Mr. Spence Goes to Washington
I spent the last year working as a policy advisor in the US Senate. Here's what I learned.
2023 was a year to remember. As a nation, we saw the highest inflation since the 1970’s, the popularization of AI through ChatGPT, a Chinese spy balloon taken down by an F-22, the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas, Israels subsequent invasion of Gaza, and more. While these events were undoubtedly worth watching from any angle, I had a particularly interesting vantage point from my new job as a Senate Policy Advisor, which I started in February 2023. Over the past year, I got an inside look at the inner workings of the US legislature in a way that very few people ever do, and boy howdy did it teach me a lot. This blog post is a summary of that experience, and the lessons I’ve taken away from it.
My background doesn’t naturally lend itself to politics. I began my career at Texas A&M University as a cybersecurity analyst, and after graduating in 2021 I worked as a back-end software engineer for a startup called Evernym. I loved the work I did at Evernym, but after we were acquired (and then acquired again) I decided I wanted a change (mergers ruin everything). Evernym had spent a decent amount of time working with governments on digital identity policy, but this was almost exclusively with European governments, and I wanted to see if I couldn’t do something to help the US.
I’d long had an interest in public policy, but to that point it had mostly manifested as a minor Twitter addiction. It wasn’t until I happened upon a non-profit called TechCongress that I realized I could do more than just watch from the outside. TechCongress places computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists to serve as technology policy advisors to Members of Congress, which was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. After a few essays and several interviews I signed an offer and made plans to move out to DC. It was my chance to do what I love, which is solve problems, on scale unlike any other.
And wow, did I get to tackle some big problems. I came in with the intent to focus on my area of expertise: digital identity, but that very quickly devolved as I signed on to work with a Senate office and had no less than six bills dropped on my desk on the first day. My new boss, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), was not one to waste time. Over the next year I would lead policy work in areas both familiar and not, and I often found it was the unfamiliar that was the most enjoyable.
I had several chances to work on digital identity policy, most notably by writing the POST ID Act, but I ended up focusing the majority of my time on two subjects: privacy and customs. All six of those initial bills were privacy related, including the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, which I was now the lead Republican staffer on. Senator Cassidy had also begun a long term project to reform US policy towards international trade, with particular focus on balancing our trade relationship with China and preventing abuses like Trade Based Money Laundering. A major part of that included modernizing the US Customs system, and especially its technical backbone the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). This technical component is what drew me onto the trade team, and it ended up opening my eyes to a whole new area of policy which which I am now somewhat obsessed.
In the last year I have written letters to agency heads, conducted oversight on major federal programs, authored multiple pieces of legislation, and nearly started a fight with another Senate Office over a health program in Africa. I even got to meet Bill Gates! Throughout that entire time I saw both the best and the worst of our political process, and while it was often frustrating it was also oddly inspiring. I came in with plenty of opinions about what was wrong with the government, and while some of those were correct, what I actually saw was a body just as broken as I thought, but in dramatically different ways than I expected. Here are some of the lessons I learned:
Lesson 1: Congress is not too old
It’s actually too young. This might sound absurd at first, but bear with me. Members of congress are the oldest they’ve ever been. The average house member is now in their mid to late sixties, and senators are even older. And yet, you would be forgiven for failing to see any of that alleged wisdom that this age should bring. The reason, however, is that members of congress are not the ones primarily responsible for writing policy. That role is delegated (to varying degrees) to congressional staff, and this staff may be the youngest it’s ever been.
This might, again, seem absurd. Wouldn’t older members want to surround themselves with older advisors, rather than a bunch of 20-somethings young enough to be their kids (or grandkids)? They might, but the key factor is that those older advisors are expensive, and congress no longer has the budget to afford them. Starting in the 1990’s, congress decided to slash it’s own budget as a mostly-symbolic gesture to prove they were “living their values”. Since then, congressional spending has continued to decline in real terms, such that nowadays the average congressional office has fewer and lower paid staffers than it did in the mid 20th century. If it seems like congress doesn’t know what it’s doing, that’s because to a large extent you get what you pay for.
The staff that congress does hire tend to be very bright, and contrary to public perception they are usually there with genuinely good intentions. The problem, however, is that DC is an expensive city and the average congressional staffer is not paid very much money. Staff assistants, for example, make about $40,000 a year on average, with Legislative Correspondents making only slightly more. Those are the main front-line staff that interact with constituents, and they’re paid less than a night manager at a Chick-Fil-A. The story for legislative staff is a bit better, with legislative aides making about $60,000 and Legislative Assistants ~$80,000, but even that is far below what similarly credentialed professionals make in the private sector, especially around DC. This has resulted in extremely high turnover rates, even beyond what you might expect given that every time a member loses reelection or retires, their entire staff loses their jobs. The resulting lack of experience and capacity severely hinders congressional policy-making, and has resulted in a substantial amount of policy being outsourced to federal agencies and lobbyists. It also biases what policy does get made in favor of the preferences of a highly educated, mostly childless and disproportionately affluent set of young elites, as young people who come from money tend to be the only ones who can take these jobs. Nevertheless…
Lesson 2: Congress Actually Gets a Lot Done
You’ll just never hear about it. If anybody outside DC is actually reading this, you’re probably thinking I am full of shit. I can’t blame you for that, because the prevailing narrative for many years has been that Congress is a do-nothing body full of dirtbags and lazy assholes who, depending on your perspective, are either out to steal your money or send it all to the military industrial complex. There’s a grain of truth there, in that there are over 500 members of Congress and some of them are genuinely terrible, but having been on the inside I can say with certainty that the situation is not nearly so dire. The major problem, near as I can tell, is that in the current polarized environment getting things done requires that you, the public, believe nothing is happening. This may sound nonsensical, but let me explain.
Politicians respond to electoral incentives. I don’t think anybody really disputes that. What some may dispute, however, is that most congressmen genuinely come into office wanting to make positive change. I promise you that this is the case. The issue is that our current polarized environment strongly disincentivizes members to work with their opponents, and in a two party system the only other option is, by definition, your opponent. Many a high profile bill has gone down in flames for fear of “giving the other side a win”, especially in election years. What’s more, partisan primaries mean that most politicians are first and foremost accountable to the most extreme parts of their base, and those voters tend to view bipartisanship as a sign of betrayal, rather than pragmatism. All of this culminates in a very strong incentive to make sure nobody sees you working with the other side.
And yet, members are usually not satisfied to do nothing. They came to congress for a reason, often having to do with some high priority issue they care about. However, it’s very rare that anything can get done on a purely partisan basis, and so for most issues working with the opposition as an absolute must. The solution, then, has been to develop what some have labeled “secret congress”. Basically, Congress works together on a variety of issues that are very important, but which are not particularly salient to the public discourse. This allows them to make genuine progress without upsetting their base or giving the other side a high profile win, because no citizen is going to vote on the basis of who supported federal hiring reform.
This leads to the perception that nothing is getting done, because on the issues that are extremely salient to voters, progress is genuinely very slow. It’s not zero, but what progress is made tends to come in the form of small-ball bills that make very incremental progress. To be clear: this is not a good system. Certain issues are highly salient for a reason, and those issues deserve to be addressed. Also, this same secret congress process can be (and is) abused to implement unpopular policies that favor special interests. However, it is simply not the case that Congress is sitting around doing nothing. A lot of work gets done in Washington, you just don’t see it, because if you did it mostly wouldn’t happen. This leads us nicely into my next lesson…
Lesson 3: We can Fix This
These problems are solvable! It won’t be easy, but note that nothing I cited is inherent to our constitutional order. With the exception of a few Supreme Court decisions, most of the issues with congress are caused by policy choices, and can be fixed with policy choices. Partisan primaries and a two party system are not mentioned anywhere in the constitution. There’s real momentum at the state level to change the systems that create this dysfunction, the most promising of which is ballot initiatives at the state level that create open, multi-winner primaries and ranked choice voting general elections. I will write about why that’s a great one-two punch in a later post, but suffice it to say these initiatives would dramatically improve the political incentives our politicians face, and they have a real chance at passing in the near future. Alaska already uses such a system!
What’s more, solving the problem of congressional capacity is as simple as reversing budget cuts. If we want to recruit better policy advisors, we can just pay them more, and hire more of them. There are plenty of smart people who can do this work, they just don’t want to make substandard wages to live in an expensive city, especially if they have families.
Final Lesson: Don’t Despair
We can fix this. There’s so much more I want to talk about, but for now if you only take away one thing from this post let it be this: real change is possible. Don’t despair, don’t let cynicism win. There is hope, there is change, and I truly believe that we have a chance in this moment to chart a course for our country that is so much brighter than the darkness that consumes our public discourse.
What interesting times we live in.
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