In short, we as taxpayers are getting cheated. Should we really be paying senators a base rate of $174,000 — Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader gets more — to preside over such bad results?

It’s time to apply the discipline of markets. For the sake of our senators’ own characters, we should pay for work.

If we now pay almost six times as much per capita on health care as Poles do, and get outcomes that are far worse, hmm, what do you think? Maybe we pay our representatives one-tenth what the Poles get? That would be $3,200 a year for a member of Congress.