Who are the 10 richest members of Congress?

The 10 wealthiest members of Congress in 2012 include Senate and House members hailing from all over the US. Can you guess which political party had the most lawmakers on the list – and who grabbed the top spot? 

8. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) – N.J.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, center, leads a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington to criticize the sale of high-capacity magazines for assault rifles that are sold to the public in this July 2012 file photo. Lautenberg's wealth comes from his founding of the payroll company ADP and extensive real estate holdings.

Minimum net worth: $56.8 million 
 
Lautenberg's minimum net worth rose about $2 million in 2011, to $56.8 million. 
 
The New Jersey senator co-founded Automatic Data Processing, the payroll processing company known as ADP, and received retirement income from the company of almost $185,000 during the period covered by his most recent filing. 
 
Lautenberg and his wife, Bonnie Englebardt, have extensive real estate holdings. 
 
There is a condo in Vail, Colo., with a reported value of $500,000 to $1 million as well as commercial real estate in Norwalk, Conn., and Sunrise, Fla., worth at least $1 million combined. And Englebardt has at least 12 real estate investments valued at $1 million or more.
 
Since a senator's spousal assets worth more than $1 million fall into a broad category of "over $1 million," Lautenberg's true minimum net worth could be far greater than reported. 
 
Lautenberg also has two blind trusts: one valued at $5 million to $25 million and the other at $1 million to $5 million. 
 
He reported at least $1.75 million in liabilities, including mortgages on two personal residences of at least $1.25 million combined. 

3 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.