REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst Acquire Licensing RightsNEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters Breakingviews) - U.S. legislators could use more skin in the shutdown game. Lawmakers will collect their salaries during the halt, however long it lasts, but nearly 1.5 million public workers will go without wages. The average salary for a federal employee was already 24% lower than the private-sector equivalent last year, wider than 2021’s gap, according to the Federal Salary Council. The $174,000 annual salaries paid to each of the 535 U.S. legislators, meantime, will be unaffected. Their median net worth is just over $1 million, according to the nonprofit research outfit OpenSecrets, so the paychecks are important to most of them.

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Persons: Kevin McCarthy, Jonathan Ernst, Ben Winck, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Sharon Lam Organizations: U.S, Capitol, REUTERS, Reuters, Republican Party, Federal Salary Council, Thomson Locations: Washington , U.S