WASHINGTON — When parts of the government shut down nearly two weeks ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez challenged members of Congress to have some “integrity” and not accept their salaries while federal workers were being stiffed.
But she’s not ready to say whether she practices what she preaches.
Ocasio-Cortez first urged that lawmakers work for free on Dec. 22, the first day of the shutdown.
“It’s completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines & then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision,” the incoming New York Democrat wrote.
She doubled down when someone on Twitter suggested that move would only hurt middle and lower-income lawmakers.
“Speaking as a working class member-elect, I think that’s only fair,” she said of Congress skipping their paychecks.
“It would also cause members who actually depend on their salary to think twice about leadership and take a shutdown vote more seriously.”
Now that the shutdown is stretching into the new Congress, Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesman didn’t respond to numerous emails, texts and calls from The Post asking what she herself is doing.
Other New York lawmakers have already announced that they’re giving up their pay until the government resumes normal business.
Right at the start of the shutdown, Republican Reps. Lee Zeldin and Elise Stefanik announced they had asked the House Chief Administrative Officer to withhold their checks. They were joined by Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who said he was doing it in solidarity with New York’s 14,000 federal employees.
Rep.-elect Max Rose (D-N.Y.), who will be sworn in alongside Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday, announced Monday he would donate his pay to a local charity.
“This shutdown is an insult to Americans who work their heart out every day because, unlike congress, they can’t afford to act like children,” Rose said.
In the past, Ocasio-Cortez has openly fretted about how she would afford Washington, saying she might need to start collecting some of her $174,000-a-year salary before finding a place to live.
In a profile that ran in the New York Times the day after November’s general election she called her transition to D.C. “very unusual” because she wouldn’t be able to take a salaried gig until her Capitol Hill job started.
“So, how do I get an apartment? she asked. She added that she had been “just kind of squirreling away and then hoping that gets me to January.”
The same month CNBC reported that she was down to under $7,000 in savings.