A first term congresscritter, last I checked, starts at $157,000 a year, tax free. A newly inducted recruit at the paygrade of E-1 starts at $16,000 a year and is taxed, even a fresh officer starts at around $33,000. This of course also doesn't cover the per diem, staff and many other benefits said congresscritter receives.
I would fully support putting representatives and senators on a similar scale to the military paychecks, perhaps split the difference between E and O scales and with a similar pension setup requiring 20 years of service in order to collect 50% of the average of the top three collecting years, scaling up to 75% at 30 years of service, but no higher.