Members of Congress are paid $174,000 a year, while members of Poland’s lower house of Parliament are paid $32,300 a year.

Hmm. It looks as if we’re getting ripped off. Members of Congress seem to underperform compared to members of Parliament in Poland and across the democratic world.

Conservatives are right to worry that feeding at the government trough breeds dependency and laziness. So I suggest we introduce pay for performance, using metrics like, say, health.

I cite Poland because so many Poles (including the Krzysztofowicz family, later renamed Kristof) came to America for a better life, yet today American babies are one-third more likely to die in their first year of life than Polish children are (and twice as likely as Italian, Portuguese and Czech babies!). Meanwhile, American women are four times as likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth as Polish women, according to the World Health Organization.