9. The Salary Grab of 1873 renewed interest in the proposed amendment, but it nevertheless took until 1992 – a record two hundred and two years, seven months, and ten days – for the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to be ratified
Passed on March 3, 1873, the “Salary Grab” provoked outrage. Taking place the day before the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant for his second term, the bill doubled the salary of the President from $25,000 to $50,000 – the equivalent of more than one million dollars today – whilst simultaneously doubling the salaries of Supreme Court Justices. Inciting the most displeasure, the act disguised within its text a retrospective increase to the wages of members of Congress by fifty percent, backdated to the start of the previous term. Against overwhelming public pressure, Congress was forced to revoke their pay increase.
Nevertheless, the saga highlighted the issue of outgoing members of Congress seeking to augment their past wages. Provoking the most consternation in Ohio, the Buckeye State ratified one of the failed original twelve amendments to the United States Constitution, first proposed in 1789, in protest. Stipulating a salary increase for an elected representative cannot take effect until the start of their next term of office, Ohio’s efforts went without notice until a student at the University of Texas at Austin wrote a paper on the subject in 1982. Graded “C” by his teacher, who asserted the amendment could not be passed, Gregory Watson undertook a nationwide campaign to prove his professor wrong, eventually succeeding in 1992.