I think there’s something to this e-mail:

Rich:
I read with considerable interest your piece on the Abramoff scandal. I was particularly struck by your following paragraph.
“There are two deeply rooted sources of corruption in Washington. One is that many members of Congress believe that they would be making much more than their $160,000-a-year salaries if they were in some other line of work. This sense is compounded when they watch their former 30-year-old aides go to work on K Street for $300,000 a year. This is how someone like Tom DeLay — otherwise a conviction politician — justifies playing the best golf courses in the world on someone else’s dime and getting special interests to funnel easy money to his wife.”
So why not pay Congressmen $300,000 a year? And also double the salaries of their top staffers? It would cost virtually nothing as government spending goes– far less than it costs in pork pushed by the lobbyists who tempt our underpaid public servants with luxury perks. A quick look at the legislative branch appropriations for FY 2006 (you may want to check my round, ballpark figures) shows about $500 million for Senate salaries and expenses and $1.1 billion for House salaries and expenses (including staff). In a $2.3 trillion Federal budget, who will notice is these legislative numbers are doubled?
Besides removing (some) temptation, it would also attract a higher caliber of candidate and staffer— and keep them. I enjoyed working for a GOP House member, and thought I was doing good things for the country (defense policy), but when my son became a teenager, I had to find a more lucrative line of work. My income doubled overnight by moving to a trade association. But it was not a “higher calling” from conviction.
Isn’t being responsible for the policies of the last Superpower as important as middle management of a corporation in some consumer product line? Conservatives have too often confused small government with incompetent, corrupt or simply “cheap” government, but that is a mistake. It is also a mistake to think that “revolving door” government is a good thing for churning the elites. And while we are at it, salaries for executive branch officials also need to be hiked to a near-private sector equivalence. They write regs, make policy and peddle influence as lobbyists once they leave office just as shamefully as legislators. Again, the cost would be small compared to what is spent, wasted or diverted by corrupted officials.