Editor's Note: This week, we decided to answer several follow-up questions readers asked about previous Congress Q&A entries.

"What is the salary of (Speaker) Nancy Pelosi?" –Eve Hunter

In a previous Congress Q&A, we discussed how Congress sets its own pay. We later realized that we forgot to mention that members of the Congressional leadership receive higher salaries than rank and file members do.

While most members of the House and Senate currently make $174,000 a year, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, makes $223,500.

The majority leaders of both parties make $193,400 in both chambers.

The President Pro Tempore of the Senate also makes a larger salary, equaling that of the majority leaders.

By tradition, that post goes automatically to the senator in the majority with the longest service record. It is currently held by Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii who has served in the Senate since 1963. 

Pay raises for these leaders have gone into effect when cost of living pay adjustments for rank and file members have. 

"What about staff for the myriad committees that grow like topsy? Aren't they controlled by the chairman?" — Glenn Smith

When we wrote about how many staffers Members of Congress can hire, we didn't even get into the budgets for committees and that is a very important aspect of Congressional budgeting.

Committees have their own staffers, and some committee members even hire staffers to split time between their personal staff and committee staff, thus allowing them more flexibility in their personal office budgets.

Standing committees have their own budgets for hiring staff and the committee chairmen control most of the hiring decisions. 

About one-third of a committee's staff is controlled by the minority membership, while the rest are majority or shared staffers.  Additional funds for hiring staff are provided for inquiries and investigations.

Four House committees (Appropriations, Budget, Rules, and Ways and Means) permit committee members to appoint "personal committee staff" paid from committee funds. 

Thus, you'll notice that the House Appropriations committee listsseveral staff members as "assistant to Rep. so-and-so," indicating that that committee staff member works primarily for an individual member, but receives the majority of his salary from the committee.

"I don't understand the last part of Section 6, saying 'and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.'" — Howard Pettyjohn

We mentioned Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution when talking about Congressional pay raises.

The meaning of the last part of that section is straightforward: It simply means that no Member of Congress can hold another office in government. For example, Sen. Barack Obama could not have stayed in the Senate once he was elected President.

The main reason the framers put this in there is to help ensure the separation of powers. Otherwise, Obama (or McCain or Hillary Clinton etc.) would have been able to propose and vote on bills as a senator and then sign them into law as president.

"You do a good job addressing the reason membership in the House hasn't risen to 10,000 or whatever. An arbitrary limit had to be set.  But why that particular number? Why 435 vs., say, 430 or 440?" — Wayne Dickson
 
When we wrote about how Congress decided to limit the size of the House, we did not explain the logic behind the choice of 435 Members as the limit.

That's because there is none — 435 is a totally random number.

It simply was the number they had reached when they decided, somewhat collectively, that enough was enough. And it helps that it's an odd number for the sake of creating a workable majority. Otherwise, the House could end up split evenly down the middle.

— France Symes, Congress.org

Have a question about how Congress works? E-mail editor@congress.org and we'll answer it in our blog.