crease roughly like that recommended the other day for members of Congress, judges, Cabinet officers and other top executives in federal government makes sense.

The issue is not what those people deserve, but what it takes to attract qualified individuals to federal service. Purchasing power for U.S. senators and members of the House has dipped 35 percent in the last 20 years. The pay of federal judges is, in many cases, less than a third of what the same people could earn in private law firms. And the pay for senior executives in federal agencies is so low, compared to similar positions in industry, that it's often difficult to find qualified people to take those positions.

Under the recommendations, made by the national commission established by law to analyze pay for senior officials, the pay of judges and members of the Senate and House, all of which must be equal under the law, would climb from the current $89,500 to $135,000. Those numbers may seem huge to taxpayers making, on average, less than a third of $89,500, but the cost of living for members of Congress and, most particularly, of maintaining a second home in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country - has put increasing pressure on incumbents either to earn outside income or to quit. As a result, many members earn

up to $35,800 a year in honorariums, the currently allowed limit, for speeches to specialinterest groups. For reasons that should be obvious, the commission wants to ban such income altogether. The recommended increase could hardly be justified otherwise.

Under the complex system created by Congress to review federal pay, the president can accept, reduce or reject the commission's recommendations, but always in the proportions established by law. If he accepts them, he will include them in the budget he sends to Congress in January. Unless Congress overrides the recommendations, the raise goes into effect automatically. But Congress will have to enact the ban on honorariums as separate legislation.

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he system is obviously designed to shield legislators from the wrath of constituents if they were to raise their own pay directly. But given the near impossibility of devising anything else that would work, it's not an unreasonable system. And in light of the difficulty of attracting and retaining good people for federal service, the commission's recommendations make sense only as a quid pro quo for the elimination of honorariums. One serious error by any of the officials covered by these recommendations will cost the taxpayers far more than all their pay raises put together.

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The American Constitution might

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have foundered, long ago, if its Inflation's toll

Framers in 1787 had not taken special care for the independence of those who were to have the main responsibility to interpret and enforce it. That is, Federal judges.

In Article III the Framers wrote: "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior." Life tenure was necessary, Alexander Hamilton explained, so judges would not be afraid "to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals."

The Framers did not stop there. They went on in Article III to provide that the judges shall "receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office." That clause was designed to prevent Congress from punishing judges for unpopular decisions by reducing their salaries.

But the wise men of 1787 did not anticipate one fact of 20th-century life: inflation. The rise in prices in recent years has had a devastating effect on Federal judges, reducing them from what was a secure if not lavish economic status to genteel insecurity.

In 1969 the salary of District judges, the trial judges in the Federal system, was fixed at $40,000. It is now $89,500. But because of inflation, their real income has fallen 30 percent over those decades.

Supreme Court justices have done even worse. In 1969 associate justices were paid $60,000 a year; now the fig. ure is $110,000. Taking inflation into account, their income has fallen 43 percent.

In the metropolitan areas where most Federal judges sit, it is difficult

on the Federal judiciary.

to provide good housing for a family and to put children through college on $89,500 a year. And by the standards of the legal profession, the figure is extremely modest.

Wall Street law firms now pay their starting associates, fresh out of law school, $82,000 a year. Within a few years, the associate will be earning more than a Federal District judge. The judge can look down from the bench and realize he has less to support his family than that young man or woman carrying briefcases into the courtroom.

It is often said that professors, too, earn less than practicing lawyers. But they do a lot better than Federal judges now. At 25 top law schools, salaries range from $102,000 to $121,000. That is for nine months. And professors, unlike judges, can add to their earnings by practice and consulting.

The point is not to feel sorry for Federal judges. As the saying goes, nobody has to be a judge. But if compensation falls so far below professional levels, who will want to be a judge? That is the point that should concern society.

Increasingly, those who go on the Federal bench will be in one of these classes:

1. People with inherited wealth.

2. Men and women who have completed many years of law practice

and have already paid for all their children's schooling.

3. Younger men and women who plan to remain judges for a limited time, perhaps 5 or 10 years, then go back into practice.

Ralph Nader argues that it would be easy to fill Federal judgeships, at modest salary levels, with lawyers who are not in the high-paying profes sional world those who provide legal services for the poor, for example. Yes, more public-spirited younger lawyers should become judges. But it is quite unrealistic to expect such appointments in large numbers.

The income squeeze will produce more and more Federal judges who are rich or who see a judgeship as a brief interlude in professional life. Resignations from the Federal bench, which used to be extremely rare, are already increasing.

The problem is not a difficult one to solve. All it takes is a little disinterestedness on the part of Congress.

For the last 20 years Congress has tied its own members' pay to that of the judges and officials in the executive branch. The system, designed to avoid political retribution for raising Congressional salaries, was to have a commission and the President propose levels that would become effec tive unless Congress said no. But the system is in ruins after political uproar led Congress to reject the latest proposals.

Members of Congress ask: Why should we treat judges differently from others? A good answer is that the Framers of the Constitution did. We rely on judges to protect the Constitution to protect us — and their compensation should not be made a political football.