Congress as First Branch, Once Again
Summary
In this episode of FEDtalk, the focus is on Congress as the first branch of the federal government. The conversation begins with an introduction and a discussion about the current state of Congress and its functioning. The guests then provide historical context, highlighting the changes in Congress over time. The conversation further explores the efforts and collaborations to modernize Congress, the role of technology in the legislative branch, funding and workforce enhancements, and the importance of diversity in congressional staff.
Takeaways
1. Congress plays a crucial role as the First Branch of the federal government.
2. The current state of Congress and its functioning is a topic of concern.
3. Understanding the historical context of Congress helps in recognizing the potential for change.
4. Collaborative efforts and inside-outside collaboration have played a significant role in the modernization of Congress, particularly around efforts over the past decade.
5. Technology is seen as an accelerant for change in Congress, with the potential to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
6. Funding and workforce enhancements are crucial for attracting and retaining talented individuals in Congress and its staff.
7. Diversity of all forms in congressional staff is essential for better representation and understanding of constituents' needs.
8. Responsible deployment of AI in Congress is a focus area, with efforts to augment, automate, and transform processes.
9. Implementation of accountability and oversight laws is underway, with a focus on transparency and accessibility of information.
10. Organizations like the POPVOX Foundation are working towards creating positive change within Congress.
Chapters:
1. Introduction to Guests and POPVOX Foundation
2. Congressional Dysfunction
3. Historical Context of Congress
4. Creating Change in Congress
5. Collaborative Efforts and Inside-Outside Collaboration
6. The Role of Technology in Congress
7. Funding and Workforce Enhancements
8. Diversity and Workforce Improvements
9. Future of Responsible AI Deployment
10. Implementation of Accountability and Oversight Laws
11. Favorite Congressional Committees
12. Best Era in Congress's History
Links to Items Discussed During Show
2023: A Monumental Year for POPVOX Foundation — POPVOX Foundation
POPVOX Foundation report reveals how AI can transform Congressional operations — POPVOX Foundation
POPVOX Foundation hosts webinar on championing implementation vs. policy — POPVOX Foundation
Congress Should Give Itself a $100,000 Raise (businessinsider.com)
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Natalia Castro (00:51.893)
Good morning and welcome to Fed Talk. My name is Natalia Castro.
Jason Briefel (00:56.602)
And I'm Jason Breifel.
Natalia Castro (00:58.78)
And we're joining you from Shaw, Bransford and Roth. We are here for the next episode in our season, the Federal Government In Flux. And today we're gonna be talking about Congress as the first branch once again. Jason, do you wanna introduce our guests?
Jason Briefel (01:15.985)
I'm really happy to, Natalia, and I'm pleased to have Marcy Harris and Daniel Schuman joining us. They're going to introduce themselves. I've known them both for a really long time. I think I've known Marcy for most of the time. So about a decade working in this space, Daniel, for maybe a few, uh, less years than that, but, uh, these are two folks who have been committed and focused to these issues for a long time, uh, there. And I'm happy to have them here.
On Fed Talk, I think Marci, this is your first time here and Daniel, we're happy to have you back in your new capacity on the Popvox Foundation team. And so before we dive in, you know, Marcy, I want to give the mic to you first, just to introduce yourself and for folks who might not be aware of Popvox and the Popvox Foundation. Could you just let us know what these organizations are and what you all are doing?
Marci Harris (02:09.578)
Sure. And it's great to see you all. Yes, we go way back. We've been doing this for a while. So I'm a former congressional staffer who left the Hill in 2010 to go and with some wonderful co-founders start a civic tech company called popvox.com. I kind of say that was back in the days when we thought we would fix everything with a website.
And one of the lessons we learned is that you can't fix everything with the website, but we have a lot of experience to bear. And that was focused primarily on public engagement, but we found ourselves working a lot at the intersection of Congress and technology in the middle of that Venn diagram where there's still very few people, although some have joined us over the years. Daniel has been a longtime collaborator there.
In 2021, we actually started the nonprofit Popvox Foundation to take what had become massive mission creep on the dot com side to really house work that we were already doing, convening, advising, publishing, training, thinking about how Congress uses technology for, and we've got three buckets now, so capacity, engagement, and innovation.
And so, Popvox Foundation now has been around since early 2021. Our mission, shared mission between the dot com and the dot org is to inform and empower people and make government work better for everyone. And in recent years, that includes a really specific focus on the concept of the pacing problem. So, the fact that technology develops very, very quickly in most cases.
or many cases exponentially, policy, less so, which introduces a gap that grows over time and becomes really important to the relevance, the ability for policymakers to respond to changes in society or even to maintain modern tools for their own use, which is really one of Daniel's areas of expertise.
Marci Harris (04:28.762)
So yeah, we've been around for about two years and continue. We are never short on projects and are especially grateful to now have expanded the team this past year with the addition of Daniel and his colleagues who were previously at Demand Progress.
Jason Briefel (04:45.597)
Thanks so much, Marci. And we're going to include a link to your 2023 Roundup, which I thought was super impressive in our show notes. So for those listening, you can dive in to learn more about the Popvox Foundation. And you teed up Daniel well. He and several colleagues joined the team. Daniel, you're the Director of Governance at the Popvox Foundation. Welcome back to Fed Talk.
Daniel Schuman (05:08.33)
It was such a pleasure to be back. Thank you.
Jason Briefel (05:12.557)
What inspired you to join this organization and keep working on these issues from this new vantage point?
Daniel Schuman (05:19.798)
Well, of course, I've known Marci, I think, like most folks have for a long time. I won't say how many years, but it's been a little while. And, you know, I'm very interested in a couple of things, modernizing government and civic technology. And these are strengths that the Popvox Foundation possesses. So when there was an opportunity for me and my team to come over and join their small but mighty team to make it a medium sized, but mighty team, it seemed like a perfect fit.
particularly with looking at the greatest points of leverage to make, particularly Congress, but to make government itself work better. So I was thrilled to come over because it was a perfect fit for what we were already doing.
Natalia Castro (06:06.824)
That's awesome, Danielle. Before we dive into some of the incredible work that you guys are doing on really modernizing Congress as a whole, I don't think we could have this conversation without talking about some of the way that Congress is functioning or perhaps dysfunctioning. There is a lot going on right now in terms of managing government funding and other large scale priorities. Let's just take a second to talk about
what is going on in Congress right now and if it's unique for what you guys have seen throughout the course of your careers.
Marci Harris (06:43.902)
I'm going to defer to Daniel on this because so much has to do with appropriations and he is the expert.
Daniel Schuman (06:49.794)
Well, so the nature of Congress is changing, but Congress has always changed throughout its history, ever since the country was established almost 250 years ago, the nature of the way the legislative branch has functioned, who has power and how it operates changes over time. And for the last 30 years, what we had was a real concentration of power and leadership, particularly on the House side, right? So you had...
The speaker that became more and more powerful, you know, Tip O'Neill, Newt Gingrich, Gingrich was sort of the epitome of this, but Speaker Pelosi as well, to the point where when people look at assessing the effectiveness of our institutions, you know, all the Republican speakers are judged against Nancy Pelosi's standard for good or for ill. And what that means is that people are looking to the top for solutions to some of these issues. And you see the same thing on the Senate where...
You know, you don't have all the power at the top, but you do see why doesn't Schumer or why doesn't McConnell do X or Y. And Congress, of course, can be organized in many different ways, but it wasn't always around the idea that a handful of people are the ones that are making the decision. So what you're seeing is power starting to be demanded by those who didn't necessarily have it otherwise. So when you read about the analyses of like, this is the least productive Congress ever.
putting aside that measurements of productivity are very difficult to do. You're also seeing this power struggle, right? Who's going to be the leader in questions on those lines? Now what this means for Popvox Foundation, I think Marci can speak to this better than I can, but what it means for us is as they change their institutional arrangements or figure out what their institutional arrangements are, how do we make sure that the Congress itself
has the tools and the capabilities to do the work that it needs? Does it have the staff? Does it have the support agencies? Does it use the current technology? Is it thinking forward to what the new technology might be? How is it dealing with the balance of powers questions with respect to the executive branch or what's happening in the Supreme Court? So we focus a lot on how do you empower the players and whatever institutional arrangement they create to be able to be
Daniel Schuman (09:12.118)
the best version of delegates and representatives for the work that they're doing and to have the systems that they need. And so when you ask the question, how is Congress doing? From our perspective, we see real modernization with respect to artificial intelligence. There's leadership there. We see ongoing efforts that are decade long to fix some of the internal tools and systems to pay some of the people better. But
We also see a lot of deficiencies that still need to be addressed. And the changing nature of the politics can make ongoing modernization hard to do because the ways of doing things have changed. And I know Marci will probably have more to add to it than that, but like at least that's, that's what it looks like from where I sit.
Natalia Castro (10:02.688)
I appreciate that historical context. I think it's often easy to look at the current state of Congress and think this is how it's always been, or think that things have gotten so bad that we can't change at all. And I think thinking about the way that Congress has been structured over time, where the concentrations of power have been, really allows us to take a step back and say, Congress has changed dramatically over the course of its history during different time periods.
And maybe this frustration that so many of us are experiencing today can be a catalyst for another era of change. And I think that's the perfect opportunity for Marci to jump in and talk about how Popvox is working on creating that change.
Marci Harris (10:43.674)
Yeah, thanks for joining me in the glass half full world over here. It's true and everything that Daniel says really lays a good foundation for some of the good news that is actually happening very, very far under the surface and very, very far out of the headlines. And in some cases, because the headlines are so distracting, some good things can happen on the structural and institutional side of things. And we've really seen that since.
2019, we are, you know, probably known to be cheerleaders of an effort that started back in 2019 with the creation of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which was existed through the 116th Congress, the 117th Congress, and now in the 118th Congress, the modernization effort has actually become its own.
subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration. This bipartisan, both when it was a select committee and even now as a subcommittee, it is still an equally Democrat and Republican committee, but this bipartisan effort became a point of focus within the House for issues that members had wanted to see fixed for a very long time.
both really small things and really big picture things that are gonna take a while to figure out how they should shake out. Became a point of focus for external groups like PopVox Foundation, but also lots of our colleagues and other civil society organizations, a place to bring good ideas, a place to interact pretty regularly, to get updates from staff and also to be asked to submit testimony or to submit reports or to provide technical assistance.
So even just that information sharing in an ongoing way over now five years within the House of Representatives has been game changing. And I think we saw that in a, I think the first glimpse of how important this was during the pandemic, when actually there was an internal, the select committee at the time, a place for many conversations about how to
Marci Harris (13:04.946)
go remote or engage the public or, you know, for many of these ideas to kind of be catalyzed. Daniel and I wrote a piece a while back during the pandemic where we said, you know, we saw in some cases things that we had pushed for 10 years happened over a weekend, including, you know, digital submission of bills and committee reports and things like that, digital signature, et cetera. So there was already progress during the pandemic.
I think what we're seeing now with the past crazy year of generative AI and lots of every industry in the world trying to figure out how this is going to work, what internal policy should be, should we take a cautious approach or an experimental approach? How should we do this? The modernization subcommittee within the House has really been a leader at taking in information, producing reports to help the public stay informed about how the House is approaching these questions. And we'll even...
have a hearing coming up at the end of the month. So all of that to say, yes, there are some surface level issues, including ones that are going to be really important this week on whether we fund the government or not. But under the surface, the ongoing bipartisan, somewhat boring institutional, one foot in front of the other discussions about how the place runs and how it should run in the future are really...
advancing in ways that I think those of us who've been watching for a while have never seen before.
Jason Briefel (14:36.377)
Yeah, we were pleased to host representatives Kilmer and Graves when they were leading that. I think that was the episode that Daniel joined us for on Fed Talk a few years ago. And I wanted to talk about that effort there, kind of how folks within Congress got together internally. As you said, maybe this is part of that shifting power. There have been members who have been frustrated for a long time.
and they want to come to Washington to feel like they're making a difference and to actually make a difference. And so this committee gave them away and a place to do that. And I'd like you each to talk about it. Maybe Daniel, we can start with you kind of like, what was that like, you know, for folks who are on the inside, I know you were on the outside supporting this effort to have a place and someone who is listening and interested about making the institution work better, and not only on policy.
But on the other important things that Congress does, constituent services, helping people out navigating the federal bureaucracy and things like that. And then maybe Marci, we can pull you in for how Popvox and civil society worked to bolster and support and give fuel to those efforts. So Daniel, what do you?
Daniel Schuman (15:51.222)
So it was incredibly heartening, right? There had long been members of Congress who were interested in these issues, right? The interests are focused in start with the modernization committee. We saw efforts inside appropriations and rules and house admin, and then with the support offices and agencies to do things. But what lacked, what was missing in part were some of the connectors, some of the focal points.
and the modernization committee played this role as a focal point. One of the first things they did was they held a hearing for other members to come in and just say what they wanted. And dozens and dozens and dozens of members showed up with ideas about this doesn't work or I want this thing or this isn't functioning properly. And some of the ideas were very big picture like the budget process doesn't work.
the calendar doesn't work for me. Why are we spending half as much time traveling in and out to Congress as we are actually physically here for the work that we're doing? And it created a place for members and staff and civil society and everyone else to go and surface, make publicly visible the conversations that may have been happening elsewhere to provide a focal point for it and then to provide a series of recommendations.
that validated the efforts in some cases that had been otherwise happening or established new efforts to address issues, that thing could work their way through the legislative process. Like this was the point of entry for members and everybody else to talk about the things that have been bothering them. Now Mycom doesn't fix everything, right? They have a limited scope in some of what they're doing. I don't want to...
give the impression that the sun rises and sets inside that committee or subcommittee, but they have made tremendous progress serving as that focal point, which is why folks may remember, it was only supposed to exist for a year, and then it was only supposed to exist for a Congress, and then it was only going to exist for a second Congress, right? And then now the parties have flipped, but like it still exists.
Daniel Schuman (18:16.838)
as part of the House Admin Committee. So this subcommittee, this effort has been a runaway success, providing a focal point for members to have these conversations.
Jason Briefel (18:30.429)
Thank you so much, Daniel. I love the story and I love that it's still going.
Natalia Castro (00:03.086)
So Marci, do you have anything to add?
Marci Harris (00:12.925)
Sure, I think Daniel really teed up well the internal effort and kind of in a parallel track. Lots of folks on the outside had been thinking about and talking about, meeting about and scheming about, complaining about various improvements and modernization reforms that
we wanted to see over the years. It turns out a lot of us are very opinionated. And, you know, there were organized efforts even before the creation of the select committee that I think many would say helped to catalyze and draw attention to the need and to the select committee as a potential solution to the need to look into some of these larger institutional questions.
And then over these past five years, civil society, across the board organizations from Congressional Institute, Congressional Management Foundation, Bipartisan Policy Center, R Street, AEI, Foundation for American Innovation, all our friends who have many, many thoughts. We have...
work together in kind of an informal, what we call cohort. It's not a coalition because we don't all agree on things. And it's one of those less formal kind of collaborations, but it has been an opportunity for us to share information, but also to coordinate on bringing information to the community. So they don't have to hear from 35 of us. Sometimes they can hear from...
a key person on a different issue. And so that inside outside ability to elevate issues that we would love for the committee to think about or to submit testimony or even explain to the public what's going on with this crazy little.
Marci Harris (02:23.013)
committee that's just chugging along in the midst of all of this other chaos. You know, we are in many cases the only ones writing articles or sharing information about this ongoing effort. So it's been a really incredible kind of inside-outside collaboration, which, you know, this happens in every topic area. When I was a staffer, my focus area was tax and trade and health, and there were plenty of folks who were...
writing policy papers about what we should be thinking about or what we should be doing. There's kind of a life cycle of ideas going into Congress. You have to write the big report that sits on the shelf for two years and you know you wait around until there's an emergency and somebody's like where's that report and then you know you pull it down and find the person who wrote the report get the one-pager you know all the things and Daniel's the master of many of these ways that you introduced ideas or new concepts into the bloodstream.
So, you know, to have that kind of effort on just fixing the place was new. And so it's been a really interesting effort collaboratively over these years.
Natalia Castro (03:33.038)
I think it's so notable how you guys have allowed yourselves to come together around these general ideas that you all agree on and have not allowed sort of the minor differences and perhaps means as opposed to the overall goal to prevent you guys from working collaboratively. I think a lot of times when there is a formal coalition, there's a lot of pressure for everyone to be on the same page about every issue. And I think
You know, it's almost a model for Congress to consider how working in these more discrete, informal ways can allow you to find those points of agreement and elevate good ideas without letting, you know, that at the bad be the enemy of the country.
Jason Briefel (04:20.12)
And you know, on that vein, I do think that you've both mentioned the role of technology in this as an accelerant for things that are going on in our society, for ways that we can implement policy ideas, but also another ground where people are trying to figure out, you know, which way is up, down, left or right, how we're going to use AI or not, if that's a bad idea or a good idea. And I think that this is another place where this
group, but not a coalition. And I liked how you phrase that Marci, because I wish we had some of the same thing on the executive branch and the workforce side, because we all just fight with each other and we go nowhere. And so I'm really impressed by the progress that you all have been able to make. And I think it's because you have diverse individuals coming at it from diverse viewpoints to help advance the ball in each of their different communities where they might come from. But on an issue like
technology broadly or on AI, you know, kind of what are you seeing there in terms of the interest and the opportunity and kind of some of the arms and legs that you might not have guessed about when this started and what you're starting to see progress on now?
Marci Harris (05:33.105)
Yeah, well, so I think so we at Popvox Foundation, Daniel and his team when he was at Demand Progress and Foundation for American Innovations at Graves and that team, we kind of jumped in early. So we put out a piece in February of 2023 with a bit of kind of our thoughts and overview and kind of just foundation setting for how JAN AI
would probably start to impact the legislative workflow and issues to be on the lookout for. And I think much of that has worn out. There again was a lot of groundwork already laid. So my colleague Aubrey Wilson, who was very recently a staffer on the committee on House administration Republicans. So she and I just released a report on AI in representative.
bodies, including looking at parliaments around the world, and looking at implementations of AI, whether machine learning or natural language processing or other things that are now getting lumped into the category of AI over the years, including a really significant project that Congress has worked on for quite some time, I think since 2017, called the
Marci Harris (06:58.877)
to compare different amendment proposals or bills, et cetera, to previous versions, see how they would impact current law, et cetera. That is a really extensive project that the Office of the Clerk and the Parliamentarian, and Daniel knows a lot more on the details in this, implemented and released in 2022, that was an AI project before we were even talking about JAN AI. I think.
over the past year, what has been really impressive, and this again is on what we call the internal pacing problem. So it's not about how Congress is understanding and regulating AI in society, which is kind of the external pacing problem that different people are working on that topic, but the internal question of how Congress will.
use these technologies, experiment with these technologies, are the internal policies going to be super restrictive or will they allow for experimentation? Those steps have been really impressive and I think especially looking at activities by some of the legislative support agencies. A particular star that I want to call out is GAO's science technology analytics.
Assessment and Analytics Innovation Lab. They really have been tip of the spear doing just as their name implies, looking into how these tools can be used in the legislative context. So they experimented with several apps for their own internal use. And most recently, they've actually incorporated a commercial.
model API to access GAO reports. So basically to run a query of GAO reports. And that's tremendous. They also are addressing the issue of do we really want all of GAO's analysts out using chatgpt.com or is it better for us to have an internal tool with leveraging the API, with terms of service that say we're not training the model every time we run a query.
Marci Harris (09:16.957)
And yes, that is the case in the broader institution. There's a lot that can be learned there. So just the fact that these kinds of experiments are happening within the year of large language models becoming mainstream is much more proactive action by Congress than we've seen. And yes, the house was ahead.
But the Senate also has issued guidance for internal use and brought together a working group. So it really is a stunning difference now with generative AI than we've seen with previous technology cycles.
Natalia Castro (10:01.798)
Yeah, I think it's interesting how it seemed like when the internet blew up, Congress was behind. When social media blew up, Congress was kind of behind again. It's still navigating, you know, social media regulation externally and even internally. And now it feels like with AI, there's really the impetus behind Congress to not fall behind and to make sure, especially because of just the power of this technology and the potential for it.
that there is an awareness and an understanding of how it could be used internally, potentially because there was so much opportunity for it to be misused, that maybe we didn't quite see those risks as much as we do today with some of these AI programs, this generative AI, this next generation. So I think it's going to be really interesting to see how Congress continues working to make sure that they're ahead of the curve and not falling behind.
Natalia Castro (11:04.01)
Awesome, well, go right ahead.
Daniel Schuman (11:04.974)
Can I speak to that for a sec? So there's an old saw, right? The future is here, it's just unevenly distributed. That's one of the big questions for the legislature. So we often talk about Congress, but Congress is a metonym for the legislative branch. And the legislative branch is the House and the Senate, the support offices and the support agencies. There's 20,000 people, different institutions that we're talking about, and then there's the different players inside.
Some folks are really trying to drive this and it's clear, right? Like they, uh, or they're trying to collaborate the, you know, I always want to talk about the congressional data task force, which is a 12 year old collaboration among a number of internal stakeholders with the public. They meet quarterly with the public, right? Which is, which is novel, um, to go and talk about how to better build internal systems and also how to better meet public needs. Um,
But there are also places that don't want to do this, or the places that the fears overwhelm the desire to do more. So like, what's notable about, I think, the AI question is that almost everyone realizes that they need to do something. And some of them are trying to do more than just something, but they're trying to do the right thing. And that is surprising. And...
It's being built off a decade long investment in data sharing and collaboration for what's not generative AI, but it is either AI or something before that, like machine learning, like other technologies. So like this sort of bending the curve that started happening around 2010, you can see that it's accelerating now. There is more that becomes possible.
I think Marci alluded to this as well with the other thing that made a lot of this happen. Actually, I think she said it straight out was the COVID remote work, the change in operations that still persists today. People are largely in the office, but people are working remotely. Technology is being used in different types of ways. A lot of things that were stuck got unstuck. And on the house side.
Daniel Schuman (13:21.622)
because the alternation in power is more rapid than it occurs on the Senate side, when the new people come in, they wanna do more stuff. You don't have the same type of lock-in that can happen in the bureaucracy that you see in the Senate sometimes. So like that also is driving things. And when the House moves forward and the Senate gets jealous and the Senate wants to move forward and you see them as they're duking it out over appropriations that has this fall on effect for the folks that wanna get the money, including the support agencies. And I...
One thing that we didn't really talk about a lot, that I think, you know, there's a real efficiency and a real money-saving aspect to this as well. That as you make use of better technology, you know, the workload on Congress has grown geometrically, right? It increases in a rate that's correlated with the size of the population, but also the ease at which there is with communicating with Congress. And when you can...
process a greater number of ideas, when you can manage more communications, when you can extract value of it. Like you may not be able to read a 300 page report, but if the choice is between reading it and not, or maybe you can get an AI to summarize it, or maybe you can surface for it. Like it changes, you can turn staff into super staff. Like you can start scaling their ability to handle information in a way that was never possible before. Because before it was always just throw another human at the problem, but there weren't more humans to throw at the problem.
Now you can throw technology at the problem in a way that is different. And while it's not the same as having a person doing the work, it is like having a very, very capable assistant that can help you do some of the work. And that fundamentally changes this one-to-many problem that exists between Congress and the workload that is before it. Now, we're not seeing that bear fruit in terms of productivity in the 18th, 118th Congress in terms of passing legislation, but we're also a little early for that.
I think we'll probably see it as actually where our colleague Anne is focusing, which is where the nature of casework and dealing with constituent communications is going to change. And then you'll start seeing it more in terms of like maybe start changing the way hearings in Markos operate. So you all see it sort of blending through and then fondly into how they manage their information technology needs to get answers to the questions that they need, like the AI that GAO is starting to figure out how to play with. So I think that there is a lot.
Daniel Schuman (15:43.906)
that's coming along with this that is really interesting and we haven't seen anything yet.
Jason Briefel (15:51.748)
No, I really appreciate you bringing up all of that, Daniel. And I think specifically kind of looking at the imbalance, the numbers game of a 20,000 person, you know, legislative branch in total versus a 2 million person executive branch, you know, the workload and the funding imbalance is, is really, um, uh, gaping and technology provides a way to try to keep up. And it will be really interesting to see if it.
affects how Congress better works together. You know, I know that OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, for example, has been under the gun for their retirement services. But because Congress didn't have a way to figure out that every single member office was dealing with people, his retirement packages were stuck until recently. You know, they didn't realize that they buried the Ledge Affairs Office of that agency in such a way that they took them three years to respond to inquiries from Congress.
because they had 400 inquiries about the same thing. And it will be really powerful to see how that can put more power into the hands of individual lawmakers to realize that an issue they have with an agency may not be a standalone issue in the future and how that drives, you know, oversight and again, kind of this, how one effect in the system affects the interplay between the branches. I guess a question on all of this is, you know,
Are you seeing more appetite in Congress to fund itself? And are they interested in funding not just the technology, but we still do need people, you know, whether it's paid interns, whether it's paying our staff a living wage, you know, some of these other aspects? How are these two things kind of the technology versus the investment in people bearing out?
Marci Harris (17:43.785)
I just want to say one thing about the casework piece that you brought up, and then I want to pass it to you, because he's worked so hard on the appropriation side of the pay issue. I think everything that you just said about the casework, specifically with the retirement example, is really, really important. And I think up until maybe last year, and some of the work of the select committee, the modernization committee, excuse me, the modernization subcommittee, Congress was not even understanding.
how valuable the information is, that it takes in every day from actual people on the ground calling their office and saying, this in a federal program is not working for me, or the website didn't work, or the thing doesn't explain it well, or I can't get through to a person. Congressional casework is the outlier of every.
user experience problem in a federal agency. When it's bad, they call their member of Congress. And so those calls, those emails, those meetings are the most valuable possible user testing, user experience research that the federal government has. And Congress has direct access to it. It doesn't have to ask an agency for access to that information about what's not working in an agency. They're calling the offices and telling them exactly what the issue is.
But Congress still doesn't have a way to process that data, compare that data, aggregate that data, and understand what's happening in every House office or Senate office. But that is one of the Modernization Committee recommendations, is that there is a casework data aggregator that would provide this information in an aggregated way so that members and committees of jurisdiction could understand where problem areas are. And that's just a tiny, tiny example of the potential for
you know, these tools that help us process so much more data in, you know, qualitative ways, so much better. Uh, and also, um, for, you know, just having a place like the modernization subcommittee where these problems, needs, ideas, solutions can kind of converge when previously they were kind of nobody's, no, nobody had the jurisdiction or the, it wasn't on their plate to kind of pull all the pieces together. But on the workforce side, Daniel, I know you've got a lot of insight there.
Daniel Schuman (20:07.934)
Yeah, so I think the biggest, so we've seen a lot of changes with respect to workforce, right? So you now have paid internships in the house and it's, you know, 15 bucks an hour. So it's around the DC minimum wage. You have a $45,000 pay for in the house, which how people live below that is difficult to imagine. You have the creation of a new intern office as well as offices to help
There is a lifting of the pay cap. So staffers were limited to being paid the same amount of money that a member of Congress got paid. And since members of Congress haven't allowed their own pay to have a cost of living adjustment since 2009, that was creating real downward pressure on staff as well. I mean, you can't go and hire an IT expert or an attorney to do oversight work at the rate that a member was getting paid. Because it's not... It's not...
comparable to what they could get in the executive branch, let alone to what they get in the private sector. And I think what we have seen is a change in understanding among Republicans in particular. We saw it with a recent statement from Patrick McHenry. We saw it with a statement from Mitt Romney as well. We've seen it from other members. I remember Darrell Issa talking about this. If you want to hold the executive branch to account, or if you want to be able to just do your job.
You need to have enough people and you have to keep them around for long enough that they actually know what they're doing. Because if you're earning $60,000 a year and you're going up against a couple of SCSs and a few GS-15s that have been around for 30 years, you're going to get rolled. And it's not because you're not smart enough and it's not because you're not good enough, it's because there aren't enough of you and you don't have the experience. So if you want Congress to be a functioning branch of government,
which they do in their support offices, right? They actually pay them on a congressional scale. You have to pay people appropriately. You have to have an appropriate pathway to attract them. And when you hit 30 years old, right, as a staffer, and you get tired of living in that group house, right? In that room in a house somewhere, and you meet that special someone, you don't wanna be like, this is our life for the next 30 years, like in this group house, we'll have, you can't do that. Like people need to be able to be successful. And it doesn't mean that you need to get rich.
Daniel Schuman (22:34.818)
but you need to be able to be a professional individual living in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. And because of this realization that if you wanna hold the Biden administration or the Trump administration or the Obama administration or any other administration to account, and you know you wanna actually win for once, you have to have people whose career is not focused on leaving as soon as possible to go someplace else and make more money. And that...
fundamental change. Now everyone hasn't reached this realization, I should say. Like there are a number of members who haven't. And when you start talking about certain issues, like some of the members have a real incentive to blow it up because they think it will help in their local election. And that's why like on member salary issues, like you still have problems because you have this defector issue. But on a lot of the other issues, the relevant appropriation subcommittee staff, the members who are there,
have changed their tune. And I think Mr. Graves, who you had on before, is a perfect exemplar of this. When he started as chair of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee, he was an adversary, right? He cut funding for the legislative branch by 10%. He made it hard for the House to do its job. He weakened that institution tremendously. And when he came to be co-chair of the Modernization Committee,
I think he had a realization of what have I done? And he worked to undo it. And where we are now, I mean, because of the last Congress, we have undone many of the pernicious funding cuts. So like Congress is now funded, the House is now funded at the same level it was in 2010. Now it's not funded at the same level it would have been in 1996, right? Where funding, or 1995, where funding levels were much higher. We haven't gone, we're not back to good, we're back to better.
Right? It's a change of perspective. And just the final thing that I'll note here is that, you know, the House Republicans in this Congress, you know, they have gone and made some cuts to the legislative branch, but they haven't done what they would have done in years past. They didn't decimate it. They focused on where they realized that there was value, and they are investing and making sure they have the human capital that they need.
Daniel Schuman (25:01.262)
to be able to execute the mission that they believe that they're there for. And that is a fundamental change from where we were 20 years ago. And it's a welcome change for Congress.
Natalia Castro (25:12.014)
I also think it's worth emphasizing the incredible positive impact that these workforce changes have had on increasing the diversity, both racial diversity, socioeconomic diversity of those who are working in Congress and therefore improving the quality of services that Congress offers its constituents and in the policy it puts forward. For so many years, I know.
When I was in college, it was kind of like a joke that you could only work in Congress if you came from a rich family who could afford to put you in a nice DC apartment while you were interning for no money for years. And the impact of that was a real disconnect between Congress and the vast majority of the people who their programs serve who are not at that income level and who don't come from these diverse backgrounds. And so I think an incredible, you know,
additional benefit of these workforce enhancements has been improving the diversity within Congress. It's something that, you know, in the executive branch where there are still some unpaid internships, there are still things like that we're working on as well because it is so important to have a government that's reflective of the people it serves. And these workforce benefits have been an incredible catalyst for making sure congressional staff are reflective of their constituents. And that has just been commendable work.
Daniel Schuman (26:36.051)
I give a lot of credit. Oh, sorry Marci. I was gonna say.
Marci Harris (26:38.51)
Absolutely. Yeah, I think we were about to say the same thing.
Daniel Schuman (26:41.638)
I was just going to say, the folks that pay our interns, Carlos and Guillermo, did tremendous work from an executive branch and legislative branch perspective in terms of trying to address the paid internship problems in particular. I should also give credit to former chairman Yoder, the Republican chair of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee in the House, who put forward the first staff-paid
Retention and Diversity Survey that had taken place in 15 years. And we had something similar in the Senate. It would have actually addressed diversity as well, but Mitch McConnell blocked it. But we were able to get the study on staff pay and retention on those issues. And when we talk about diversity, it's gender, race, background, but it's also geography, it's ideology. You shouldn't have to be rich to work for the legislature.
And when you make a pathway, which is what's happening, it makes it possible for Congress to do more. And I think we're starting to see the fruits of those efforts.
Jason Briefel (27:52.96)
Yeah. And in that vein, you know, we're almost at our last few minutes here. I want to ask you both. We've got kind of two funner questions to wrap things up. Coming out of the twenty three that the Povlox Foundation has had and with some of the momentum that you have both talked about that's been building for the past decade. I think it's critically important that Congress realizes like we have to be able to do our job and they're now taking proactive action to that.
curious kind of what you're both excited or most excited or eager to see here in 2024. Maybe Marci, we'll start with you.
Marci Harris (28:34.645)
Sure, so I am very excited to see Congress continue its momentum on learning and being proactive where it comes to responsible deployment of AI and responsible understanding of the potential and how it we're thinking about in three categories for our next report, which is, you know, to augment current systems to eventually automate some.
some processes and potentially down the road transform the way that we do some things. So I am really interested and excited in how these institutions go about thinking about that, experimenting with that, testing that, et cetera. I'm going to put one plug in for something that I am newly obsessed with, and that is one problem I think we have with the way that
Marci Harris (29:34.829)
sorry, that jurisdictions are set up for committees is that often the technology for a program is handled in a committee that is separate from the committee of jurisdiction for the program. And we often don't have tech expertise within the committee of jurisdiction for the program. And I think that's gotta change.
soon. That's something that we're thinking a lot about the various mechanisms, whether it's detailees or fellowships, ultimately, hopefully some of that professional technical staff that we talked about. But we know now that there is not a difference between regular businesses and tech businesses. Every business is a tech company. There is not a difference between normal policy and
tech acquisition or running tech. It's like, it is all intertwined now and the way our Medicare systems work is of interest to the Ways and Means Committee. The way that our immigration technology works is of interest to the Homeland Security Committee and we need people who understand those programs also understanding the technology that is underlying those programs. And so I think that potential for more crossover between the tech experts and the programmatic folks.
is kind of the next level of making sure that Congress is kind of operating at the level that we need to catch up with the way that things are changing.
Jason Briefel (31:06.552)
Yeah, love it. Without that implementation layer, which is largely technology based, you know, it doesn't matter what the policy is if we can't do it. Um, Dana, what are you, uh, excited about or, um, looking forward to here in 2024?
Daniel Schuman (31:22.998)
I think the starting point is I'm hopeful that Logs will see an appropriations bill for the last fiscal year. That would be a nice thing. There's a bunch of provisions in it that would be interesting to see. I'm looking at in part implementation of a number of accountability and oversight laws that Congress enacted. So the PLM Act, which as you know requires
All senior federal appointees be listed on a website maintained by OPM. The Access to Congressional Mandate Reports Act, where GPO has rolled out the first version of the Congressional Mandate Reports website, where the vast majority of reports required by law to go to Congress will be available in a central location. There's a couple of others sort of on those lines. There's one having to do with lobbying at OIRA, for example. So I want to see how those things are implemented and how they're tied back.
to congressional systems. So like you can imagine the senior executive system tracking stuff, connecting, sorry, not senior executive, the senior appointees tracking back with the nomination information that's available on congress.gov. So you can start to crosswalk it and you can start to say, well, I'm on this committee, who's outstanding for my committee and what's going on here. And I think that there are other things along those lines internally inside the legislative branch, like we.
Video from Senate proceedings being available on congress.gov, although it seems small is actually going to be the big thing. I'd love to see the comparative print project fully available to the Senate and made available to the public. There is an effort in the House to modernize their committee websites, including information about who the witnesses are so you can see who's testified and when about what and who they represent and how often they've done so, as well as seeing the votes in the committees. I'm interested in the modernization of the lobbying disclosure system, which is
has to and then there's an eternal house phone book. So there's a lot and I could keep going, but I won't. So there's a lot of technology projects that are underway that can strengthen the capability of the legislative branch to function. I'm very excited to see about what happens there.
Natalia Castro (33:29.47)
You know, Dan, I just used the newly released OPM electronic plumbook the other day and I was stunned by how easy it was and how it was really intuitive and allowed me to look up everything I needed for a project in a matter of minutes. And it really felt like an innovation. So the further steps that you just described would really only critically enhance that important work.
But work is being done, and I was really happy to see that when I used it for the first time. So I think that was a really interesting point that you made, and I'm excited to see how it keeps moving forward.
Jason Briefel (34:09.405)
Do you want to do the last final fun question?
Natalia Castro (34:13.09)
Oh, sure. So for our final fun question, let's see. You know, Marci, you talked a little bit about committees and some of the committee changes that you would make. What would you say is your favorite congressional committee?
Marci Harris (34:31.042)
Well, see, I have to default to my long-term answer on this because once you work for Ways and Means, it's like a metaphorical tattoo that you get that Ways and Means is like forever the first committee, the best committee, you know, in Article 1, Section 7, all revenue measures originate in the house. They originate in Ways and Means. So I will forever love that committee and the way it conducts things. But also I'm quite a fan of...
of modernization subcommittee and all of the great institutional work that's happening there.
Natalia Castro (35:07.546)
I just know that every Ways and Means staffer has those constitutional provisions memorized, and I love it. Dan-
Marci Harris (35:14.998)
That was the name of our softball team was the Article One Section 7. So like.
Jason Briefel (35:21.554)
Ha ha.
Natalia Castro (35:22.154)
love that. Dan, I'm going to give you a different one. You talked earlier about how there have been so many eras of Congress, some with the leadership, you know, the really powerful times of the New Gingrich Speakership. What would you say was the best era in Congress's history?
Daniel Schuman (35:39.37)
The one that's yet to come. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. It's what's next.
Natalia Castro (35:43.766)
Great answer.
Marci Harris (35:49.72)
Amen.
Natalia Castro (35:49.826)
Wow, guys. Amen, yeah, thank you for that. That was great. Daniel, Marci, everyone from PopVox, thank you so much for all of the incredible work you're doing and for joining us today on this conversation about Congress. We look forward to continuing to follow your work and we'll make sure that there are some notes in this show description so that all of our readers can follow along too. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Marci Harris (36:18.474)
Thank you.
Jason Briefel (36:18.536)
Thanks y'all.
