Kevin Kosar:
The topic of today’s episode is, “How does Congress fund itself?”
My guest is Daniel Schuman. He is the Policy Director at Demand Progress, a grassroots, nonpartisan organization with over 1.5 million affiliated activists fighting for the rights and freedoms needed for a modern democracy. Daniel has spent many years studying our national legislature, working to reform it, and advocating to better fund it. He also is the editor of the First Branch Forecast, an extraordinarily informative newsletter that you can read and subscribe to at no cost at https://firstbranchforecast.com/.
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to the Understanding Congress Podcast.
Daniel Schuman:
And thanks so much for having me.
Kevin Kosar:
Let me get to my first question right away. According to the Constitution, Congress has lots of authority to design itself. It can decide whether to have committees, what rules should be for passing bills and doing all the things it does, and it can fund itself. Now, in simplest terms, what is the process Congress uses to fund itself? Who decides how much money gets spent on Congress?
Daniel Schuman:
So that’s a great question. The short answer is that leadership decides. Like most things in Congress, leadership decides. So the House and Senate leadership in consultation with the chairs of the Appropriations Committees and the Budget Committees determine what’s called the 302(a) allocations, which is the top line amount of discretionary money that is available. This is like the giant pot. And then there’s 12 little pots inside it, which are the 302(b) allocations, which are how much goes to each of the 12 appropriations subcommittees. And it ranges from gigantic, which is like $750 billion for defense to leg branch, which is about, oh, I don’t know, $5 billion.
Daniel Schuman:
And this determination is largely made, like I said, by the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader and the chairs of the Appropriations Committees. And that’s it. So those are the people who decide how big the pie is that’s available for the legislative branch, and then the appropriations subcommittee gets to cut up the pieces on the pie to figure out where that goes.
Kevin Kosar:
And just as a quick follow-up, all this has to be moved in a bill through both the House and the Senate, and off to the White House, correct?
Daniel Schuman:
That’s right. And the fun of this, of course, is that many members of Congress have decided that they won’t vote for most of the appropriations bills for whatever reason. So then instead of moving each of the 12 appropriations bills separately, they, generally speaking, roll them all together and push them through at once, which makes for as chaotic a process as you would expect.
Kevin Kosar:
Now, there’s an impression out there in America that Congress is full of fat cats with opulent offices, and that they’re waited upon by legions of overpaid minions. That’s not accurate, is it? How much is Congress funding itself each year?
Daniel Schuman:
Well, no, it’s not accurate at all. So Congress spends about $5.3 billion a year, which is a lot of money. But when people think of Congress, they think of the House and the Senate, and they think of the senators and the representatives. They don’t think of the Capitol Police, that gets 10% of the legislative branch’s funding. They don’t think of the Library of Congress, that gets 13%. They don’t think of the Congressional Budget Office, the GAO, the GAO gets 13 or 15%. And they’re, of course, responsible for ferreting out waste, fraud, and abuse. They don’t think of the cost of the buildings, which are falling apart right now.
Daniel Schuman:
So when you look at that amount of money, it’s really like a 10th of that is spent on people. And it’s spent on people engaged in the policy-making process, on congressional staffers. And they’re paid terribly as it turns out. On average, the typical congressional staffer’s paid 20% less than their executive branch counterpart. Members of Congress are, while they have a decent salary, their salary’s actually been held down over the last 20 or so years. And they earn significantly less than the president and other cabinet officials. And if you ever go to a congressional office, and I know you’ve done that many times having your time at CRS and elsewhere, those are not great places to work, right? They have these staffers jammed in there like sardines, where there’s a ton of people in a little room, there’s incessant noise, incessant traffic. There’s no meeting rooms, there’s no place to really sit there and think. It’s really a difficult environment for people to do work. It’s not like other offices.
Daniel Schuman:
And, of course, there’s a cap on staff pay as well. Staffers can’t earn more than a member of Congress, which means that they earn significantly less, like I said, than their executive branch counterparts, but also then their private sector counterparts. So people who are responsible for things like cybersecurity for Congress earn a quarter or a fifth or a 10th as much as their counterparts at major private companies do. So while there’s certainly an impression of Congress as a place where fat cats may wish to go, it’s really not that great a job in terms of perks. It’s really at the opposite end of that spectrum.
Kevin Kosar:
Yes. And if I’m not correct, it’s been many, many years since Congress gave itself even a COLA, isn’t that right? Pretty much their pay has been frozen in amber, which trickles down, as you say, to what the staff can earn. And meanwhile, Washington DC, the price of living here, I’ve been here 17 years now, has absolutely skyrocketed.
Daniel Schuman:
That’s right. We did a study on this and we looked at pay rates for staffers based on their titles, and with the exception of the staff directors and the chiefs of staff, which are the people basically at the top of the pyramid, everybody now is earning less in real terms than they earned 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. And as you mentioned, DC is incredibly expensive. The cost of getting an apartment here is very high. Most staffers, certainly, lower level staffers still live in group houses, so they live with a lot of other people. There’s none of this living by yourself kind of thing. And oftentimes, many of them are forced to take second jobs.
Daniel Schuman:
And as they become more senior, and this gap between what they earn on the Hill and what they could earn elsewhere increases, there is this hydraulic pressure that shoots them out into the lobbying world. It shoots them out elsewhere, where they have to go and take these other jobs, because they can’t afford to pay for the basic cost of living. Once they hit 30 and they meet that special someone, living in a group house just doesn’t cut it anymore and they want something better. And this results in this tremendous churn, just because the quality of life for the folks that we are having making billion dollar decisions really isn’t all that great.
Kevin Kosar:
Yes, yes. I remember one of the surveys that I and a couple others did looking at Hill staff, we found that the average tenure of a staffer was about three years. People come and people go, and that constant churn sure makes it difficult to run a place very well. Now, we mentioned the personal staff of members of Congress has been capped for a very long time. It’s also the case that Congress has cut other staff on committees and also at the legislative branch support agencies. You were the first person in DC, I believe, who, something like 10 or 15 years ago, did an analysis where you showed the numbers that Congress was actually bleeding itself of staff. Kind of a penny wise, pound foolish move.
Daniel Schuman:
That’s right. So we updated the numbers recently. So looking at House committees alone, House committees have defunded themselves in real terms by $100 million. I forget the exact number, it’s like $450 million to $350 million, somewhere in that ballpark. And the Senate had a less, but still significant decrease in the money that’s available for itself. When you look at the Congressional Research Service, they’re down by more than 20%. The Government Accountability Office is down by more than 20%. They lost 2,000 staffers in the mid-90s, and they’ve never really recovered those numbers. People often talk about it says a decimation, but a decimation is a 1 in 10 reduction, this is really more of a 1 in 5 reduction.
Daniel Schuman:
Congress has really destroyed its own ability to do its job. And that has created a stronger executive branch, because Congress is unable to push back. And it’s created a stronger lobbying industry, because Congress doesn’t have the basic facts that it needs to do its job. It’s really unfortunate. And what’s interesting, from your research and from my research and from others, nobody was really looking at this, right? There was no understanding, because the half-life of a staffer is three years, nobody had an understanding that this was really going on in any type of systematic way. We all knew that there was something happening, but when you look at it, the institution is a shadow of what it used to be. No wonder it’s weak and feckless, there’s just no institutional knowledge. Everybody just turns over so rapidly.
Kevin Kosar:
Yes. And in pursuit of saving money, as we both know, Congress, in the 1990s, got rid of one of its legislative branch support agencies, the Office of Technology Assessment, which you know a thing or two about.
Daniel Schuman:
Yeah, it’s interesting. So when you think about what you would want a legislature to do, one of the things you would want is long-term planning, right? The ability to evaluate the various options, to understand what the trade-offs are, to figure out where to make strategic investments, and to push national resources to that to some extent. And we had an office that did that for science and technology, as you suggested.
Daniel Schuman:
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Office of Technology Assessment conducted 12 or 18-month studies of major issues. It could be gene technology, it could be global warming, it could be missile defense, it could be the creation of the internet, which they looked at and made suggestions around where funding should be pushed. And Congress took the evaluations seriously. They made determinations based upon what they thought was right. And they invested money in things that worked well, and they defunded things that didn’t work well. And this foresight capability, this horizon scanning, this ability to look ahead, was one of the first things that was on the chopping block. Because when you evaluate what’s good and what’s not good, you tend to irritate some people when their pet projects turn out to be not as good as they might think it would be otherwise.
Daniel Schuman:
All of Congress sort of suffered from this, but of course the Office of Technology Assessment suffered the most, because they were just simply zeroed out. And there’s been an effort to bring them back really, basically, from the day that they were cut. There’s a little homunculus that started being created inside the Government Accountability Office that finally has grown up a bit from being a pilot program to being a bit more serious, it’s the STAA, which is inside GAO, which performs some of those old responsibilities. But it’s nowhere near what OTA was, and there’s major functions like that foresight capability that is still largely missing.
Daniel Schuman:
And in parallel with that, so you have to have folks that can have the sense-making role, which is what OTA did, but Congress also has to have an absorptive capacity. You can give them the best possible advice, but if the people there can’t understand what you’re saying, or aren’t able to take in what you’re saying, that is a significant problem as well. So we’ve got two barrels, we’ve got both problems, right? You can’t look ahead, you don’t have the folks [inaudible 00:11:18] engaged in this sense-making process. And most of the committees are ill-equipped to really dig into the issues in the way that they need to. So even if they have this advice, it’s not as effective as it would be otherwise. And so, of course, you have this vicious cycle where things just don’t work very well.
Kevin Kosar:
Yes. Talk to anybody on Capitol Hill, staffers in particular I mean, you will frequently hear them describe their lives as drinking from a fire hose. Now, we’ve been talking about Congress’ budget. Let us pause just very, very briefly to compare how much Congress spends on itself versus how much it spends on the executive branch. I think pre-COVID, the executive branch, the spending on it was something like $4.4 or $4.5 trillion. How much is spent on the legislative branch, including the Architect of the Capitol, and the Capitol Police, and all those things that one doesn’t think of as Congress?
Daniel Schuman:
So it’s only $5 billion. And one thing that we found, which was really interesting… And sorry, I mean, I know you can take it, but the language is going to get wonky here. The growth rate for spending on Congress was half the rate as spending on other non-defense, non-mandatory spending. In other words, Congress chose to spend on itself at half the rate that it chose to spend on other discretionary things inside the government that’s not defense.
Daniel Schuman:
So putting aside the military, for every dollar increase that you had for dollar growth that you had in spending for executive branch functions, the growth rate for legislative branch equivalent was half of that rate. And inside the legislative branch, the growth that they had, which again is at half the rate of everyone else, two thirds of that money went to cops and buildings, and that’s it, right? A third of it went to the Capitol Police, and a third of it went to the Architect of the Capitol. And everything else, everything else, had to fit within the remaining third.
Daniel Schuman:
So you’ve got half the growth rate of the executive branch, and most of that going for defense and buildings. What that meant is that there’s basically no money left over to pay people appropriately, to make sure that the legislative branch could function in any way that it needed to function. And when you look at the data, they’re clearly destroying their ability to do anything. It’s just a fact.
Kevin Kosar:
Yes, it’s indubitable. The job of Congress gets larger and larger, not least the oversight. There’s 180 federal agencies that need to be overseen and funded each year, yet the capacity has contracted. Now, I want to move on to my next question. One thing that’s less obvious to most listeners, I would imagine, is that when Congress funds itself, it’s not just allotting dollars, it’s also making policy about how well the chamber will run. Can you say a little bit about that?
Daniel Schuman:
Certainly. So there are two major processes inside the legislative branch in terms of how they make decisions about the way government’s going to operate. One is what it should do, and this happens through what’s called an authorizing process. At least this is what happens in theory, where they pass a bill and it says, “This agency will do X thing.” And there’s the appropriations process, which is basically supposed to decide, “Well, how much money for each of these things?”
Daniel Schuman:
In the legislative branch, the authorization process has been largely broken. The oversight that needs to happen from the House, the two relevant committees, Committee on House Administration and the Senate Rules Committee, largely doesn’t happen. So to the extent that anyone’s paying attention to this, it’s the money people, it’s the appropriators, people on the legislative branch appropriations subcommittee. And while it’s my personal favorite committee inside the legislative branch, because the money that it oversees is so small, it’s usually a stepping stone for members and staff. They tend not to stay there very long, they try to move elsewhere.
Daniel Schuman:
But that is where most of the policy-making is made. Where they stick language in reports that accompany the appropriations bills and they say, “Hey, we’re going to go and make CRS reports publicly available,” or, “We’re going to require the inspectors general for the Capitol Police to release the reports or not, or whatever it is. This is not the way it’s supposed to work. But what we’ve seen, generally speaking, over time is that the number of authorizing bills has decreased significantly, they’ve gotten very large, and the appropriations bills tend to be where more and more of the action is.
Daniel Schuman:
So inside the legislative branch context, a very small committee of a couple people who are under the thumb of leadership, largely, but not entirely, are the ones who are making all the decisions about what’s going on. And they’re doing it with just a couple of staffers and a couple of members on a committee that they’re not necessarily all that excited to be on in the first place. And the pressure that’s on them is to figure out how they can sell what they’re doing on this committee back home, which is where you get this austerity stuff, right? “We’re going to downsize the government and we’re going to start in Congress to demonstrate our commitment to doing this.” And then a new person comes in, they say, “We’re going to downsize the government and we’re going to start by doing it at Congress.” Of course, they never get around to anybody else. That’s what just keeps happening is this sales job around what they’re going to do, and we’re going to make an example of ourselves. And making the example of themselves is what’s debilitating the legislative branch.
Kevin Kosar:
Yes, yes. It is interesting how the appropriations process across the government, but in particular for the legislative branch, has become a vehicle for actually making policy changes. I mean, earlier you had referenced the growth of this unit within GAO, STAA, to do more and more of the work that OTA once did. And that was not through an authorizing statute being passed, it was something that was jammed into an appropriation. I should move to my last question. You have advocated for Congress to spend more on its capacity, but I should ask, is there waste there? Are there dollars in the annual Legislative Branch Appropriation Bill that should be cut or redirected?
Daniel Schuman:
I always think that there’s waste, fraud, and abuse. I mean, that’s why we support, in part, a strong Government Accountability Office, because they’re the ones who go and find waste, fraud, and abuse. And they say that for every dollar that you spend on GAO, you save $119 last year. That’s why we support an inspector general. There’s one inside the House, and we think there should be one inside the Senate. Which is why we support a strong ethics process.
Daniel Schuman:
Where I think the waste exists partially comes from mismanagement. And the best example is actually over at the Capitol Police. It’s kind of hard to talk about it right now, but the Capitol Police have seen a 350% growth over the last 30 years, but you can’t really see what they’re doing. Which means that they engaged in a bit of empire building, but when there’s a serious threat, it’s obvious that they’re not capable of standing up to it. It was troubling watching it happen, and it was troubling watching the results of were that happened. The problem isn’t money for them, it’s management.
Daniel Schuman:
And there are other problems as well. I think when you look at the Library of Congress. You and I used to work at CRS. When you look at the reports that they create now versus the reports that they issued 20 or 30 years ago, they’re significantly less valuable. That is a lost opportunity. They could be really evaluating topics and providing insight into it, but they’ve gone to this on one hand, on the other hand kind of stuff that, while somewhat useful, is much less useful than it could be. Waste is waste, but it’s missed opportunities.
Daniel Schuman:
There are instances within member offices where they spend money on franking, on mail to the district. I’m not sure that sending people that much mail makes that much sense when things like email work so much better now. And there are other problems as well. We see significant harassment over in the Architect of the Capitol. There are probably some legislative functions that probably belong elsewhere, or at least should be structured in different ways. So there certainly is waste, but I would suggest that dollar for dollar, putting money into a strong Congress is the best insurance policy that you can get to maintain a democratic form of government that is representative of the people and is capable of making sure that our democracy is strong.
Daniel Schuman:
While there are certainly problems in the way that it manages itself, and we’ve got more recommendations than most on how to make it work better, a strong Congress is essential. And even if there is some waste, and there’s always going to be some waste, I would suggest that the waste that comes from taking young staffers, educating them, making them incredibly competent, then having them leave and become lobbyists and lobby against the institution is the biggest waste that we see. And if we invest a little bit more in paying them, and supporting them, and training them, and creating a proper work environment, the dividends that we get from that investment will far outweigh any small costs that we might incur.
Kevin Kosar:
Well put. Daniel, thank you for being on the program and explaining how Congress funds itself.
Daniel Schuman:
Thank you, Kevin, so much for having me. I love the podcast, keep it going.
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