Written by Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey

The House of Representatives'  internal operations budget was the subject of a Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this morning. In the last two years, the House's budget was decreased by 10% from its FY2010 level, and it may be set for a further reduction.

Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, made clear in his opening statement that he expected the eventual budget allocation to be lower for FY 2013 than in previous years. Mike Honda (D-CA), the subcommittee's ranking member, called cuts to the House budget "misguided" and questioned the effect they would have on staff compensation, office operations, and the legislative process. The effect of budget cuts on Congress's ability to do its job was the subject of a 2010 Sunlight Foundation report.

A number of department heads submitted testimony for the hearing. Of particular interest were statements by the Clerk of the House and the Office of Law Revision Counsel that discussed ongoing transparency measures, many of which are crucial for how the public learns about the House's operations.

Karen Haas, Clerk of the House of Representatives, highlighted the Clerk's transparency efforts in her opening statement and written testimony. The Clerk's proposed budget, a 14% decrease from FY 2012, includes funding to continue "deploying new technology as part of a continuing effort to improve the efficiency and transparency of House floor proceedings." Haas touted the launch of docs.house.gov, improvements to HouseLive.gov, and an upgraded interface to track House floor activities on the Clerk's website as successful initiatives. We agree.

The Clerk's transparency plans for FY 2013 include the addition of committee documents to docs.house.gov, improved video streaming services, and an update to the Legislative Information Management System that will complete its modernization. We welcome the further improvements to docs.house.gov, and hope that along with an improved LIS will be better access to legislative information. The Clerk's office is also working with the Senate to develop a web-based filing system for lobbying disclosure information, an improvement which is long overdue.

Haas also cited CBO estimates that the electronic filing and disclosure system mandated by the recently passed STOCK Act would cost $4 million to implement and $1 million every year to manage. This cost was not factored in to the Clerk's budget request. Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) expressed disdain for the legislation and concern over the cost. To be effective, the STOCK Act must be fully funded and enforced.

Ralph Seep, the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, submitted a budget request equal to his offices' FY2012 appropriation. His statement highlighted recent upgrades to the US Code's online presence and stressed efforts to update the code in a more efficient manner. The FY 2013 request would make it possible for LRC to continue converting to an XML based production system and maintain and make further upgrades to their website. We agree that these improvements are important, as the public deserves timely access to laws as they are codified. More on LRC here.

It is also worth noting that this hearing was not webcast.

Additional Resources:

• Statement of the House Sergeant-At-Arms Paul Irving
• Statement of Chief Administrator Officer Daniel Strodel
• Statement of Kerry Kircher, General Counsel
• Statement of Inspector General Theresa Grafenstine

Image credit to RambergMediaImages.

When the House returns to work today, it will be a slightly leaner, slightly less technologically cutting-edge body than it was a year ago.

Last January, the House voted 410-13 to slash its operating budget by 5% (or $35 million). A Sunlight Foundation analysis of House disbursement data shows some immediate effects: a loss almost 1,000 salaried staff positions and major cutbacks in computers and office supplies.

House offices will have to do it all over again this year. The 2012 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act cuts funding for the House by another 6.4%. Since compensation accounts for more than half of all House expenditures, expect cuts in both staff and salaries.

These cuts are part of a longer-term decline in congressional staffing and personnel spending. Already, congressional salaries and benefits lag behind their private sector competitors, meaning that offices often have a hard time retaining and attracting top talent. Instead, they must rely increasingly on special interests to help them to do their work. As Congress continues to curtail its own capacity, there is good reason to expect even greater reliance on the 12,242 registered lobbyists in Washington.

To see how the budget cuts have affected House offices so far, we compared House disbursement data for the third quarters of 2009, 2010 and 2011. Here are some key changes since 2009:

• Overall, House offices have cut the number of salaried staff positions by 7.4%, shedding 948 between 2009 and 2011. (This includes both legislative and non-legislative positions.)
• Overall spending on total personnel compensation is down 1.7%. (In the private sector, total compensation has increased by 4.1% during this same period.)
• Offices have cut spending most steeply on office supplies (down 30.7%), equipment (down 46.4%, particularly computers, which are down 62.5%) and franked mail (down 25.8%).
• One area of growth, however, is in public relations. House offices added 32 new “Communications Director” positions between 2009 and 2011.

In 2011, offices did the relatively easy stuff: skimping on office supplies and new computers, and letting some staff go. That leaves the harder stuff: more serious cutting of salaries and staff.

According to a Congressional Management Foundation survey, “the consensus is that the cumulative two-year cut of 11.4% will require the large majority of offices to make painful cuts that will be felt by virtually all staff."

This will have consequences. With each cut to salary and staff, and each reduction in office resource budgets, it becomes that much more challenging for the House to do its job. As staff struggle with declining resources and scramble to work harder to compensate for lost positions, they become that much more dependent on outside lobbyists to help them.

Table 1. Changes in aggregate House expenditures (arranged by 2009 expenditure size)

STAFF REDUCTIONS IN FORCE

Breaking down the salaries by title, we can see where on the totem pole offices are cutting. Among the 20 unique position titles that account for the most combined expenses, “staff assistants” suffered most significant reduction, a loss of more than 200 positions, from 1,245 to 1,038 (down 16.6%). The number of “professional staff member” positions also declined at almost the same rate, from 205 to 176 between 2009 and 2011, down 14.1%. “Part Time Employees” are also down substantially, from 506 to 427 (down 15.6%).

On the side of growth, the fastest growing position in the House is “Communications Director.” Despite the cuts, the House actually added 32 new communications directors between third quarter of 2009 and third quarter of 2011, going from 232 to 264 positions (an increase of 13.8%). It is, however, worth noting that the number of press secretaries decreased at the same time by 12 (down 6.6%, from 183 to 171 positions), so some of the new communications directors may be press secretaries who got a new title.

Other big increases were in the position of “Scheduler” (up 12.6%, from 143 to 161 positions), “District Director” (up 8.2%, from 291 to 315 positions) and “Legislative Director” (up 7.4%, from 309 to 332 positions). Interestingly, the number of “Constituent Services Representatives” is up 6.8% (from 205 to 219) while the number of “Caseworkers” is down 5.5% (from 307 to 290).

Table 2. Changes in staffing force, by position (for 20 most expensive positions by total expenditures, arranged from biggest decline to biggest gain)

STAFF PAY

For those who managed to keep their jobs on the Hill, the average salary actually increased by 3.7% since 2009.

Chiefs of staff are doing quite well. Their average compensation rose 5.8%, from $120,276 to $127,280 a year (estimated from third quarter compensation), topped only by individuals in the somewhat ambiguous role of “special assistant,” who have seen their compensation rise by 8.5% during this period (from $42,464 a year to $46,084 a year).

Major positions where the average salary declined more than five percent are “Counsel” (down 5.8%), “Deputy District Director” (down 5.7%), and “Legislative Correspondent” (down 5.4%).

Where salaries declined, it may likely be as a result of new, less experienced staffers who will work for less replacing older, more experienced staffers who commanded more money.

Table 3. Changes in salary, by position (for 20 most expensive positions by total expenditures, arranged from biggest decline to biggest gain)

It is worth noting, however, that personnel benefits were up 5.8% between 2009 and 2011, from $64 million to $68 million. Most of the growth there, however, is in health insurance costs (up 12%) and retirement costs (up 4%). These are costs that congressional offices typically have less control over.

SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT

The biggest cuts came from spending on equipment (down 46.4%), supplies (down 30.3%) and franked mail (down 25.8%). The decrease in spending on franked mail is probably not cause for concern. Members are using more and more e-mail and social networking to reach out to constituents anyway.

More than half of the equipment budget goes to computers, and  this is where offices have really skimped. The computer budget is down 62.5% from 2009, from $14.1 million to $5.3 million. At a time when so much work is conducted electronically, increasingly out-of-date equipment will put staff at an ever-increasing disadvantage.

In the category of “supplies and materials,” the top three expenses are office supplies, medical supplies and publications and reference materials. Office supply budgets are down 20% (from $6.5 million to $5.3 million), publication and reference material budgets are down 25% (from $2.2 million to $1.7 million). Medical supplies are down slightly (from $2.8 million to $2.7 million).

Table 4. Changes in expenditures on equipment and supplies and materials, major categories

While these may be reasonable areas to cut, these reductions are not necessarily sustainable. At some point, House staffers are going to need new computers and some office supplies. Yet with more cuts still ahead, it’s unclear where the money will come from.

Most offices could weather a lean year on supplies and equipment. But as anybody who has worked on the Hill knows, offices are far from luxurious. In a world in which more and more activity is conducted electronically, to fall behind technologically puts congressional staff behind the curve. Furthermore, with another round of cuts coming, it’s going to be hard for the House to catch up.

Now House offices have to cut another 6.4%. That will likely mean fewer staff, less support, probably lower salaries and more outmoded technology. Congress will likely be forced to rely more on interns, and almost certainly more on lobbyists.

A NOTE ON THE DATA

Our data come from the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. That means we are dependent on what the House reports. The biggest challenge in aggregating the data is that different House offices classify expenses in different ways. This is most obvious with job titles. Even when we standardized the title names by collapsing all synonymous abbreviations, we still wound up with 2,600 unique position titles over the three years. Though we are confident that our data captures the larger patterns, we must in good faith disclose that the underlying data are messy. At best, the data reveal general trends, and higher levels of confidence in it can only come when the House of Representatives makes a better effort with respect to how it normalizes and releases the data to the public. To dig through the data yourself, visit our House Expenditure Reports Database.

Yesterday's Legistorm report on congressional staffers-turned-lobbyists provides more support for the theory that Congress is turning over its work to special interests. It adds to a mountain of evidence that includes an expanding pay gap between House staff and their private sector equivalents, fewer policy staff in Congress, and significant new cuts in staff positions and pay.

Looking at a decade's worth of data, Legistorm found that "5,400 people have been both lobbyists and received paychecks as staff from the legislative branch in the past decade." The report adds that it's likely that at least 2,900 former staffers are currently lobbying, with 605 current congressional staff having served as lobbyists in the past decade. These numbers are likely low, both because the number of federally registered lobbyists does not include many people who lobby and data available for the study was incomplete (missing "perhaps hundreds of potential staffer-lobbyist matches.")

Having inside connections is a big help to the bottom line for staffers-turned-lobbyists, according to two research papers. Lobbyists who are connected to members of Congress get paid more than those who are only experts. In addition, lobbyists who worked for a US Senator "suffer a 24% drop in revenue -- around $177,000 -- when their ex-employers leave office." In Washington, who you know is more important than what you know.

That influence is only magnified when Congress cannot effectively evaluate claims made by lobbyists. Unfortunately, Congress has been shrinking its pool of experienced staff for over two decades. According to my review of data going back to 1979, "there are fewer House staff and fewer legislative support agency personnel now that at any time in the recent past." House personal office, committee, and leadership staff are at 87% of their 1979 levels. Committee staff alone are at 62% of their 1979 levels, having eliminated 755 positions. Major legislative support agencies have suffered tremendous losses, and are at 65% of their 1979 staffing levels. GAO, the investigative arm of Congress that looks at the public purse, is at 60% of its 1979 staffing level; CRS is at 80%. While government has grown more complex, there are fewer congressional staff to provide oversight, and they cannot help but rely upon the army of lobbyists whose influence has expanded to fill the vacuum. It's no wonder that $3.51 billion was spent on lobbying in 2010.

The reduced congressional capacity to handle influence has an effect on decision-making. For example, a recent look at lobbying during the financial crisis found that mortgage-lending companies that lobbied prior to the financial crisis engaged in riskier lending practices and were more likely to be bailed out.

With these institutional factors at play, it's no surprise that staff are leaving to go to the private sector. A review of two decades of staff salary surveys shows that the leading factors that drive out staff are unpredictable work hours and low pay. The high turnover rate and youthful median staff age puts Congress at a disadvantage when dealing with the Executive branch or the private sector.

This trend is only going to accelerate. The House Appropriations Committee has adopted what it called "the largest ever two-year reduction for the legislative branch." For upcoming fiscal year 2012, which starts on October 1, the House Appropriations Committee has endorsed a 6.46% cut to the House of Representatives, which on top of the FY 2011 cuts decreases the House's budget by 10.4% over two years. By way of example, the amount of money available to each personal office for a Member of Congress will be reduced by around $90,000. Since most office costs are fixed and staff pay is already effectively frozen, this likely will translate into staff reductions and pay cuts. Put another way, if you add up all spending for the legislative branch, including expenditures for security, all the support agencies, the visitor center, and so on, the proposed 2012 budget is $4.38 billion. By contrast, the total federal budget is $3.82 trillion. That's a small amount of money when compared to its responsibility to set the direction for the entire government.

Tomorrow, the Senate Appropriations Committee will markup its Legislative Branch Appropriations bill, determining how much pain to mete out to Senate personal, committee, and leadership offices. At the same time, it will determine whether to agree to the House's huge cuts to the Government Printing Office (16%), the Library of Congress (8%), Government Accountability Office (6.4%), and other important legislative support agencies. The future of many staff now includes earlier retirement, furloughs, and a bare minimum of resources.

All of these problems are compounded by Congress's lack of introspection about the work that it does and our inability to track these exertion of influence by special interests. It's true that there are important ongoing legislative efforts to close these lobbying disclosure loopholes, most notably the Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act, and a broad consensus about what to do about lobbying. And there are some efforts to make more congressional information publicly available, so that the public can figure out what's going on. Unfortunately, we are far from where we need to be if we want an effective Congress that capably balances its dual roles as policymaker and agent of the people.

Incoming Speaker Boehner recently vowed to tighten the House of Representative’s collective belt through a 5 percent budget reduction. Congressional staff are the most likely target. An in-depth look at Congressional staff employment trends raises questions about whether Congress has the support necessary to do its job. After reviewing a quarter century of staff salary and retention data, we found:

• A pay gap between Washington-based House personal office staff earnings and people doing equivalent work in the DC metropolitan area.
• A decrease in the total number of hill staff over the last two decades.
• Fewer staff engaged in policy-making roles.
• Average salaries for most Washington-based House personal staff have not increased in two decades, and may have decreased for many.

Who is picking up the slack? One clue could lie in the nearly 12,500 federally registered lobbyists, and countless others, who provide information and exert influence in the halls of Congress; by contrast there’s around 7-8,000 House personal office, leadership, and committee staff. Put a different way, $2.6 billion was spent on lobbying in Washington in 2010, versus $1.37 billion for the House of Representatives in FY 2010. Have we privatized Congress?

Pay Gap

Our analysis found a pay gap between Washington-based House personal office staff and their DC-area counterparts. That gap may encourage staff to seek greener pastures while depriving Congress of experience and expertise. The gap is widest at the top. For example, a chief of staff on average would earn 40% more in the private sector than on Capitol Hill. See the chart below.

This comparison may still underestimate the market value of Capitol Hill staff. They are in a unique position compared with other people performing similar roles. With a competitive and thriving market for former hill talent, market forces and difficult working conditions have likely pushed many talented people into the arms of the private sector. Indeed, the average age of a DC-based House personal office staffer is 31. Ex-staffers who become lobbyists can increase their earnings by many multiples, a value derived from their Congressional employment. There are countless illustrations of the revolving door at work.

Unfortunately, our comparison between Congressional and private sector pay is incomplete. We are unable to evaluate House committee staff salaries. We didn’t look at the Senate in detail. The personal office salaries are aggregate averages drawn from a 2009 survey [PDF] performed by ICT International for the Chief Administrative Officer of the House; we only have access to the report, not the underlying data. The job titles in the House are only roughly comparable to the occupational employment and wage estimates for the District of Columbia drawn from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics [FTP]. (There's no clear fitting private sector analog to Legislative Assistant in the Bureau of Labor Statistics database.) We have no good way of comparing employment benefits. And the profile for hill staff both in age and education likely varies significantly from the DC metropolitan area.

Even so, the pay gap is clear.

Fewer Overall Staff

We also found that there are fewer House staff and fewer legislative support agency personnel now than at any time in the recent past, with data going back to 1979. (The data is drawn from the publication Vital Statistics for Congress 2008, which covers 1979 to 2005, and was supplemented by several CRS reports.)

Altogether, House personal office, committee, and leadership staff numbers are at 87% of their 1979 levels. Much of the reduction took place in 1994-1995, when the Republican party regained control of the House. Over the last three decades, committee staff took the biggest hit, dropping from 2,027 staff in 1979 to 1,272 in 2005. See the chart below.

Major legislative support agencies show an even more dramatic downward trend, staffed at 65% of their 1979 levels. The Government Accountability Office suffered the greatest decline to 60% of its 1979 level, a reduction of 2,112 staff. CRS is at 80% of its 1979 staffing levels.

Some of the work being performed by government employees likely has been taken over by lobbyists and think tanks, at least in part. Unfortunately, reliable data is not available for the number of lobbyists prior to 1996, and we haven’t uncovered data on think tank staff. Even with this privatization of public work, assuming that’s what’s happening, it’s likely that much congressional activity -- conducting oversight, evaluating proposals brought to the hill -- cannot be outsourced.

To be sure, some could argue that changes in technology have made some staff redundant. Perhaps that is true, but the nature of legislative support work and the history of staff reductions strongly suggest other causes.

Fewer Hill Staff in Policymaking Roles

Our analysis strongly suggests that fewer staff perform policy-related work now than in years past. As a general rule, legislative and policymaking work is performed in Washington, while constituent services are provided in the district offices. Recent years have seen a shift towards employing more staff in the district at the expense of the DC office.

For example, in 1976, nearly three-quarters of House personal office staff were based in Washington; that decreased to one-half in 2005. In other words, the total number of staffers in Washington has decreased by 1,500 to 3,354 from 1976 to 2005. (Again, this information is drawn from the publication Vital Statistics on Congress 2008.)

This 30-year tectonic shift likely diminished the House’s policymaking capabilities.

Personal Office Staff Pay Unchanged Over Two Decades

We also found that most House personal office staff salary averages are unchanged over the last 20 years, adjusted for inflation, and may have even diminished over time. Consequently, staff may find that longevity brings them diminishing benefits and may prompt them to bring their skills elsewhere.

With the exception of the Chief of Staff, Legislative Director, and Scheduler, the average personal office staffer’s salary has not changed since 1990. On average, a staffer in 2009 likely earns within a few thousand dollars of their 1990s equivalent. By contrast, a Chief of Staff’s earnings have increased by $30,000 on average; a Legislative Director’s earnings increased by $17,000; and a Scheduler earns $9,000 more.

It is possible that we underestimated the value of 1990s Hill staff earning power because we relied on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator to transform all money into 2010 dollars.  The Inflation Calculator uses national data, but Washington DC of the 1980s and 1990s is a very different place than it is today. It is now the wealthiest and most educated region in the nation, according to the Washington Post’s analysis of 2010 census data. DC in the top 25 for most the most expensive homeownership markets and top 10 for most expensive home rental markets. Additional analysis may find that many Hill staff salaries have actually decreased in real terms.

Our findings are drawn from the best available information, but we cannot fully assess their accuracy. Our data is drawn from Congressional Management Foundation and ICT International surveys. We did not have access to the underlying data, but only averages and aggregate totals. The methodology and reliability of each report may vary; as may the classification of who has a particular job title. Unfortunately, the surveys do not include information on committee staff pay, or on employment benefits. Legistorm, although complete, only goes back to 2001.

Our efforts to collect House and Senate employment surveys was complicated by the House’s refusal to provide these reports upon request, their unavailability generally (including at the Library of Congress), and an incredibly small print run and restricted distribution. The Congressional Management Foundation, which ran the survey until 2004, was as helpful as they could be without breaching contractual relationships. Ultimately, we relied on fantastic librarians like James Jacobs of Stanford University, several friends on the Hill, and former intern Jessica Pearce to obtain copies of existing reports.

The Big Picture

The foremost concern is whether Congress has the capability to effectively and impartially carry out its responsibilities. Does the decreasing number of policy staff combined with financially attractive outside employment negatively affect Congress’ legislative and oversight capabilities? Would addressing these issues have a positive effect on Congress’ ability to function? Congress looked seriously and comprehensively at related issues in 1978 in its Commission on Administrative Review (H. Doc. 95-178), chaired by David Obey. It is time for another look.

Second, for those who care about the legislative branch, Congress must do a better job of making available information about itself. It was nearly impossible to obtain copies of staff salary surveys. Not until this past year were House Expenditure Reports, which include staff pay, made available online, and they’re in a terrible format that is difficult to evaluate. The Senate won’t begin publishing comparable data online until the 3rd quarter of 2011. The publication Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 is incredibly useful, but was compiled by private researchers. Again, Congress should make this information available online in formats that lend themselves to easy analysis.

Third, there is too little information about lobbyist pay, lobbying, and the effect of the revolving door. More research is needed; we also need better tracking of these activities.

Fourth, this analysis is separate from the ongoing debate over executive branch salaries.

Finally, we identify a number of useful questions, but our analysis is necessarily limited. Addressing the incentives that affect how staffers gain expertise and evaluate policy choices -- even if incompletely -- is worth additional attention. To that end, we are making available all of the data we used, except when we are not permitted to do so for copyright reasons. (See staff salary data [XLS] and House vital statistics [XLS].) Please let us know what you think.

Disclosure: I formerly worked as a hill staffer and for a legislative support agency.