EP. 32 — THE OTHER 97% OF CONGRESS

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Weston Wamp: I'm Weston Wamp, and this is “Swamp Stories,” presented by Issue One. 

Few Americans approve of the job Congress does. That’s no secret.

What’s more elusive is why Congress seems so dysfunctional. Why do lobbyists have so much influence over Congress? And where is the oversight of sprawling federal bureaucracies that is the responsibility of the First Branch of government? 

Well, when we talk about Congress and its problems, we focus almost entirely on the 535 members of the U.S House and Senate.

But our representative democracy of 330 million people relies at least as much on the nearly 18,000 congressional staffers who make up over 97% of the legislative branch of the federal government.

For decades, congressional staff pay has stagnated. The hours are long, the cost of living in Washington D.C. is exorbitantly high, and, to make matters worse, some members of Congress brag about not using all of the funds allocated for staff pay. 

But these staffers don’t only work for members of Congress. They work for all of us. 

Without congressional staff, legislating would be near impossible. A lot of the “work” Congress does is done at the staff level. We all have a vested interest in a competent, qualified, and motivated legislative branch of government. We obsess over who gets elected as billions in campaign dollars are spent to decide congressional elections. So maybe it’s time we pay some attention to the staff who make Congress work — and do something about the low quality of life and inequitable pay that often defines life for staff in the legislative branch.

This is Episode 32: The Other 97% of Congress

Weston Wamp: Leave it to Congress to toil in denial of one of life’s ultimate truisms. 

“You get what you pay for.”

No doubt, Congress doesn’t flinch to fund $100 million fighter jets or billion dollar aircraft carriers. But when it comes to its own house, Congress has failed to understand and adjust to the competitive dynamics of a job market that chronically under compensates great talent, which robs taxpayers of great public servants and makes sure lobbying firms, known collectively in Washington as “K Street,” keep the upper hand.

Meredith McGehee: The first thing that you need to realize when you're talking about congressional pay is that the K Street lobbyist runs circles around congressional staff. And so when that happens, the policies that get made reflect the interests more of the K Street special interest than they do of average Americans. And they can afford it, because they make a lot of money, and therefore he who pays the piper calls the tune. It's like baseball. If you can go out and pay top dollar for the best players to come on your team, then you're going to have a better team. And right now, K Street has the better team.

Weston Wamp: For decades Meredith McGehee has been one of the most forceful voices advocating for reforms to make Congress work better. For the last several years, she’s worked with us at Issue One as our executive director. 

Meredith McGehee: Most people don't realize that members of Congress are given a set amount to run their office. It's called their MRA, their Members' Representational Allowance, and they're supposed to run their office out of that. And there also are a limited number of staff people, particularly on the House side, that you can hire with that. So it's a very limited budget.

Weston Wamp: Marci Harris is an entrepreneur, the founder of the citizen engagement platform POPVOX, and another effective advocate for a more transparent, accountable, and effective Congress. 

Marci Harris: The way you often hear Congress described is that it's, in the House, 435 small businesses, and 100 in the Senate, and they all kind of run their own offices. And that is very true in the way that they run those offices is with their representational allowance, which is the money that they have to in most cases decide how they're going to spend it, whether it's on technology or people, or newsletters and outreach.

Weston Wamp: Although there are some similarities between a congressional office and a small business, Harris points out that in congressional offices there has been a sort of rules for thee but not for me attitude.

Marci Harris: I think one of the things that Americans do not realize and many are shocked when they hear is that Congress doesn't subject itself to the same rules that it makes for other workplaces. So rules limiting unpaid labor or hourly requirements, or other labor practices that are mandated in other workplaces, don't apply to Congress. 

Weston Wamp: As Dr. LaShonda Brenson of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies points out, uncompetitive pay in a city where the average rent is among the highest in the country, has created an untenable situation.

LaShonda Brenson: So staff pay can start as low as $29,000, right? So if you think about the cost of living in D.C., a one bedroom apartment isn't something that a person like that could afford, but it would go around about $2,000 per month. And so obviously that person would have to either live further out, so adding more commute time, or having a lot of roommates in order to make that work.

Obviously D.C. is one of the most expensive places to live. You have to think about, okay, the average student, the student has student loan debt and other expenses, if you have a car. It really can add up.

Weston Wamp: At best, Congress has been pennywise and pound foolish, naively saving negligible taxpayer dollars by compensating staff poorly. At worst, it’s evidence of congressional incompetence. Great companies often pay their best people well. And will go to great lengths to protect them from being poached. 

But in Congress, an even more unseemly tradition has developed over the years, feeding the lobbying industry with much of Capitol Hill’s best talent. Let me illustrate.

Let’s say a fresh college grad gets an entry level job as a staff assistant on Capitol Hill making $30,000 a year. A promotion to legislative assistant making $40,000 a year is still not even enough money to get ahead in Washington. But if she does a great job for a couple of years and is hired as a legislative director for a member of Congress, let’s say on the Transportation Committee, her salary will double to maybe $80,000 a year. And for the first time she has some breathing room in her monthly budget. But after a couple of years learning the ins and outs of the committee process and making friends with the committee staff and other members’ staffs, she gets a call. Boeing wants her to come to K Street. The offer? $120,000 a year to start with — upside for a lot more. Suddenly, a world of possibilities opens. She’s conflicted, but she’s been offered her previous salary and her current salary combined. And she knows from her friends and colleagues that those salary numbers can skyrocket.

Meredith McGehee: Well, there's something that's been going on for a long time known as the “K Street carousel,” and that's when you work for a member of Congress or maybe a committee. You need to get your two or three years in. And then if you work for a member of Congress on a good committee, you're likely to get hired by a K Street firm who can then send you up to the Hill and lobby for those interests and you make a lot more money. 

Weston Wamp: The wide-ranging consequences of stagnant staff pay and the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street should motivate the left and the right to find solutions. We need to retain good staff on Capitol Hill to make the Congress the best it can be — and Congress should treat its staff well.

Basic math dictates that breaking even on Capitol Hill as an entry-level staffer, let alone as an intern, is nearly impossible. In practice, affluent relatives often subsidize the living expenses of underpaid, young staffers. According to Dr. Brenson, this robs the legislative branch from the unique perspectives of staffers from families without means and often people from communities of color and rural areas.

LaShonda Brenson: When we talk to staffers about, or anybody we talked on the Hill about, "Okay, what do you think could change the nature in terms of lack of diversity amongst staff?" They would say just increase pay, because unfortunately a lot of staffers of color cannot afford to have their pay subsidized by family.

If we look at recent census data, it talks about how the average Black household income substantially trails the national average, and it's a trend that's becoming worse, not better. That's commonplace for other racial and ethnic minorities as well. 

Weston Wamp: Progressives have long fought for an increase in the MRA, or Members’ Representational Allowance, which would allow for increases in staff pay.

But in the name of limited government, conservatives have mistakenly throttled pay in the legislative branch and high profile conservatives have intentionally held back funds from their budgets to issue press releases praising their own fiscal prudence. As McGehee points out, this means staffers are less and less equipped to take up the challenges of responsible government.

Meredith McGehee: The studies are showing Hill staff are getting younger, they're staying shorter amounts of time, and there's a tendency on the part of some members of Congress to say, "Oh, I don't spend all of the money I could on my office. Doesn't that show that I'm a good fiscal steward?" When in fact, they're just basically screwing their own constituents.

Weston Wamp: As a fiscal conservative myself, let me say… limited government was never supposed to mean ineffective government. 

In reality, the swamp needs active oversight and accountability from Congress. I believe there’s a moral imperative to steward taxpayer dollars, to fight waste and abuse, and to ultimately protect the government’s ability to provide public services and serve those truly in need.

Virtue signaling over staff pay runs counter to the need to have top notch staff to hold accountable the executive branch and our vast federal government. 

Meredith McGehee: Well, serving your constituents should be the goal, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. That should be a shared goal. The question here is, in an increasingly complex and complicated civil government and a federal government in particular, you need help as an average citizen navigating that often, whether it's casework and you need your Social Security check, or you're a veteran. This is the constituent casework that is the bread and butter.

But there are also important policy questions that are very complicated in a complicated world, and they need people who are sophisticated to help members of Congress really understand the implications of those choices. 

Weston Wamp: Marci Harris agrees.

Marci Harris: It's really important who's in that office and what kind of capacity they've got. Are there enough of them to handle the many phone calls that are coming in day-to-day or the letters so that they can understand what people are telling them from back home? And are there enough of them with expertise to go from a hearing on technology, to a hearing on defense, to a hearing on healthcare and all of the various topics that Congress covers. When you have a small House office with eight or nine staffers, that's a whole lot to have on their plate.

Meredith McGehee: And unfortunately, the kind of black-and-white dialogue that we have in our politics has meant that there hasn't been the nuance and the grayness of policy choices that need to be made, and if you don't have the expertise to see the grayness in policy, then you end up with bad policy.

Weston Wamp: Recently, Speaker Pelosi allowed staff salaries to exceed those of members of Congress, which have been held at $174,000 for more than a decade. And as unusual as it may seem, this increase will allow Congress to retain talent when competing against the benefits and hefty salaries often offered by K Street.

And an increase in the MRA, along with increasing entry level pay, could help recruit and retain the best staff, and drastically improve the diversity of perspective on both sides of the aisle, so that those working in Congress much better reflect all of America. 

Let me take a moment as we wrap up this 32nd episode of “Swamp Stories” to thank Meredith McGehee. Being interviewed for this episode was one of her last acts as Issue One’s executive director, before beginning her next chapter. She was fiery and passionate as always — a keen communicator with a huge heart for democracy. Behind the scenes, she has sharpened many an episode of “Swamp Stories.” On a personal note, I’m grateful for her friendship and her leadership in the nonpartisan political reform movement. For decades she’s been one of the most influential advocates in Washington — always fighting for a more perfect union. Farewell Meredith, and thank you.

On the next episode of “Swamp Stories, we’ll take a close look at how the most recent census is leading to contentious redistricting battles — especially in Texas, where two new seats will be up for grabs in 2022. 

Weston Wamp: Thanks for listening to Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix our broken political system. Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better, rate and review it on iTunes to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at swampstories.org. I'm your host Weston Wamp. A special thank you to executive producer, Ethan Rome, senior producer Evan Ottenfeld, producer Sydney Richards, and editor Parker from ParkerPodcasting.com. Swamp Stories was recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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