Inside-the-beltway publication Roll Call just released its yearly ranking of Congress’s wealthiest and poorest members. Using publicly available financial disclosures, Roll Call created its “Wealth of Congress Index,” revealing interesting nuggets of information about members’ finances while also exposing how the current system often creates “the illusion of transparency.”
For instance, congressmen and senators are required to list the amount owed on their mortgage(s), but not the equity in their home(s). This makes many of them appear “poorer” than they actually are. Additionally, members are only required to report the value of their assets in broad ranges, rather than in specifics.
A few interesting stats from Roll Call:
The median net worth among all 535 members is more than five times that for all U.S. households, $81,400 in 2013. Half the senators and 140 House members are paper millionaires, but just 5 percent of all adults are, in the estimate of Credit Suisse Research.
And the richest 50 lawmakers were worth at least $7.3 million at the start of the year. The current threshold for being a member of ‘the one percent’ is a net worth of about $7.9 million, according to the most recent Federal Reserve study of census data.
For the third consecutive year, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is the richest member of Congress with a net worth of $255 million.
Roll Call explains how he built his fortune:
The backstory behind Issa’s fortune has become the stuff of congressional legend. After being charged — but never convicted — as a young man in two car theft cases, he invested $7,000 and loans from his family in a struggling Cleveland consumer electronics business in the early 1980s. Within a few years, he’d transformed his holdings into DEI, moved to California to take advantage of a surge in auto thefts and unveiled the enormously popular and profitable Viper car alarm. (He used his own sonorous baritone to record the system’s signature warnings: “Protected by Viper. Stand back,” and, “Please step away from the car.”)
For the second straight year, Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) is the poorest member of Congress, with massive credit lines related to his dairy farm leaving him $8.75 million in the hole.
Alabama’s delegation finds themselves scattered in between those two with net worths ranging from $4.2 million (Sen. Richard Shelby) on the high end, down to -$80,000 (Rep. Terri Sewell).
Here’s how each of Alabama’s congressmen and senators ranks overall. Head over to Roll Call to see the full list.
The net worth of Alabama’s congressional delegation ranges from -$80k up to $4.2m (details) https://t.co/5uYfJ7OadE
— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) November 2, 2015
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