 Hello, I'm Dan Cunningham reporting from Washington. Two Supreme Court justices testified before a House subcommittee on April 19th as advocates for a pay raise for federal judges. The country won't run the risk with this institution. Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito testified that judges' compensation has been hit harder by inflation over the past few decades than the pay of most Americans. Compensation is real. You have to pay for food with real dollars. It's not phony inflated dollars. And when you look in terms of real compensation, what you discover is compared to the average American, compared to the average American, the judges' pay has dropped a 50 percent, really. The justices said some judges are leaving the bench for more lucrative jobs, a point of great concern. I think it is a sign of what is coming. I think we are approaching a very unfortunate tipping point. And if something is not done, then I am fearful that the federal judiciary that we know and that we have come to depend upon will be fundamentally changed in future years. Justice Breyer painted an even darker picture. The day that that job becomes a stepping stone, instead of a capstone, which is what it is supposed to be, the capstone of a career, not a stepping stone to some other thing, that is death for the judiciary. Congressional leaders voiced concerns that lagging salaries may lead to a judiciary comprised only of men and women who are either independently wealthy or who do not come from careers in private practice. The point that impresses me the most is this need for diversity. And diversity is the one thing that is slipping away from us as your salaries continue to decrease over the decades. One of the roadblocks to increasing judicial pay is that it is linked to congressional pay. There probably was a time in our history when it could be justified, or there was a rationale for it that made sense. I don't think that exists any longer, and it's my belief that more and more of the members of Congress who will decide this ultimately feel the same way. The discussion on linkage was not long, and there was a split of opinion on delinking the salaries of judges and members of Congress. It was also noted that the tie to congressional pay does not extend to the executive branch. But not all public servants are treated this way. That is deprived of higher pay by an arbitrary link to congressional compensation. For example, the FDIC's chief officer is paid more than $257,000 annually, while the SEC's deputy chief accountant earns in excess of $200,000. Our staff, the AO, went through and they just tried to find out, by looking at a day's worth of advertisements for jobs in the executive branch, how many pay more than the federal judge? Well, here's the list. There are five or six on a page. Now, a lot of them are medical, but some are legal and some are purely administrative. A significant number of federal employees in the executive branch and banking agencies receive salaries at or above the salary of a district judge. For example, a federal district judge currently makes $165,200, yet an SEC trial attorney can make a maximum salary of $174,384, and the deputy general counsel at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can make a salary of almost $209,000. The question of if, how, and when federal judges will receive a long-delayed pay raise are still unanswered, but many of the subcommittee's members acknowledge the need for action. If we want to continue to attract those with the broadest experience and greatest knowledge to the federal judiciary, we simply have to pay them more. That's not a comment on their motives. It's a recognition of reality and the marketplace. Reporting from Washington, I'm Dan Cunningham.