The Congress we pay for
One of the recent scandals involving the District of Columbia government arose at a branch of the city's motor vehicle department. A female employee at the branch was accepting money in exchange for providing phony licenses for use by illegal aliens.
The branch was located in a fancy mall in the heart of Washington’s up-scale Georgetown neighborhood. It struck me as almost inevitable that a greedy bureaucrat of poor character working in the midst of wealth and luxury would eventually find a way to parlay her job into a means of obtaining the money needed to shop at the ritzy adjoining stores.
Which brings me to the subject of Congress. For the DMV bureaucrat, substitute a Senator or Representative. For the branch that issues licenses, substitute the Capitol building. For the fancy mall, substitute the fancy neighborhoods, restaurants, etc. of Washington, D.C. and its environs.
Members of Congress make less than $170,000 a year, about what first year associates at top D.C. law firms make, and maybe one-tenth of what top lobbyists make. Doesn’t it seem almost inevitable that members of Congress eventually will parlay their jobs into a means of obtaining the kind of money people feel they need to “play” in Washington – either by becoming corrupt or by leaving Congress to become a lobbyist?
It seems that way to Dick Meyer. That’s why he proposes jacking the salary of Senators up to $1 million and the salary of Representatives to $750,000. The idea is a non-starter – Meyer doesn’t call his column “Against the Grain” for nothing – and it probably should be. But generally you get what you pay for, and I doubt we’ll ever have a clean, high-quality Congress for the money we’re paying now.
CLARIFICATION: I wanted to say it seems almost inevitable the some members of Congress eventually will parlay their jobs into a means of making more money. Clearly, some members stay in Congress as long as the voters permit them to without becoming corrupt.
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