Here’s how members of Congress actually get rich

• You may have seen some wild claims about politicians’ high net worth.
• Most of it’s not true, though there are a handful of ways that lawmakers can make an extra buck.
• It’s also pretty easy to verify claims about members of Congress’s net worth yourself.

If you spend a significant amount of time online, particularly on Elon Musk’s X, you may have come across some jaw-dropping information about American politicians’ wealth.

There’s a good chance it’s not true.

Whether it’s falsely inflated salaries, charges of illicit sources of income, or estimated net worths seemingly pulled out of thin air, false information about the personal wealth of American leaders is seemingly all over the place online.

The claims are sometimes so outrageous that lawmakers feel compelled to respond, as Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Jasmine Crockett of Texas have.

Some of this false information has been promoted by Musk himself, who recently expressed interest in raising the salaries of members of Congress — based on the notion that they’re enriching themselves by steering money toward non-governmental organizations in which they’re involved.

The DOGE leader recently reshared a post making false or unverified claims about various top lawmakers, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

“It’s not like these politicians started companies or were NBA All-Stars, so where did they get all the money?” Musk wrote. “Does anyone know?”

Occasionally, members of Congress do engage in outright corruption, with the most recent example being Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

But by and large, members of Congress don’t have a ton of avenues to enrich themselves, thanks to ethics rules.

There’s one key way that lawmakers make extra cash

Under ethics rules, members of the House and Senate are generally barred from earning more than roughly $30,000 in outside income from other jobs.

Some make use of that: Marco Rubio, now the Secretary of State, earned more than $20,000 a year teaching college courses when he was a senator, disclosures show. Many do not.

But some lawmakers do manage to find a way to make extra money while serving — one that’s perfectly legal and not subject to the outside income limit: book deals.

This is especially true in the Senate, where lawmakers are more well-known, and thus more likely to sell lots of books.

Take Warren as an example. In 2023, she made more than $36,200 from book royalties. The year before, she made even more — over $443,000.

The Massachusetts senator is an especially prolific author, drawing royalties from a combination of political memoirs she’s written since becoming a politician. The books include “The Two-Income Trap,” which she wrote as a professor, and even textbooks that she helped write in the 1980s.

In 2023, eight senators made more than $100,000 from book agreements. That includes Democrats like Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Tim Kaine of Virginia, along with Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Book proceeds are by far the most common way for lawmakers to generate significant amounts of income while in office.

Sometimes, writing books can allow lawmakers to dramatically improve their financial situations. Rubio, for example, has said that writing a book allowed him to pay off his student loans.

Becoming landlords is another way for property-owning members of Congress to make money.

For lawmakers who are already independently wealthy, there’s also a way to pad that: stock ownership. That’s more controversial, given that lawmakers may have access to non-public information.

Business Insider’s “Conflicted Congress” project found in 2021 that many members of Congress fail to report their trades in a timely fashion, and that conflicts of interest abound.

But making money from the stock market isn’t entirely straightforward either: The market rises and falls, and even lawmakers can make bad bets.

You can verify all of this for yourself

If you see a post stating that a rank-and-file member of Congress has an annual salary other than $174,000, there’s a good chance that it’s fake.

That’s the salary that virtually all members of Congress have been paid since 2009 — lawmakers have blocked any increase every single year since then.

Congressional leaders make a bit more than that. The speaker of the House — currently Rep. Mike Johnson — makes $223,500 a year. Every other top party leader makes $193,400.

If you come across a post claiming a lawmaker makes an exorbitant amount of money, it’s probably worth fact-checking.

The good news is that anyone can do it themselves.

Every year, members of the House and Senate file reports disclosing their assets, sources of income, and debts. The same is true of Trump administration nominees and candidates running for federal offices.

The Senate maintains an online portal for searching this information, as does the House. For the executive branch, there’s a portal managed by the US Office of Government Ethics.

So is Chuck Schumer worth $75 million, and Warren $76 million, as the post that Musk reshared alleges?

No.

According to 2023 disclosures, Schumer is worth roughly $2.3 million, while Warren — who’s also publicly released her tax returns — is worth a little more than $9 million.