Calling a 16 percent pay raise for Congressmen “irresponsible” and “an insult to the American people,” Congressman Dennis Hastert yesterday introduced legislation to stop it.

astert, a Republican from the 14th District, which includes DeKalb, said his immediate reaction to the the proposed pay raise was to say “no thank you.”

“I’m confident the residents of the 14th District did not send me to Washington to immediately vote myself a pay hike,” he said.

Bob Welling, Hastert’s press secretary, said Hastert’s legislation calls for a vote on the pay increase. If the bill, House Resolution 518, was not introduced, the raise would have been adopted automatically, he said.

If passed, the pay increase would represent a $12,000 per year increase for each of the 535 members of Congress. “This (the pay raise) translates into a $6.5 million increase in federal expenditures,” Hastert said.

“The proposal (for the increase) originated before I arrived in Congress,” Hastert said. The increase of 16 percent is much higher than most salary hikes in the private sector, he added.

“One of the major missions in the 100th Congress is to try to find ways to reduce federal spending,” Hastert said. However, “The federal deficit is now more than $2 trillion and growing,” he said. Furthermore, “Congress has had great difficulty making the tough choices on where to reduce spending,” he added.

Asking for a double-digit pay raise at this point is inappropriate, Hastert said. The pay increase is “too large and does not make sense,” he said.

A year-long study by an independent Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries included a recommendation for the pay hike, forwarding it to Congress as part of the President’s budget for fiscal 1988.

“In his budget, the President has given us (Congress) a mandate to reduce the federal deficit and hold the costs of government to an absolute minimum,” Hastert said. “We owe it to our constituents to do just that by blocking this proposal,” he said.