Prime minister Gordon Brown tossed a cat into the pigeon loft by suggesting, with due prudence, that MPs might like to forego part of a suggested 2.8% increase in an annual backbench salary of £60,675.
Mr Brown wants MPs to accept the 1.9% deal on offer to many public sector workers instead.
Now our AMs may soon face their own fiscal dilemma about whether to vote themselves an inflation-busting rise.
UPDATE: Meanwhile some MPs won't appreciate this development.
The idea for the pay hike for MPs came from the independent Senior Salaries Review Board, which also assesses the pay of leading civil servants, the military top brass and the judiciary.
Rises for MPs, under the proposal, would take the basic salary to £66,500 by 2010, added to which comes the current average £136,000-a-year in expense costs, costing taxpayers to £87m-a-year.
A submission to the SSRB by a cross-party advisory panel, said MPs should be paid around £100,000-a-year to stay in line with workers, such as chief executives of smaller sized local authorities and directors in larger councils.
The problem for MPs is explaining all this to their constituents, whose own pay or incomes may well be curtailed.
After all, you set up an independent group of experts to look at it, then have to vote through the feather-bedded rise yourself in the full glare of publicity.
Meanwhile, the Assembly Commission, which runs the devolved institution, is awaiting the findings soon of its own independent panel which has been looking at all the new responsibilities heaped on AMs in the new Government of Wales Act - law-making and all the rest of it.
Almost three years ago, AMs were handed a 3% rise by the SSRB, which at that time rejected calls by some AMs for pay parity with MPs at Westminster.
The commission set up its own pay and allowances panel, fearing that the review board would be unable to carry out the study in the near future because of its own workload.
It is more than likely this panel will suggest increases in pay for extra responsibilities before the new financial year begins in April.
Should politicians accept such independent advice, despite brief unpopularity, or try to offer an example to those in the real world facing financial belt-tightening?
The SSRB findings no longer apply to AMs pay and conditions, but will no doubt be taken into account by the Wales panel pondering their wages and allowances.
The basic AM’s salary increased from £34,438 in 1999 to £46,496 this year, a rise of £12,058 or 35%, for ministers the rise was from £67,798 to £86,435, some £18,637 more, or 27%, while the First Minister’s salary increased from £98,746 in 1999 to £123,492, some £24,746 or about 25%.
Deputy ministers have also joined the payroll in Cardiff on £71,617, a £19,000 or so increase compared to the rate paid to the deputy presiding officer in 1999.
It was billionaire financier Sir Janes Goldsmith who was credited with declaring: “If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.”
Much earlier than Goldsmith, the French philosopher Voltaire proposed that: “The art of government is to make two-thirds of the nation pay all it possibly can for the benefit of the other third.”
More details on AMs pay and allowances can be found here.
