a slight overstatement. A comparison of base salaries shows that Edwards makes $2,300 more per year than what Vitter makes per month.
Launched in October 2015 and active through October 2018, Fact Check by Ballotpedia examined claims made by elected officials, political appointees, and political candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. We evaluated claims made by politicians of all backgrounds and affiliations, subjecting them to the same objective and neutral examination process. As of 2025, Ballotpedia staff periodically review these articles to revaluate and reaffirm our conclusions. Please email us with questions, comments, or concerns about these articles. To learn more about fact-checking, click here.
Sources
C-SPAN, "Louisiana Gubernatorial Debate," November 10, 2015
Louisiana State Legislature, "Bill Search," accessed November 17, 2015
Louisiana State Legislature, "SB672," accessed November 17, 2015
WAFB, "Louisiana legislators approve plan to double their pay," June 16, 2008
WAFB, "Governor Bobby Jindal vetoes legislative pay raise," June 30, 2008
General Services Administration, "Per Diem Rates," accessed November 17, 2015
Louisiana State Legislature, "HB1390," accessed November 17, 2015
The Advocate, "Per diem frozen for two years by bill," April 29, 2010
Congressional Research Service, "Salaries of Members of Congress: Recent actions and Historical Tables," September 17, 2015
Congressional Research Service, "Congressional Salaries and Allowances: In Brief," December 30, 2014
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