GOP senator blocking pay raise for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

It’s rare for Washington officials to decline a pay raise, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he doesn’t want one if it means meeting the demands of a former Senate colleague eager to expand offshore oil drilling.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is attempting to restore the interior secretary’s pay to its original rate after a constitutional clause forced Congress to reduce it in 2009.

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A clause in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution bars lawmakers from serving in an executive branch position for which they voted for a salary increase. Salazar, a former senator from Colorado, voted to increase Cabinet salaries before joining the Obama administration in 2009.

In order to accommodate lawmakers who leave for executive branch jobs, Congress regularly votes to cut the salary of the position to its previous rate. The “Saxbe fix” — named for former senator William Saxbe (R-Ohio), who quit the Senate to serve as attorney general in 1973 — was also used to curtail the secretary of state’s salary before Hillary Rodham Clinton assumed the position.

But Salazar is now eligible for full pay because his old Senate term expired in January. (Clinton won’t be eligible for a pay bump until 2013, when her second term would have ended.)

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), still smarting over Interior’s decision to scale back oil drilling after last year’s BP oil spill, said he would block Salazar’s raise until the secretary restores all previous drilling permits and approves new ones.

“When the rate of permits issued for new deep-water exploratory wells reaches pre-moratorium levels . . . I will end my efforts to block your salary increase,” Vitter told Salazar in a letter sent Monday.

Salazar told Reid on Tuesday to abandon the raise, because Vitter’s vote “is dependent upon the outcomes of his attempted coercion of public acts” at Interior.

“Oversight and regulation of offshore energy production is — and will continue to be — guided by principles of integrity, the public interest and much-needed safety and environmental standards,” Salazar said. “The public deserves nothing less.”

Reid blasted Vitter on Wednesday, saying he was attempting to block an exercise used to accommodate former lawmakers for more than a century.

Vitter said he’s glad Salazar isn’t pushing for a raise.

“Now I hope he starts earning what he already makes and properly issues new permits for much needed drilling in the gulf,” Vitter said Wednesday.

There was no word from Reid’s office on whether all attempts to increase Salazar’s pay have been spent.