Should we pay members of Congress for performance? Can we?

By Ezra Klein

Can we pay members of Congress for being productive?

That's what Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) wants to do. "The real trouble with Congress is that you get what you pay for, and we are paying for the wrong things," he said in a recent speech at Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. "Right now taxpayers are paying for mediocre members of Congress to look good while ducking fundamental issues in order to get reelected. Fixed salaries do much more to perpetuate the terrible status quo than most people realize."

The problem is, how do you measure congressional productivity? Bills passed? Constituents helped? Television hits? Even Cooper doesn't know.

Initially, I wrote his idea off as economic thinking run amok. But an interview today changed my mind, at least a bit. Cooper may not know how to pay congressmen to be more productive -- and he's not for higher pay overall. But he makes a good case that they are currently paid -- or at least rewarded -- for the wrong sorts of productivity.

"If you look at it carefully," he says, "we're already being paid for performance. But it's by special interests. And even here on the Hill, we kind of pay ourselves for a certain type of performance. Party leadership hands out all these perks: Committee assignments, staff privileges, annex offices, pages, even permission to travel. And then there are campaign contributions from the DCCC."

So what to do about it? That's a bit harder. There are crude measures of productivity like attendance at votes, hearings, and issue meetings. But it's not clear where exactly that gets you. It's important for a member of Congress to show up for a vote, but is it really better performance for her to help name a post office in another state than to meet with a constituent or read an issue brief? Another option is to reduce the bad types of performance pay, or at least their appeal, through things like campaign finance reform. But perhaps you folks have some subtler, better ideas for how to do this. Can we pay members of Congress for performance?