Browsing: Frank Lautenberg

For federal agencies, the current sequester-related budget crunch is unprecedented. Congress, however, isn’t letting go of one venerable tradition: Paying a year’s congressional salary (currently at a base level of $174,000) as a death benefit to the spouse of a lawmaker who dies in office. No across-the-board cut here: The fiscal 2014 continuing resolution unveiled yesterday authorizes the full payment to Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, widow of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. Frank Lautenberg died in June at age 89. After rising from childhood poverty to lead the Automatic Data Processing payroll management company, Lautenberg was numbered among the Senate’s…