CRS 2024

A number of posts have discussed congressional capacity. The Congressional Resarch Service is especially important in this regard.

Kevin R. Kosar at The Hill:

Last week, the Library of Congress made an important announcement: The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is getting a new director. Karen Donfried will begin her 10-year term on Sept. 23. She takes over for interim director Robert Newlen, who has led the agency since July 2023.

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Congress heavily leans on CRS to inform the legislative debate. CRS staff provided Hill staff and legislators with 479 in-person briefings, 2,754 confidential memoranda, 22,212 telephone responses and 36,222 email responses, according to the agency’s 2022 report. The agency also wrote 1,093 reports and general distribution products for Congress and 9,652 bill summaries, which the Hill and all of America can find on Congress.gov.

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Like any new leader, she will have to earn the trust of staff. Doing that will require spending a lot of time managing by walking about and encouraging staff to explain what they do along with what is working well and what isn’t.   And then she will need to start remedying the troubles, which are many. For example, various technology issues hinder CRS staff’s capacity to serve Congress. Staff works on buggy software and their phones often do not work due to cellular dead spots in the Madison Building, where CRS is headquartered.   

Donfried also will have to address some of the management problems, which she will no doubt learn about during her listening tour. Poor leadership has driven away a lot of staff, as Congress learned at a hearing in 2023.  CRS too often has placed people who are highly expert in policy analysis in management positions despite them not being people persons. Those individuals will need to be replaced. She also will need to figure out how to position CRS in the 21st century. Fifty years ago, the agency had a quasi-monopoly on the provision of expert information and analysis to Congress. These days, it faces stiff competition from think tanks, foundations, interest groups and private research firms. 

As I see it, the way forward is for CRS to lean into its six core strengths: It is a nonpartisan organization with deep expertise and long institutional memory that can provide rapid responses to congressional requests with customized research products and services that draw on diverse, in-house knowledge.

Conservatives for More Hill Staff

  A number of posts have discussed congressional capacity, legislative productivity, and deliberation.

 Jim Saksa at Roll Call:

At a House Administration hearing last week exploring how Congress could react to the end of Chevron deference, a panel of conservative and liberal experts all advocated more staff.

Overall, staff levels in Congress haven’t changed much in the past half-century. According to the Congressional Research Service, there were an estimated 8,831 House staffers in 1977 and 9,247 in 2023, although a large part of that growth came from a roughly 300 percent increase in the number of leadership staffers. The number of committee staff, who are generally considered to be the subject matter experts of Congress, fell by more than a third, from upward of 2,000 in 1978 to just 1,170 in 2023.

Similarly, even though staff levels in the Senate have risen, committee staff showed the smallest increase, growing just 10 percent over the period between 1977 and 2022, from 1,084 to 1,194.

While adding lawmaking capacity has long been a no-brainer on the left, small-government conservatives have come around to the idea that the way to shrink the overall size of government is to make the legislative branch a little bigger first. “We were designed to be slow and methodical, not responsive, right?” said Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a conservative Georgia Republican. “So, the fallback was let’s just empower the agencies, but that hasn’t worked out so well, as we’ve seen.”

Brain Drain on the Hill

Many posts have discussed the current state of Congress.

 Peter M. Weichlein at Newsweek:

Would you call an organization that has seen more than 50 percent turnover in upper management over less than six years a mess? I would, and so did a bipartisan group of almost 300 former members of Congress who, when asked in a recent survey to attach adjectives to the current Congress, landed on the following top five words: dysfunctional, partisan, polarized, divided, mess.

Since 2019, almost 250 members of Congress were replaced, either through retirement or election loss, and that number will obviously rise by the time the 119th Congress is sworn in. Already, more than 50 representatives and senators have announced that they are retiring or seeking other offices. That's experienced upper management and decades of institutional knowledge walking out the door.

The numbers are even worse at the staff level, where average tenure right now is less than 5 years. According to LegiStorm, which tracks congressional staff rosters and salaries, 55 percent more House staff members left their jobs in 2021 than in the preceding year. Does the date Jan. 6, 2021, ring a bell?

We're giving current and potential candidates for office every reason imaginable to consider other professional paths. Salaries for current members of Congress have remained unchanged for almost two decades. When one accounts for inflation, salaries have actually decreased 29 percent, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

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In 2023, Capitol Police opened over 8,000 threat assessment cases based on complaints filed by members, their families, and their staffs. That's an increase of about 400 percent over the past six years—while at the same time, almost 400 officers have left the Department since Jan. 6, 2021.

The State of Congress 2024

  From the Congressional Management Foundation:

A new survey confirms what many Americans already believe: Congress is not doing well. State of the Congress 2024 was based on a survey of senior congressional staff conducted by the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF). A large majority (81%) said Congress is not “functioning as a democratic legislature should,” and identified deficiencies in the institution, especially with regards to civility and bipartisan collaboration. However, when comparing this late 2023 survey to a similar one conducted in early 2022, many metrics related to the capacity of the institution to function had improved.

READ REPORT HERE: https://www.congressfoundation.org/revitalizing-congress/state-of-the-congress/2012

“What we found offers both hope and reason for concern,” the authors of the study wrote. “Based on results comparing the 2023 survey to the 2022 survey, Congress may have improved in some important areas of legislative functionality including: access to high-quality, nonpartisan policy expertise within the Legislative Branch; the technological infrastructure; congressional capacity and support; human resource support; Members’ and staffers’ understanding of Congress’ role in democracy; and accessibility and accountability to the public. But there is still a lot of room for continued improvement.”

The report noted that improved attitudes are most likely attributed to the work of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, an equally bipartisan House committee that developed more than 200 recommendations to improve the House of Representatives from 2019 to 2023, with many already implemented. The work of the Committee led the House to create a Subcommittee on Modernization under the Committee on House Administration in 2023 which continues to implement improvements and focus attention on congressional modernization.

Among the key findings:

• Civility and bipartisanship were important to almost all senior staffers surveyed, but virtually no one is satisfied with the current state. Republicans (85%) and Democrats (70%) said civility was “very important” to a functioning legislature; and 60% of Republicans and 51% of Democrats said encouraging bipartisanship was “very important.” However, only 2% of Republicans and zero (0%) Democrats were “very satisfied” with the civility in the institution; and no one of either party (0%) reported they were “very satisfied” with bipartisanship. A large number (96% of Democrats and 98% of Republicans) agreed that “it is necessary for Senators and Representatives to collaborate across party lines to best meet the needs of the nation.”
• More Republicans (31%) than Democrats (12%) agreed that Congress is “functioning as a democratic legislature should.”
• Alarmingly, Democratic congressional staff report concern over their personal safety. When asked how satisfied they were that "Members and staff feel safe doing their jobs" only 21% of Democratic staff said they were satisfied with the current environment compared to 61% of Republican staff. Democrats (68%) and Republicans (73%) similarly report personally experiencing "direct insulting or threatening messages or communication" at least "somewhat frequently."
• When asked how frequently they questioned “whether I should stay in Congress due to heated rhetoric from my party,” 59% of Republican staff are at least somewhat frequently considering leaving Congress compared to 16% of Democrats.
• Regarding the capacity of the institution to perform its role in democracy, comparing the same survey question from 2022 measuring staff satisfaction, “access to high-quality, non-partisan expertise within the Legislative Branch” went from 12% “very satisfied” to 32% in 2023; “technological infrastructure is adequate” saw an increase in “very satisfied” from 5% in 2022 to 11% in 2023; and Congress having “adequate human resource support” went from 6% “very satisfied” in 2022 to 14% in 2023.
• Regarding congressional accountability and accessibility to the public most senior staffers were satisfied with Congress’ physical (96%) and technological (85%) accessibility to the public. And similar percentages of Republicans (71%) and Democrats (70%) consider it “very important” that "constituents have sufficient means to hold their Senators/Representative accountable for their performance,” Republicans (50%) are much more likely to be “very satisfied” with the current state than Democrats (18%).

“While the findings overall suggest the absolute need for improving Congress, the positive change in attitudes about the capacity of the institution to do its job demonstrates that we can improve our democracy,” said Bradford Fitch, President and CEO of CMF. “It’s highly likely that the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress and the new Subcommittee on Modernization were the catalysts for this change. This shows that a bipartisan group of lawmakers, acting in good faith and in a thoughtful way, can improve our democratic institutions and provide better representation and service to the American public.”

The survey involved 138 staff, with 55% having served 10 years or more in the Congress. The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 1977 dedicated to strengthening Congress and building trust in its work with and for the American people. CMF works to revitalize Congress as an institution; promotes best practices in congressional offices; and helps Congress and the people they represent engage in a constructive and inclusive dialogue toward a thriving American democracy.

READ REPORT HERE: https://www.congressfoundation.org/revitalizing-congress/state-of-the-congress/2012

Congressional Capacity

A number of posts have discussed congressional capacity.  Despite large increases in federal spending and administrative rulemaking, Congress now has less capacity to oversee the executive than it did decades ago.

Congress has fewer committee staff and nonpartisan wonks to help it than it did in 1990.

Source: https://t.co/MK5SK2rZSM pic.twitter.com/5l9dNU8mu0

— Kevin R Kosar (@kevinrkosar) March 13, 2024

Thomas, Clerks, and Networks

 Abbie VanSickle and Steve Eder at NYT:

In the 32 years since Justice Thomas came through the fire of his confirmation hearings and onto the Supreme Court, he has assembled an army of influential acolytes unlike any other — a network of like-minded former clerks who have not only rallied to his defense but carried his idiosyncratic brand of conservative legal thinking out into the nation’s law schools, top law firms, the judiciary and the highest reaches of government.

The former clerks’ public defense of the justice was “unparalleled in the history of the court,” said Todd C. Peppers, a professor of public affairs at Roanoke College and the author of “Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk.” “It’s frankly astonishing.”

For Justice Thomas, the letter came at a time of both trial and triumph. He had become the face of long-simmering questions about the high court’s ethical guidelines. But he was also at the height of his influence. The court’s senior justice, he had spent years on the losing side of cases, writing minority opinions grounded in his strict originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Now that former President Donald J. Trump had given the court a conservative supermajority, Justice Thomas was a guiding voice for a new judicial mainstream.

He was playing a long game, and his former clerks were among its most important players.

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Now the tides have turned, and at least 18 of those former clerks have served as state, federal or military judges, nearly three-quarters of them appointed by Mr. Trump to federal courts, where they have ruled on issues like voting rights and access to the abortion pill. Roughly 10 more served in Mr. Trump’s administration; nearly a dozen made his Supreme Court short lists. Former Thomas clerks have argued, and won, several of the most momentous Supreme Court cases of recent years.

The network also includes a number of “adopted clerks” who never worked for Justice Thomas but are invited to events and receive clerk communications. Among them are high-profile conservatives including Leonard Leo, the judicial kingmaker of the Federalist Society, Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Alex Azar, a Trump cabinet secretary.

AI Fellows on the Hill

Many posts have discussed the political uses of philanthropy. 

Brendan Bordelon at Politico:

Top tech companies with major stakes in artificial intelligence are channeling money through a venerable science nonprofit to help fund fellows working on AI policy in key Senate offices, adding to the roster of government staffers across Washington whose salaries are being paid by tech billionaires and others with direct interests in AI regulation.

The new “rapid response cohort” of congressional AI fellows is run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Washington-based nonprofit, with substantial support from Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, IBM and Nvidia, according to the AAAS. It comes on top of the network of AI fellows funded by Open Philanthropy, a group financed by billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.

The six rapid response fellows, including five with PhDs and two who held prior positions at big tech firms, operate from the offices of two of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s top three lieutenants on AI legislation — Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) — as well as the Senate Banking Committee and the offices of Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).

Alongside the Open Philanthropy fellows — and hundreds of outside-funded fellows throughout the government, including many with links to the tech industry — the six AI staffers in the industry-funded rapid response cohort are helping shape how key players in Congress approach the debate over when and how to regulate AI, at a time when many Americans are deeply skeptical of the industry.

The apparent conflict of tech-funded figures working inside the Capitol Hill offices at the forefront of AI policy worries some tech experts, who fear Congress could be distracted from rules that would protect the public from biased, discriminatory or inaccurate AI systems.

Technological Expertise and Congress

Maya Kornberg and Martha Kinsella at the Brennan Center:

Nost public attention on Congress’s struggles to legislate has focused on partisan roadblocks — the increasingly sharp ideological divisions between the two parties and anachronistic procedural hurdles such as the Senate filibuster — that make decisive action a challenge, even during periods of unified party control.

footnote8_o0lnh008 But a related driver of congressional dysfunction is lawmakers’ shrinking access to the high-quality research and data and nonpartisan expertise needed for them to comprehend complex technical issues. In a 2016 survey, 81 percent of senior congressional staffers said that access to high-quality, nonpartisan policy expertise was “very important,” but only 24 percent were “very satisfied” with the resources available.footnote9_ydajgm09

Congress has many in-house subject matter experts. Each member has personal staff, and each committee has staff from each party. Legislators are also assisted by a number of support agencies, including the Library of Congress and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) housed therein, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional Budget Office, and the Government Publishing Office. Yet staff levels in Congress and at its support agencies have atrophied substantially over the past several decades, primarily as a result of cuts Congress has made to its own budget.footnote10_i9mgmtn10

Insufficient access to and absorption of high-quality, nonpartisan science and technology resources have many adverse consequences, including the allocation of billions of dollars in funding for technologies that do not work. These deficiencies also contribute to partisan gridlock because lawmakers increasingly rely on one-sided information from external sources — including those supported, directly and indirectly, by major political donors — making it harder to find common ground about basic facts and metrics for policy solutions.footnote11_4180msp11

Whether dealing with climate change, emerging AI technology, or myriad other complex issues, Congress has a need for science and technology support that continues to grow.footnote12_nbhe49x12 And while lawmakers have often issued broad statutory directives that defer to the expertise of executive branch agencies to fill in the gaps, the Supreme Court has put limits on the policymaking authority of those agencies.footnote13_3u2oaq913 Congress itself will need to legislate with more frequency and greater detail in response to complex problems. It does not have the support it needs to fulfill this responsibility.

CRS Troubles

A number of posts have discussed congressional capacity. The Congressional Resarch Service is especially important in this regard.

Kevin Kosar at The Hill:

Congress calls upon CRS frequently. In 2021, for example, the think tank provided 265 in-person briefings, 2,729 confidential memoranda, 24,044 telephone responses and 34,844 email responses. The agency also wrote 1,073 reports for Congress and 13,348 bill summaries, which the Hill and the public read on Congress.gov.

While it is indubitable that CRS employees are doing a fine job, the agency itself has had troubles for more than a decade.

In 2019, Congress took a close look at flagging staff morale and employee frustration with CRS’s leadership. The Committee on House Administration (CHA) made clear that it wanted CRS leadership to right the ship. That did not happen. A survey of CRS staff last year revealed sky-high displeasure with CRS’s front office. So, the CHA’s Subcommittee on Modernization recently held another oversight hearing to get to the bottom of things. (Disclosure: I testified at this hearing.)

Chairwoman Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) grilled CRS director, Dr. Mary Mazanec, over a bungled $20 million technology project that has left CRS staff writing reports and memoranda with a buggy version of Microsoft Word 2016. The committee also heard that staff service to Congress was suffering due to patchy Wi-Fi in their offices, Zoom accounts that shut down after 40 minutes of use and difficulty in getting technical support.

The State of Congress

Congressional Management Foundation and the Partnership for Public Service

The Congressional Management Foundation and the Partnership for Public Service released the first annual assessment of congressional performance by a cohort of more than 100 senior and exceptional congressional staff. The research reveals these staffers have deep concerns about important aspects of congressional civility, functionality, and capacity. State of the Congress 2022 is available at: https://ourpublicservice.org/publications/state-of-the-congress-2022/.

"Legislatures are the glue that holds democratic societies together," the report reads. "The United States Congress should be the bulwark against the forces that seek to tear democracy apart through division, violence, misinformation, and hate. Congress should be a place where people throughout the country are represented through difficult conversations and problem-solving that leads to the greatest good."

State of the Congress 2022 reveals bipartisan agreement that Congress needs to improve to best perform its role in democracy. It provides an assessment of congressional performance by the people who know the institution best: congressional staff. The Exemplary Congressional Staff Cohort – or "Congressional Exemplars" – were recommended by former staff and direct experience of the report's authors. The Congressional Exemplars work in personal, committee, leadership, and institutional support offices throughout the Legislative Branch. Two-thirds have worked in Congress for more than 10 years, most are senior managers, and all have demonstrated a deep commitment to the institution of Congress.b

1. There is a great deal of bipartisan, bicameral agreement on many of the challenges facing Congress. The key findings from the research are:Congress is not functioning as it should. When asked if they agree with the statement, "Congress currently functions as a democratic legislature should," only 24% agreed and 76% disagreed. Party affiliation had some bearing on the response: More than three-quarters (80%) who work for Democrats and more than two-thirds (68%) who work for Republicans disagreed.
2. Polarization and rhetoric are making it more difficult to get things done in Congress. Two-thirds (66%) who work for Democrats and more than half (54%) who work for Republicans "strongly agree" that otherwise non-controversial legislative ideas have failed due to polarization among Members. And an almost equal number of Democrats (66%) and Republicans (70%) "strongly agree" that congressional leadership should enforce the rules and norms of civility and decorum.
3. Members' primary role is solving constituents' problems. About half of the Congressional Exemplars who work for Democrats (47%) and Republicans (52%) identified "solving constituents' problems" as Senators' and Representatives' most important role. They were generally more satisfied with aspects of public engagement and accountability than with most other aspects of congressional functionality and capacity.
4. It is very important for Members and staffers to be civil and to work across party lines. More than three-quarters (77%) said it was "very important" to encourage civility and more than half (59%) said it was "very important" to encourage bipartisanship among Senators and Representatives, but only 1% were "very satisfied" with the current state of either. Importantly, a near-equal percentage of Democrats and Republicans shared this viewpoint.
5. Congressional Exemplars suggest areas where there is clear opportunity for improvement. When asked about the importance of certain reforms recommended by the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, four rose to the top as being "very important" to the Congressional Exemplars: reclaiming Congress' constitutionally-defined duties (74%); improving staff recruitment, diversity, retention, compensation, and benefits (69%); reforming the budget and appropriations process (61%); and ensuring continuity of congressional operations in emergencies (61%).
6. Improvement in Congress will likely require building capacity and infrastructure. More than three-quarters (80%) of the Congressional Exemplars said it was "very important" that Congress have adequate capacity and support to perform its role in American democracy and almost as many (74%) said it was "very important" that Congress' technological infrastructure is adequate to support Members' official duties. Yet only 5% were "very satisfied" with the current state of capacity and support and just 4% with the current technological infrastructure.

During the past two decades, organizations that monitor and support legislatures throughout the world have turned considerable attention to developing benchmarks and frameworks for assessing the democratic performance of these institutions. In 2017, CMF began to use this body of work to produce the report State of the Congress: Staff Perspectives on Institutional Capacity in the House and Senate. Now, CMF and the Partnership have expanded the State of the Congress research to include functionality and civility of the institution.

The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan nonprofit whose mission is to build trust and effectiveness in Congress. Since 1977 CMF has worked internally with Member, committee, leadership, and institutional offices in the House and Senate to identify and disseminate best practices for management, workplace environment, communications, and constituent services. CMF also is the leading researcher and trainer on citizen engagement, educating thousands of individuals and facilitating better relationships with Congress.

During the past 20 years, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service has been dedicated to building a better government and a stronger democracy. We work across administrations to help transform the way government works by providing agencies with the data insights they need to succeed, developing effective leaders, inspiring the next generation to public service, facilitating smooth presidential transitions and recognizing exceptional federal employees. Visit ourpublicservice.org, follow us @PublicService and subscribe today to get the latest federal news, information on upcoming Partnership programs and events, and more.

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CIVILITY, COMMITTEE, CONGRESSIONAL OPERATIONS, CONSTITUENTS, DEMOCRATS, HOUSE, LEADERSHIP, REPUBLICANS, SENATE, TRANSPARENCY

"Sometimes, the interns themselves appear to be running the show."

 Annie Karni at NYT:

When an alarmed Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, called the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, demanding to know why the president of the United States had suggested he was coming to the Capitol while Congress met to certify his election defeat, the person on the other end of the line had just turned 25 years old.

“I said, ‘I’ll run the traps on this,’” Cassidy Hutchinson, now 26, testified this week before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, recalling what she had told Mr. McCarthy, Republican of California. “I can assure you, we’re not coming to the Capitol.”

Ms. Hutchinson’s two hours of testimony provided a riveting account of President Donald J. Trump’s mind-set and actions the day of the mob attack and situated the young aide — an assistant by title, but a gatekeeper in practice — at the very center of some of the most sensitive conversations and events of that day.

It also pulled back the curtain on a little-acknowledged truth about how Washington works: The capital’s power centers may be helmed largely by the geriatric set, but they are fueled by recent college graduates, often with little to no previous job experience beyond an internship. And while many of those young players rank low on the official food chain, their proximity to the pinnacle of power gives them disproportionate influence, and a front-row seat to critical moments that can define the country.

Sometimes, the interns themselves appear to be running the show.

After the House investigative committee accused Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, of attempting to hand-deliver to Vice President Mike Pence a slate of false electoral votes for Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson, 67, blamed the incident on a young underling. He claimed that an unidentified “House intern” had instructed his staff to give the list of fake electors to Mr. Pence.

Other former Trump aides who have appeared in video testimony during the Jan. 6 hearings include Nick Luna, now 35, Mr. Trump’s former body man; Sarah Matthews, now 27, a former deputy White House press secretary; and Ben Williamson, now 29, like Ms. Hutchinson a former aide to Mark Meadows, the final Trump White House chief of staff.

The committee has also featured some of its own young-looking investigators in videos laying out its work.

Estranged Republicans

 Kevin D. Williamson at National Review:

If I am not quite politically where you’ll find, e.g., my friends over at the Bulwark, I am not emotionally where they are, either, and that may be more to the point. By this, I do not mean to cast any aspersions on that school of thought and its adherents. I would be very surprised if William Kristol did not have much stronger personal feelings about the Republican Party than I do: He served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations (as chief of staff to the vice president in the latter case), advised (and even managed) Republican campaigns, led organizations with the word “Republican” in their name, etc. — and I didn’t. Joe Scarborough held office as a Republican. If you look at the résumés of conservatives most bitterly estranged from the Republican Party, you’ll see many former advisers, campaign operatives, Hill staffers, party officials, etc. These are people who didn’t casually date the Republican Party — they were married.

House Staff Turnover

Keturah Hetrick at LegiStorm:

Last year's rumored staff exodus was more than just speculation: According to LegiStorm data, House staffers left their jobs at the highest rate in at least two decades.

House turnover has crept upward since about 2009, but the pandemic and Capitol insurrection pushed far more staffers than usual to leave their jobs in 2021 - 55 percent more than in the preceding year. Last year's rates mark the House's highest turnover since at least 2001, the first full year of LegiStorm's salary data.

House Democrats were overall poorer at retaining staff and lost workers at a 24 percent higher rate than Republicans. Democratic staffers have been at the forefront of a recent push for staffer unionization.

Still, it was two Republicans who led the House in the highest turnover rates. Then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who resigned his seat in January to lead the Trump Media & Technology Group, lost left at nearly five times the House average. Fellow Republican Victoria Spartz (Ind.) came in second, with about 3.5 times average.

Reps. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), Sean Casten (D-Ill.), Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.), Pat Fallon (R-Texas), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) rounded out the rest of the ten worst.

LegiStorm's staff turnover index is salary-weighted, meaning that the departure of a higher-paid staffer, such as a chief of staff, will count proportionately more than that of a staff assistant or other lower-paid staffer. LegiStorm considers only full-time, non-temporary staff and excludes all interns and fellows.

Alliance for Congress

 Many posts have discussed Congress and reform of its deliberative capacity.

William Gray at LegBranch.org:

The Alliance for Congress, a new initiative by the Partnership for Public Service, launches today!

Their mission is to unite allies to help Congress become a healthier and more capable institution that can tackle big issues and serve the public good. Over the past several months, the Partnership has joined other good government groups, civic organizations, congressional experts and leaders from across the political spectrum in the space to help modernize Congress.

In light of their launch, the Alliance also released a new research study focusing on how congressional staff view the health of the institution overall.

Going forward, the Alliance will work collaboratively to:

• Promote productive solutions and recognize success in the legislative branch;
• Elevate new and diverse voices serving in the institution;
• Provide tools and resources to members of Congress and staff; and
• Drive a forward-looking conversation around congressional functionality, diversity and equity.

And as PPS president Max Stier notes in his own announcement about the initiative, the Alliance for Congress will focus on three key areas of work:

• Resources: We equip members of Congress and staff with tools, data and constructive recommendations so the institution can become more responsive to the needs of constituents.
• Connections: We amplify and support the efforts of allies working to strengthen Congress and serve as a collaborative partner in the broader effort to empower Congress to deliver results for the public.
• Recognition: We advocate for the institution and tell the stories of the people who solve problems and promote a future-focused vision of Congress that better serves our diverse and changing nation.

“As the Partnership has learned through its work with the executive branch, healthy public sector organizations – with good leaders and engaged employees – are essential to serving the people,” he said.

Learn more about the Alliance for Congress at www.allianceforcongress.org and follow them on Twitter @allforcongress.

Brain Drain on the Hill

New report from New America:

Congressional Brain Drain

Legislative Capacity in the 21st Century

By: Alexander C. Furnas, Timothy M. LaPira

Executive Summary

This research report comprehensively investigates congressional capacity and governance using publicly available data on long-term trends in legislative branch expenditures and data Furnas and LaPira collected in the 2017 and 2019 Congressional Capacity Surveys (CCS).1 When combined, the CCS is the most comprehensive time-series cross-sectional survey of congressional staffers’ professional backgrounds, career paths, policy views, technical knowledge, substantive expertise, and job experiences ever conducted. We document how the decline in legislative capacity has changed during the era of rising polarization and increasing political party competition. As a consequence, legislative staff in Washington are asked to do more and more, with less and less.

1. Congress is a funnel to lucrative jobs in lobbying. Between 40−45 percent see the private sector as their next career step. Roughly half of staff aiming to enter the private sector after serving on the Hill want to become lobbyists. For the most part, working on the Hill is viewed as an entry-level position for K Street, rather than a stepping stone for a career in public service.
2. Staff resources have shifted to the district. The share of total staffer full-time equivalents dedicated to Washington, D.C. offices has fallen from more than 70 percent in the 1970s to 50 percent in recent years.
3. There are fewer resources to pay staff. In the House of Representatives, the budget allocated for office staff hires fell by 10 percent from 2013 to 2017.
4. Staff pay is declining. Salaries fell among communications, legislative, and administrative staff following the 110th Congress (2007-2008). The decline cannot alone be attributed to the member pay freeze and austerity measures resulting from the Great Recession because the decline in resources allocated for legislative staff started well before 2007.
5. Congressional staffers in important roles are largely inexperienced. Most staff who manage policy portfolios in Congress have only one or two years of Hill experience. That is, roughly one-third of legislative staffers have not yet served the duration of a single Congress. Conversely, staffers in both chambers who have spent more time working in Congress are measurably more knowledgeable about institutional procedures and important policy topics.
6. Capitol Hill is staffed primarily by Millennials. Roughly 60 percent of the congressional staffer population is under the age of 35, and 75 percent under 40 years old.
7. Turnover among congressional staff is exceedingly high. The average tenure for staff on Capitol Hill is 3.1 years. About 65 percent of staffers plan to leave Congress within five years. Even more strikingly, 43 percent plan to depart by the end of the Congress in which they are employed.
8. Most do not see working in Congress as a long-term career option. Even among those who would like to continue careers in the public sector, more than half (55 percent) plan to leave Congress.
9. Staffers work extremely long hours, and are spread thin. More than 65 percent of staff work 50+ hours a week, and 20 percent of staff work 60+ hours. Of senior staffers, 65 percent work 60+ hours a week. The average legislative staffer works on two to six issue areas every single day.
10. Staff like working for their boss, but not so much for Congress. Seventy-six percent report a very strong or strong sense of belonging in their employing office, but only 61 percent feel similarly about Congress as a whole. This institutional deficit is greater for women and staffers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).
11. In Congress, experience yields knowledge, but is not rewarded. Staffers that have spent more time working in Congress are measurably more knowledgeable about institutional procedures and important policy topics. This is true across both chambers, and is unrelated to actual work assignments. Yet, turnover is so high and retention rates so low that members fail to keep that knowledge in house, so must rely more and more on K Street.
12. Staffers are highly partisan and highly ideological. Sixty-five percent of staffers identify as strong partisans, and almost no staffers identify as true independents. Staffers are well-sorted ideologically, such that there is little ideological overlap between Democratic and Republican offices.

Decline in Legislative Capacity

Many posts have discussed declines in congressional capacity.

Jesse M. Crosson Alexander C. Furnas Timothy Lapira Casey Burgat, "Partisan Competition and the Decline in Legislative Capacity among Congressional Offices," Legislative Studies Quarterly.  The abstract:

Since the 1990s, members of the US House have shifted resources away from legislative functions to representational activities. We reveal this decline using an original dataset constructed from 236,000 quarterly payroll disbursements by 1,090 member offices for 120,000 unique staff between the 103rd and 113th Congresses, as well as interviews with former members and staff in Congress. These data allow us to test two plausible alternative explanations, one rooted in the centralization of legislative power over time and the other in conservatives’ desires to contract government power. We show that the decline in legislative capacity is symmetrical between and consistent within both parties, contrary to expectations rooted in asymmetrical, ideological sabotage. Additionally, this divestment occurs within incumbent member offices over time, accelerates when new members replace incumbents, and persists when majority control changes. We conclude that competition over institutional control and centralization of legislative functions motivates declining legislative capacity among individual members.

From the article:

The general patterns we uncover here are substantiated in an interview with a Legislative director for a democrat, who serves as a senior staffer responsible for the office’s legislative matters and manages three junior colleagues. the staffer observed that the decline in legislative resources we document here is associated with increased turnover and decreased policy experience in the House:

The other piece is no one really knows how to legislate anymore. as someone who’s been around a little while…there’s not really the expertise, even among committee staff that there was a couple years ago because we’re not doing it [legislating]…i was talking to a [committee legislative staff friend] last year. she was telling me that she had to bring all of [the legislative assistants working for members on] the subcommittee in to teach them how to do a markup because not one of the [legislative assistants] of this subcommittee had ever staffed their boss in a markup before. ever.

[…]
We’ve got a great, smart team … but two of my legislative assistants are 23 and 24…you need a little bit more experience in a place like this. [Congress] is always gonna be a young place, it’s always gonna attract young people that are ambitious. But it’s gone to an extreme…you can tell that people haven’t gone through this before sometimes. sometimes you can use that to your advantage, sometimes it’s frustrating. But that’s a real issue…it’s hard when there aren’t people that have been through quite a few markups, or been through a couple reauthorizations of a major bill

Oversight and the Legislative Lobotomy

Many posts have discussed declines in congressional capacity.

William Yeatman at Cato:

After World War Two, committees were the most consequential institutions in Congress; now, parties fill that role. Part of the reason for this change is demographic: The parties became more homogenous with the demise of southern Democrats and northeastern Republicans. At the same time that party rank-and-file were taking on hive-minds, opportunistic party leaders gamed the House and Senate rules to centralize power in their hands.

For ascendant party leadership in Congress, strong committees were a roadblock to the consolidation of authority. To weaken committees, party leaders sought to weaken committee staff.

Matters came to a head in 1995 on the first day of the 104th Congress, when Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican leadership slashed committee staff by one-third, and the Senate soon followed suit. Because it was in the interest of both parties’ leaders to subdue committees, staffing never recovered

For example, there were 2,115 professional personnel in House and Senate standing committees in 2015, or less than two-thirds the total in 1991 (3,528). To be fair, party leaders invested in some parts of Congress--themselves. From 1995 to 2011, House and Senate leadership staff increased 35 percent and 38 percent (respectively).

Simply put, Congress doesn’t have the tools to oversee the administrative state it created. The WSJ grows a false narrative when its Editorial Board opines that Warren’s plan for congressional staff reflects an “expansion of government.” In a less sincere tone—his real purpose was power—Rep. Gingrich advanced the same arguments when he dropped the ax on committee staff in 1995. Though untrue and often disingenuous, it makes for a great talking point to claim that Congress should lead by example by starving itself in the name of fiscal prudence. Anyone who claims otherwise is branded as a spendthrift. That’s why staffing levels have never recovered

Modernizing Congress

Recommendations of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress:

Making Congress More Effective, Efficient and Transparent

1. Streamline the bill-writing process to save time and reduce mistakes.
2. Finalize a new system that allows the American people to easily track how amendments change legislation and the impact of proposed legislation to current law.
3. Make it easier to know who is lobbying Congress and what they’re lobbying for.
4. One-click access to a list of agencies and programs that have expired and need Congressional attention.
5. One-click access to see how Members of Congress vote in committees.

Streamline and Reorganize House Human Resources

6. Creating a one-stop shop Human Resources HUB for Member, committee, and leadership staff.
7. Making permanent the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
8. Examining and updating the staff payroll system from monthly to semimonthly.
9. Raising the cap on the number of staff in Member offices.
10. Regularly surveying staff on improving pay and benefits.

Overhaul the Onboarding Process and Provide Continuing Education for Members

11. Allowing newly-elected Members to hire and pay one transition staff member.
12. Offering new-Member orientation in a nonpartisan way.
13. Making new-Member orientation more comprehensive.
14. Promoting civility during new-Member orientation.
15. Creating a Congressional Leadership Academy to offer training for Members.
16. Making cybersecurity training mandatory for Members.

Modernize and Revitalize House Technology

17. Reestablishing and restructuring an improved Office of Technology Assessment.
18. Improving IT services in the House by reforming House Information Resources (HIR).
19. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to prioritize certain technological improvements.
20. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to reform the approval process for outside technology vendors.
21. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to allow Member offices to test new technologies.
22. Creating one point of contact for technology services for each Member office.
23. Creating a customer service portal to improve technology services in the House.
24. Leveraging bulk purchasing of the House by removing technology costs out of Member offices’ budgets and moving into a centralized account.
25. Prioritizing a “rapid response” program at the Congressional Research Service for nonpartisan fact sheets on key issues.
26. Developing a constituent engagement and services best practices HUB for Members.

Make the House Accessible to all Americans

27. Improving access to congressional websites for individuals with disabilities.
28. Requiring all broadcasts of House proceedings to provide closed caption service.
29. Requiring a review of the Capitol complex to determine accessibility challenges for individuals with disabilities.

Congressional Capacity and Reform

From the American Political Science Association Task Force on Congressional Reform:

[The] main areas of consensus concerned ways to improve congressional capacity through increased personal and committee staffing, as well as expanded funding for existing support agencies and / or new support entities. Staff retention should also be encouraged with higher compensation, standardized benefits, and improved professionalization and training opportunities. We also had broad agreement on a range of initiatives to improve staff diversity. The task force also reached agreement on two reforms with respect to the budget process: eliminating floor votes on the debt limit and reinstituting earmarks. Finally, there was a consensus in favor of greater institutional attention to the evaluation and deployment of new technologies to enhance both constituent communications and Congress’s internal operations.