Why don't we just pay lawmakers $1M a year, or maybe more?
The fact that a lawmaker is impressed by a nice dinner or a basketball game is embarrassing.
The fact that a lawmaker is impressed by a nice dinner or a basketball game is embarrassing.
Paying them more wouldn't solve this problem because running an election campaign is so expensive that they spend the majority of their time trying to raise money. They end up taking positions that are friendly to potential donors in the hope that the donors will keep sending them money.
The major problem isn't that they trade favors to lobbyists to enrich themselves directly (although some undoubtedly are), the problem is that they trade favors to lobbyists in order to keep getting re-elected.
If there was any political will to solve this problem, it would have been solved long ago.
And that's totally legal.
Forcing all interactions with lobbyists to be recorded and released might help.
Publicly funded campaigns would also probably solve this problem (but could also cause its own problems).