Members of Congress are getting paid more than $2,000 for every bill they pass.
The chart below — assembled by the Washington Post, based on data from the Congressional Research Service and GovTrack — reveals the remarkable extent to which lawmakers today are being paid to accomplish next to nothing.
Members of Congress, excluding leadership and the president pro tempore, earn $174,000 per year. Lawmakers in the wildly unproductive 113th Congress are being paid $4,368 per bill passed over the two-year session — or $2,184 annually.
Money is hardly an issue for most lawmakers, anyway. A January 2014 study by the Center For Responsive Politics found that “[f]or the first time, most members of Congress are millionaires.”