Automatic raise for lawmakers? Why?!

State lawmakers are getting a 2.8% cost of living pay increase. It's automatic.

First of all, the question is: how many people in the nonunion private sector get an "automatic" pay raise? None.

Second, right now we have an $11 billion shortfall. How much of that is due to wages, pensions, benefits, etc. of the public employees?

Right now they're talking about raising the income tax by 50 percent. We pay 10, 11, 12% sales tax on purchases, the highest in the country, and they still expect to get their raise.

What on earth is wrong with these people? How do they differ from the greedy CEO's that got us into the mess the country is in?

Now I have a question for the Daily Herald. I am grateful, of coarse, that you bothered to print the article, but why on the fifth page? Why not on the front page, with all the names of the politicians wo voted to keep their "automatic" cost of living raise when everyone around them are heading to the poor house?

How much is enough, at the expense of the long suffering taxpayers? How can they justify their greed? Why not print all the names on the front page?

Rosemary Colbert

Schaumburg