If Congress keeps cutting its staff, who is writing your laws? You won’t like the answer.

[Commentary] In June 2015, the Obama Administration announced new rules requiring overtime pay for workers who make less than $50,440 a year. Roll Call reports that while more than half of congressional staffers would be eligible for overtime under these new rules, many may be excluded. While undoubtedly disappointing to many staffers who routinely work 50 to 60-plus hour weeks, it is certainly not surprising. Professional staffers decisively support Congress, but the modern Congress rarely returns the favor. Congress itself determines how much money to spend on staff when it creates a budget. Staff cuts immediately limit Congress’s capacity to influence policy, while also limiting its ability to retain experienced staffers or attract replacements. Why would Congress cannibalize its own legislative and creative capacity?

Using new data from Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we suggest that the reason may be twofold: First, most of the public doesn’t know how much the legislative staff does. And second, members routinely run against “Washington,” which includes the bureaucrats and government employees who enable Congress to do its work. So who’s left making policy? Lobbyists and interest groups, who are happy to fill in for free.

[Anthony Madonna is an associate professor of political science at the University of Georgia.
Ian Ostrander is an assistant professor of political science at Texas Tech University.]