Cleveland Plain Dealer
Can members of Congress retire with full pay after just one term? PolitiFact Ohio
By Tom Feran, The Plain Dealer
January 11, 2013 

Political trends come and go, but the classics endure. 

Such is the case with a chain email PolitiFact Ohio received to start the new year. When we received a nearly identical version a couple of years ago, we said it could be "a new classic of the genre." 

The email claims that Congress gets special perks nobody else does; complains that a complacent media ignores the news, and requests that recipients of the email forward it on to 20 more people. 

We examined one of the special perks mentioned in the email, that "the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans." The claim is confusingly worded, but we assumed that it referred to relatives of members of Congress and Congressional staffers. 

We gave the statement a rating of Pants on Fire because it was (and is) ridiculously false. Relatives of members of Congress and Congressional staffers have to pay back their loans like everyone else. 

Read the rest of the article at the Cleveland Plain Dealer