Would Paying Congress More Save Money?

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry advances the idea:

Legislators crave the legislative subsidy [lobbyists supply] simply because they don't have the staff to research whether proposed tax X would really kill eleventy zillion jobs. Legislative chiefs of staff are "owned" by Abramoff as soon as he tells them he has a job for them in several years because they're getting paid a pittance. What if every member of Congress had a, say, $20 million staff-and-research budget?

What if a congressional chief of staff made $1 million per year, and what if each congressman had an army of staffers to research policy and draft bills, as opposed to a skeleton staff? The legislative subsidy would just become irrelevant. Or at least, congresspeople would be on equal footing vis-à-vis well-funded lobbyists. And the cost would be a drop in the bucket compared to the federal budget — and even less compared to the social and economic cost of carveouts and tax breaks.