Congress needs more experts

In 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services took up a bill that would let big banks keep certain risky trades — called swaps — inside the parts of the bank backed by federal deposit insurance and emergency support from the Federal Reserve. When reporters at The New York Times compared the bill to a draft written by Citigroup’s lobbyists, they found that 70 of its 85 lines reflected the bank’s recommendations. Two paragraphs were copied almost exactly, except for two words lawmakers made plural. The bill passed the House 292-122, with 70 Democrats joining 222 Republicans, and in December 2014, it became law.

No bribe was needed. Citigroup was able to write the bill because it had people who understood swaps and the committee did not. Political scientists describe this kind of lobbying as a subsidy — lobbyists do the research and drafting that congressional staff would otherwise do, and their work is paid for by the interest groups that benefit from the result. In that model, influence comes from doing a lawmaker’s work for them, rather than directly paying them off.

For decades, Congress has cut the expert staff it needs to understand the laws it writes, and that work has quietly moved to the industries it is supposed to regulate. Rebuilding Congress’ own expert staff is the cheapest reform in Washington with the biggest payoff. It would make the federal government more effective without making it any more powerful.

The decline in Congress’ expert staff is measurable. Congress employed nearly 2,150 professional committee staff in 1993, a number which dropped to 1,316 by 2011. The executive branch now has more than 120 times the legislative branch’s funding, which means the agencies Congress is supposed to oversee have funds to access far more experts and resources than the lawmakers overseeing them. The clearest casualty was the Office of Technology Assessment — a small, nonpartisan office that gave members of Congress plain explanations about science and technology issues. Over its 23 years , it produced roughly 750 reports. Its 1986 study of the Social Security Administration’s computer systems was credited with $368 million in savings, more than 16 times the office’s entire $22 million annual budget. Congress defunded it in 1995 as part of a broader effort to downsize Congress itself.

The staffers who remain in lawmakers’ personal offices and on committees do not stay long. The average congressional staffer lasts about 3.1 years on Capitol Hill, and roughly half of those headed to the private sector say they want to become lobbyists. Many already have: Over a single decade, nearly 5,400 current and former congressional staffers moved between Capitol Hill and registered lobbying, and in 2011 alone, 388 aides left Congress to become lobbyists.

This used to matter less, because other federal agencies filled in the gaps. Under a 1984 Supreme Court decision , Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, judges had to accept an agency’s reasonable reading of a vague law, even if they would have read it differently themselves. That case, for example, let the Environmental Protection Agency decide what counted as a “ stationary source ” of air pollution when the Clean Air Act left the term unclear. In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned that rule in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Now, judges decide for themselves what an unclear law means, even when an agency’s specialists disagree. So when Congress leaves a gap, a judge fills it rather than an expert. That puts the burden on Congress to write laws specific enough to stand on their own. Two years later, the Bipartisan Policy Center — a Washington, D.C.-based think tank — warned Congress may not currently have the staff, expertise or training it needs to draft those laws. And among experienced senior congressional staff, only 5% say they are very satisfied with Congress’ capacity.

Loper Bright was sold as a way to take power from unelected bureaucrats and return it to elected representatives. But without the expertise to use that power, it goes to whoever can write the detailed language of the law, and too often that is members of the industry being regulated. An industry writing its own rules will write them in its own favor, in the same way Citigroup loosened a rule meant to keep taxpayers from backing its riskiest bets. The Citigroup bill sets a precedent; unless something changes, this is what lawmaking looks like from here on.

The fix is small and specific. First, Congress should bring back a dedicated science and technology office. Sens. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced a bill in 2023 to revive the Office of Technology Assessment. Even adjusted for inflation, the office’s old budget would cost the government less than $10 for every $1 million it spent in fiscal year 2025. Second, Congress should restore the professional staff it cut across its committees and pay experts enough to stay. The House already showed this is possible in 2022 when it set a $45,000 minimum salary for staff.

This kind of investment pays for itself. The Government Accountability Office — the nonpartisan agency that audits federal spending for Congress — reported $62.7 billion in financial benefits to the federal government in fiscal year 2025, savings that came from agencies and Congress acting on its audits, including $15.7 billion in Medicaid savings alone.

Some fiscal conservatives will hear “more staff” and think “bigger government.” It is the opposite. R Street Institute — a free-market think tank — argues starving Congress makes it more dependent on lobbyists and weaker as a check on the executive branch. A 2020 essay in the conservative Federalist Society’s series on modernizing Congress makes the same case, warning high staff turnover hands power to lobbyists and executive agencies and calling a stronger Congress a conservative goal. Spending a little more on Congress moves power away from unelected agencies and industry insiders and back to the people voters actually elect. It does not impact how states run their governments, and it does not expand federal power over a single citizen.

Congress’ dependence on lobbyists matters beyond Washington, D.C. Only 10% of Americans have confidence in Congress, and an estimated 139 million Americans believe a small group of elites controls the levers of power in the country. The Citigroup bill shows that a version of that belief is literally true, though the problem is more mundane — and easier to address — than most people assume. The real problem is that Congress no longer has enough experts to understand what it votes on, and the fix exists within a budget Congress itself controls. Fixing this requires no constitutional amendment, no cooperation from the states and no new federal power over anyone. It only requires Congress to pay for its own competence: fund a revived Office of Technology Assessment, rebuild committee staff to their early 1990s levels and pay experts enough to stay. Until that happens, the people who understand our laws best will keep writing them, and they will keep working for someone else.

Seth Gabrielson is an Opinion Columnist who writes about the intersection of politics, science and philosophy in his biweekly column “Public Reason.” He can be reached at semiel@umich.edu.

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