{"id":41636,"date":"2018-05-17T10:14:39","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T10:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/80000hours.org\/?post_type=career_profile&#038;p=41636"},"modified":"2024-11-06T15:50:51","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T15:50:51","slug":"congressional-staffer","status":"publish","type":"career_profile","link":"https:\/\/80000hours.org\/career-reviews\/congressional-staffer\/","title":{"rendered":"Congressional staffer"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":87289,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"[fn 1]Kennedy, Edward M. True compass: A memoir. Twelve, 2009. Quoted in Kaiser, Robert G. Act of Congress: How America's Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn't. Vintage Books, 2014. p. 28\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 2]\"The Department of Defense (DoD) supports a range of activities addressing infectious diseases, efforts that are an important part of broader U.S. government global health efforts. With U.S. military personnel deployed to over 160 countries around the world, including many with endemic and imported infectious diseases, DoD places a high priority on protecting personnel from such diseases in order to maintain force health and operational readiness. For these reasons, DoD has long made and continues to make significant investments in infectious disease prevention, research and development, and other activities.\" - [LINK](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180517034714\/https:\/\/kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/10\/8504-the-u-s-department-of-defense-and-global-health-infectious-disease-efforts.pdf)\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 3]The federation of american scientists has estimates of each country's stockpile.\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 4]The US leads the world on most measures of scientific productivity - [LINK](https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-worlds-best-countries-science\/) \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 5]\"Data from ongoing surveys by the National Science Foundation (NSF) show that federal agencies provided only 44% of the $86 billion spent on basic research in 2015.\" - [LINK](http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2017\/03\/data-check-us-government-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50) \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 6]Hagedorn, Sara L. Taking the lead congressional staffers and their role in the policy process. Diss. University of Colorado at Boulder, 2015. p. 208\r\n\r\nThis source does have some important weaknesses:\r\nWhen they conclude 'staff are involved in agenda setting', they haven't limited their study to look only for large influences on the most important policy issues. Instead, they looked for all types of influence, however small, on any policy, however unimportant.\r\nThey interviewed personal staff rather than committee staff. We think that a large part of the impact that Congress has on government comes from committees. If it turns out that committee staff are more constrained than personal staff, they may not be able to have much impact.\r\nThey interviewed only staffers, who might overestimate their influence.\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 7]Hagedorn, Sara L. Taking the lead congressional staffers and their role in the policy process. Diss. University of Colorado at Boulder, 2015. p. 10\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 8]Kaiser, Robert G. Act of Congress: How America's Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn't. Vintage Books, 2014. p. 284-85\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 9]Waxman, Henry. The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works. Twelve, 2009.\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 10]\"While Tim was in Atlanta learning about immunizations, a CDC scientist had suggested that he meet with a colleague named Jim Curran, who was described as \"a VD doctor.\" Curran had noticed an outbreak of a strange and deadly pneumonia that was showing up in gay men in Los Angeles, specifically in West Hollywood, which is part of my district.\" \r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nWaxman, Henry. The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works. Twelve, 2009.\r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nAccording to Tim Westmoreland \"By 1981, when the first reported cases of Pneumocystis pneumonia [PCP] were published, I heard about it from the people at the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention (CDC)] saying you should know something about this. And I put together the first hearing on what became to be known as AIDS and HIV in 1982, in April of 1982, when there were, I think, two hundred cases and a hundred deaths. So, the hearings that we did, I think probably during that time from 1982 to 1994, I think probably we did 35 hearings during that time on AIDS issues. Everything from prevention research, to Medicaid, to who was going to pay for the prescription drug costs and ultimately led, in 1990, to the legislation that is the Ryan White [Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE)] Act.\" - [LINK](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20201023173126\/http:\/\/hab.hrsa.gov\/livinghistory\/voices\/tim_transcript1.htm) \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 11]\"In October, on a trip to Turkey for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Chon happened to sit next to Pierre Cardon, a senior official at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. It was a coincidence that helped transform Chon's view of derivatives...\r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nThe BIS is home to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the body responsible for trying to coordinate bank regulations among the rich countries. Cardon was involved in this effort. He and Chon spent nearly eight hours together in that airplane, talking about derivatives\u2014an eye-opening conversation. Cardon showed her a detailed report from the BIS on derivatives, and discussed why they could be so risky. He gave her the names of other Europeans who would be at the IMF meetings who could help her understand what others were thinking about derivatives regulation. She followed up in Turkey, found these people, and realized that there was an emerging international consensus in favor of stiff new regulation of the financial sector generally, and the derivatives market specifically. One of the people she met was Stephen Cecchetti, an American and former economics professor at Brandeis University, who \"had been writing about the dangers of the unregulated derivatives markets for years,\" Chon said. The meetings she attended in Turkey and the contacts she made there helped her realize that \"there was quite a bit of academic research to back up the policy ideas that were being floated around for reg reform,\" especially the need for systemic risk regulators and new controls on derivatives. In Washington Shelby's staff had complained of a shortage of good research and hard facts, but \"here I was in Istanbul and I see all of this great research work being presented.\" When she got back to Washington, Chon followed up on the contacts she had made in Turkey...Chon looked for other \"validators\" in America who could help her convince colleagues of the need for tough regulation. She found two. The first was Steve Eisman, the hedge fund operator memorialized in Michael Lewis's book The Big Short for his decision to bet against the housing market near the height of the bubble. He made hundreds of millions of dollars on this bet, and honed his image as a skeptical contrarian who, in Lewis's words, \"refused to be buffaloed by other people's gobbledygook,\" especially Wall Street's. Chon talked to Eisman on the phone to see if he would help her. He was outspoken. \"There are two things that you must accomplish\" with financial reform legislation, he told her. \"Number one, you have to create a CFPA to protect consumers.\u2026 And number two, you have to have a tough derivatives bill. If you don't have both, you might as well not show up for work, it's going to be pointless.\"...\r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nChon brought Eisman to Washington in October to meet with the staffs of Banking Committee members, Republicans and Democrats. Eisman said derivatives had played a big, damaging role in the Great Crash. He argued eloquently for strong regulation. When one Shelby aide asked why it would have been wrong to let AIG go under in September 2008, Eisman had a blunt reply. As Chon remembered it, he said: \"How can I explain this to you in English? There was a global freakathon going on. And when there are freakathons, you don't just let the world collapse.\" Her colleagues \"hadn't dealt with someone like him,\" Chon said. She thought Eisman was terrific. The second validator Chon found was suggested to her by Barbara Novick, vice chairman of the huge New York investment management firm BlackRock, and a fellow Cornell graduate with whom Chon had become friends. Novick suggested her colleague Nigel Bolton, part of a BlackRock team hired by the New York Fed to help wind down AIG's inventory of credit default swaps, the derivatives that played a big role in the crash. Bolton briefed senators and staff. \"Dodd loved him,\" Chon recalled. He gave a just-the-facts presentation with his English accent about how sloppy AIG Financial Products had been, and how reckless. October was the month when Dodd's team wrote the first version of his bill, the \"discussion draft\" that he released on November 10. It contained a strong section on derivatives, empowering the regulators\u2014the SEC and CFTC\u2014to force most trades onto exchanges, and to require participants in private, over-the-counter derivatives trades to post collateral to guarantee them. But Chon knew this was just an early draft.\" Kaiser, Robert G. Act of Congress: How America's Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn't. Vintage Books, 2014. p. 288-289\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 12]\"We defined a ''side'' as a group of actors seeking to achieve the same policy outcome. Note that we did not require members of a side to work together or to form a formal coalition.\" Baumgartner, Frank R., et al. \"Money, priorities, and stalemate: How lobbying affects public policy.\" Election Law Journal 13.1 (2014): 194-209.\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 13]\"Our main finding is that lobbyists connected to US senators suffer an average 24 percent drop in generated revenue when their previous employer leaves the Senate. The decrease in revenue is out of line with preexisting trends, it is discontinuous around the period in which the connected senator exits Congress, and it persists in the long term. Measured in terms of median revenue per staffer-turned-lobbyist, this estimate indicates that the exit of a senator leads to approximately a $182,000 per year fall in revenues for each affiliated lobbyist. We also find evidence that ex-staffers are less likely to work in the lobbying industry after their connected senators exit Congress.\r\n<br\/>\t\t\t\t\r\nWe regard the above findings as evidence that connections to powerful, serving politicians are key determinants of the revenue that lobbyists generate. Consistent with this interpretation, we also find that the political power of the exiting politician is a good predictor of the drop in revenue suffered by the connected lobbyist. Lobbyists connected to exiting senators who served in the Finance and Appropriations Committees and to representatives who served in the Ways and Means Committee suffer a substantial drop in revenue when the connected politician leaves office. Lobbyists connected to congressmen in neither of these powerful committees are statistically unaffected by their exits.\" \r\n<br\/>\r\nVidal, Jordi Blanes I., Mirko Draca, and Christian Fons-Rosen. \"Revolving door lobbyists.\" The American Economic Review 102.7 (2012): 3731-3748.\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 14]\"Sides with more high-level government allies were successful nearly 80 percent of the time, while sides with more mid-level government allies were successful 60 percent of the time, and those percentages are statistically different from mere chance. In addition, having more former government officials lobbying for your side led to success 63 percent of the time, a finding that should give us pause as these ''revolving door'' lobbyists are indeed a type of ally that money can buy.\" \r\n<br\/>\r\nBaumgartner, Frank R., et al. \"Money, priorities, and stalemate: How lobbying affects public policy.\" Election Law Journal 13.1 (2014): 194-209.\t\t\t\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 15]\"Recent disclosures and employment agreements reviewed by The Nation show that current leadership staff to both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have received six-figure bonuses and other incentive pay from corporate firms shortly before taking jobs in Congress. In many cases, these staffers are well positioned to influence multibillion-dollar legislation on issues ranging from tax policy to defense, and which impact their previous employers.\" \r\n<br\/>\r\nFang., L \"The Reverse Revolving Door: How Corporate Insiders Are Rewarded Upon Leaving Firms for Congress\" The Nation (2013)\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 16]Light, Paul C., Government's Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century Brookings Institution, 2000\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 17]Appropriations committees regulate expenditures of money by the government of the United States.\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 18]Authorization committees conduct oversight over Federal agency programs.\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 19][Foundation influence interview with Kerry Vaughan](https:\/\/80000hours.org\/2014\/07\/foundation-influence-interview-with-kerry-vaughan\/) \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 20]\"Quant trading pays very well, plateauing at between $300,000 and $10m a year after five to ten years, depending on performance. This of course allows for very large annual donations.\" - [LINK](https:\/\/80000hours.org\/2017\/08\/the-life-of-a-quant-trader-how-to-earn-and-donate-millions-within-a-few-years\/) \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 21]'Despite Gingrey's comments, middling staffers with 10 to 12 years of experience would be lucky to get $300,000 and are more likely to fetch $150,000.\r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\n\"There is a certain amount of hyperbole of salaries leaving the Hill, but your average person coming off the Hill is not likely to strike it rich,\" said Doug Pinkham, who heads the Public Affairs Council, a trade group for public affairs professionals.\r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nThose earning in the $500,000 range include top leadership aides and staff directors on the plum committees, such as Senate Finance, Senate Banking, House Ways and Means, and House Financial Services.' - [LINK](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240625195420\/https:\/\/rollcall.com\/2013\/10\/01\/whats-a-hill-resume-worth-on-k-street-maybe-not-500k\/) \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 22]Although there aren't any statistics on how many staffers have to do this, it's mentioned in passing enough that it seems to be relatively common. For example, [this article](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190425093851\/https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/congressional-staffers-225-shoes-reveal-a-major-problem-on-capitol-hill\/2016\/01\/07\/6705d0aa-adb0-11e5-b711-1998289ffcea_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.30c32531611f) says \"My starting salary was $25,000, or $2,083.33 a month before taxes. After paying Uncle Sam and for health insurance, I had about $1,450. Rent and utilities took $750, leaving me with $700, or $23 a day. \u2026 I quickly learned there are three sources of extra income in Washington. For me, money came via a second job. I tutored pre-med students for $20 an hour on nights and weekends. It didn't allow for top-notch suits, but it did increase my cash flow.\"\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 23]Data from the Congressional Research Service's \"Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in House Committees, 2001-2015\" and \"Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in Senators' Offices, FY2001-FY 2015\"\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 24]Data from Congressional Research Service's Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in Senate Committees, FY2001-FY201 5 and Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in House Committees, 2001-2015  Where salaries were quoted separately for minority and majority party, we averaged them. 2013 data for House Minority Staff Director and Senate Minority Chief Counsel was unavailable so we used the 2014 figures. \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 25]\"Many House offices do not advertise any of their job openings. The ones that do send a job announcement often eschew the public list and instead send an email to trusted colleagues, including current and former staffers and people connected to the district or state. One office preferred asking other member offices it worked closely with, either on a committee or within a delegation. Some offices sent job announcements more widely to lists such as \"Democratic House Chiefs.\" [LINK](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20200517171454\/https:\/\/www.rollcall.com\/2014\/10\/07\/secrets-from-capitol-hills-back-rooms-how-to-get-hired-on-the-hill-2\/)[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 26]Congressional Management Foundation \"Life in Congress: Job Satisfaction and Engagement of House and Senate Staff\" (2013)\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 27]Jensen, Jennifer M. \"Explaining Congressional Staff Members' Decisions to Leave the Hill.\" Congress & the Presidency. Vol. 38. No. 1. Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. p. 52\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 28]Kaiser, Robert G. Act of Congress: How America's Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn't. Vintage Books, 2014 p.156-58\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 29]According to Wikipedia: \"There exists an informal category known as the top 14, or T14. This term refers to the 14 institutions that regularly claim the top spots in the yearly U.S. News & World Report ranking of American law schools. Although \"T14\" is not a designation used by U.S News itself, the term is \"widely known in the legal community.\"[3] Although these schools have seen their ranking within the top fourteen spots shift frequently, they have not placed outside of the top fourteen since the inception of the annual rankings (with a few exceptions).[4] Because of their consistent placement at the top of these rankings, these schools are commonly referred to as the \"Top Fourteen\" in published books on Law School Admissions,[5] undergraduate university pre-law advisers,[6] professional law school consultants, and newspaper articles on the subject.[7] There have been occasional changes in the top 14 ranking over the years, although the significance of these changes has been debated.\" - [LINK](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Law_school_rankings_in_the_United_States#Consistency_at_the_top_of_the_U.S._News_Rankings) \r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 30]\"In 2004, after six years as a banker, she decided it was time to try public service in Washington. This was a presidential election year. \"My thinking was, as an outsider\u2014I didn't have any contacts in Washington\u2014there is usually staff turnover in big presidential years, so it would increase the chances of an unknown like me with no contacts or sponsors to get my foot in the door.\" It wasn't so easy. Eventually she volunteered for John Kerry's presidential campaign and befriended two of Kerry's speechwriters, who helped her find a job at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Seven months later she was hired by the Democratic Policy Committee, which provided substantive staff work for Democratic senators and their offices. In this job she could exploit her experience in the financial world. \r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nWhen Democrats won control of the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, Chon was hired onto the staff of the Banking Committee. Her patron was Shawn Maher, the new staff director of the committee and Dodd's principal aide\u2014the man who brought Amy Friend to the staff of Banking. Chon and Maher had gotten to know each other at weekly meetings organized by the Policy Committee staff.\" \r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nKaiser, Robert G. Act of Congress: How America's Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn't. Vintage Books, 2014 p.284-85\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 31]Hagedorn, Sara L. Taking the lead congressional staffers and their role in the policy process. Diss. University of Colorado at Boulder, 2015. p. 208\r\n[\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 32] \"Tenet, 48 a hefty, outgoing son of Greek immigrants, was having a leisurely breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel, three blocks north of the White House, with the man who was most responsible for his rise in the world of secret intelligence -former Oklahoma Democratic Senator David L. Boren. The two had struck up an unusually close friendship going back 13 years when Tenet was a mid-level staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Boren chaired. Boren had found Tenet to be a gifted briefer and had jumped him over others with more seniority to make him staff director, a post which granted him access to virtually all the nation's intelligence secrets.\r\n<br>\r\n<br\/>\r\nBoren then recommended Tenet to President-elect Bill Clinton in 1992, urging that he be appointed to head the administration's transition team on intelligence. The following year, Tenet was named National Security Council staff director for intelligence, responsible for coordinating all intelligence matters for the White House, including covert action. In 1995, Clinton named him deputy director of central intelligence, and two years after that, he appointed him director of central intelligence (DCI), charged with heading the CIA and the vast U.S. Intelligence Community.\" Woodward, Bob. Bush at War. Simon & Schuster UK, 2012. p.1-2\r\n[\/fn]"},"categories":[342,1306,484,330,482,1220],"class_list":["post-41636","career_profile","type-career_profile","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","category-congressional-staffer","category-government-policy","category-moral-philosophy","category-politics","category-problem-prioritisation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Congressional staffer - Career review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Want to get a job in Congress? 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