• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Instead, think about those who aren’t rich, who don’t have a high-income-earning spouse, and who don’t come from rural West Virginia. Think about a member from Seattle, or Boston, or San Francisco. Imagine that member needs to keep a home in the district, but brings her family to D.C. Imagine her spouse is a schoolteacher, and they’ve got three kids. Think about what a member like that does.

There are a number of ways that members like these can cope with the salary they get. Some cut costs by living in their office—literally, sleeping on a couch and showering in the gym. Some simply suck it up, and serve for a relatively short time before returning to private life. And some do something more—by securing a future for themselves that compensates for the (relatively) low pay of their present.

The motives of the members in this group need not be questioned. Many just simply can’t afford perpetual service to a low-paying government, at least if they’re going to afford to raise a family. Or at least, if they’re going to raise a family the way their family might reasonably expect, given their talents and the comparable opportunities. Whatever the pressure, the question I mean to raise is about the work these members do after their life in Congress. Because if their plan is to enter the influence market that D.C. has become, then they can’t help but develop a dependency upon that market doing well. It’s not just the need to keep future employers happy. That’s a possible but, I think, distant concern that would rarely extend its reach into the day-to-day work of the job.

Instead, the real problem is imagining a soul like this voting to destroy a significant chunk of the value of this influence industry—which fundamental reform of the type that I discuss in chapter 15 would do. For if lobbyists weren’t able to channel funds to campaigns, and hence, if congressmen didn’t depend upon lobbyists to get them the resources they need to run, then the value of lobbying services would decline. Lobbyists’ market power would decline. And hence the ability of lobbying firms to pay former members of Congress millions would disappear. If “Capitol Hill is a farm league for K Street,” then imagine asking players on a baseball minor-league team whether salaries for professional baseball players should be capped, and you will quickly get the point.

Of course there are members who would ignore that consequence. Of course there are some who would do the right thing, regardless of how it affected them personally. But fortunately or not, members of Congress are humans. They are much more likely to develop all sorts of rationalizations for keeping alive the system that will keep them millionaires. You think you wouldn’t? You think they are so different from you?

Life after Congress is thus one reason why members would be reluctant to think about fundamentally changing the economy of influence that governs D.C. today.

A second reason is much more contemporary (with a member’s tenure), and much more disgusting.

Members of Congress are not members of the Politburo. Unlike with members of the Politburo, the salary of a member of Congress is basically it. They don’t get a housing stipend. For most of them there are no fancy government limos driving them from one place to another. There’s no summer dacha. There are no free flights on government planes. As for most of us, their salary is their salary.

But unlike for most of us, their salary is not all they get to live on. Rather, members of Congress have perfected a system that allows them to live a life a bit more luxurious than a first-year associate at a law firm. And the way they do this ties directly to the need to raise campaign cash.

Many members of Congress (at least 397, according to the Center for Responsive Politics)9 have leadership PACs. A leadership PAC is a political action committee that raises money from individuals, and other PACs, and then spends it to support candidates for office. Members of our Congress stand in