How come there’s next to no money for education and health care, but there’s a seemingly endless pool for representative pay raises?
The average salary for Representatives and Senators is $150,000 per year. (cite)
There are 100 Senators and about 440 Representatives. That’s about $81 million in compensation for congresspeople total.
The 2003 Budget for the US Department of Education totals about $54.5 billion.
The compensation of congressmen, then, totals about 0.14 percent of the budget for the DoEd.
Most funding for education at the K-12 level comes from the states.
The total budget (PDF) for the Department of Health and Human Services is about $65 billion.