One word, Term Limits. Oh, that’s two words isn’t it? We need to return to the citizen statesman and I can’t see any other way to do that in this climate with all the incumbency advantages that are available.
One problem is that it would also need to include congressional staff, who are the people who really create the legislation these days. Otherwise the incoming replacement would have a big incentive to retain the outgoing congressman's staff, and the same faces would still be running things behind the scenes.
the real corrupting influence is all the money that is on the table. The federal government needs to be pruned about 80%.