Two weeks ago, Rod Dreher claimed that “I am told by someone in a position to know that something like 30 to 40 percent of DC GOP staffers under the age of 30 are Groypers.” Michelle Goldberg seized upon Rod’s claim in her New York Times column anointing Fuentes the successor to Charlie Kirk. It’s enough to make you think about a Benedict Option, or alternatively a “Beckerman option” in which Jews pursue communal solidarity over mainstream acceptance.
It’s not clear how seriously we should take Dreher’s specific figure. It’s even less clear how we would test it. You can’t poll staffers on their Groyperism, at least not if you expect a straight response. There’s no question, however, that antisemitism and other hateful ideologies are on the rise in America. As center-left economist Noah Smith, puts it, “we have a staffer problem in America. In both parties.” The specific problem is this: “Tons of staffers are extremist, extremely-online idiots.”
There’s no excuse for turning to Nazism and communism. And the rise of these ideas among staffers is certainly a cause for alarm. We should ask ourselves, though, how it got to this point. Why would employed and educated young professionals turn to the worst ideas of the 20th century? Young staffers earn low wages but must live in an unaffordable, high-crime city. They arrive with an ambition to change the course of history, or at least participate in it. And then they end up working in a dysfunctional Congress that has surrendered its power. They watch their nation rack up historically high amounts of debt, awarding generous benefits to even the wealthiest retirees. At the same time, the age of the median first-time homebuyer has jumped to 40-years old, and core governmental functions are beginnig to falter. Should we be surprised when young people working in these conditions end up angry, and weird?
Zach Graves described the core problem in 2020: “The $50,000 median salary for a legislative assistant (a junior to mid-level policy role) in the House may seem generous to many Americans, as it is more than the median household income in much of the country. But context is important. For one thing, the cost of living in DC is very high (GSA gives it a +31% adjustment).”
Under such a system, can we expect “the interest of the man” to “be connected with the constitutional rights of the place” (to use James Madison’s expression, often quoted by Yuval Levin)?
Graves noted that as in 2019, legislative assistants “earn(ed) a little over half the comparable salary for executive branch employees. They can expect to earn even more moving to K Street to lobby their former colleagues. These forces contribute to Congress’ high staff turnover and weak institutional knowledge, empowering lobbyists and executive agencies, and placing billion-dollar decisions in the hands of overworked, underpaid 20-somethings.”
This arrangement means staffers often lack the knowledge and experience necessary to make such decisions wisely. It also threatens our Constitutional structure. We cannot expect legislative “ambition to counteract” executive, or judicial, “ambition”, so long as the most motivated congressional staffers see their near future outside the legislative branch.
The current system also attracts a specific type of person. They must choose to pursue a career in Congress at the cost of greater compensation elsewhere. And they must be willing to live in the Washington, DC era. To find these sacrifices acceptable, they probably will possess an uncommon amount of ideological motivation. And it will help if they come from wealth. Both factors will weigh against individuals with standard, “American dream” aspirations: a remunerative job with growth-potential, marriage, family, owning a home in a safe neighborhood, and good choices for the kids’ education. Instead, the system selects for unusual and unrepresentative individuals
Then comes the job. Despite their strong political motivations, staffers must work in an institution that doesn’t do very much, at least not compared to its notional authorities. Congress only appropriates about one quarter of the seven-trillion dollar federal budget, letting the rest go forward on autopilot each year. Despite recent Supreme Court cases reining in arbitrary executive authority, Congress is still poorly equipped to “engage the regulations that already exist and provide oversight for the large flow of new regulations proposed each year.” It lacks the knowledge and staff to do so. In such circumstances it will remain tempting for lawmakers to delegate authority to agencies, to let them answer the hard questions. This, of course, means large policy swings from one presidential administration to another, but less of a chance for the enduring reforms that can only come from bipartisan legislation.
Back in 2010, economist Tyler Cowen predicted that “[m]ore and more laws will be frozen in place…More and more expenditures will be frozen into place. Politics will become more symbolic, and in some ways more disgusting, in response to the absence of real issues to argue over.”
Today we live in Cowen’s prediction. Affective polarization, the emotional disgust Americans hold for the other party, has risen to dangerously high levels, even as policy disagreements have declined.
Realists that they were, the framers of the American Constitution planned for our current levels of political polarization, but not for our passivity. Today our politics rile us up, but gives us little to do. When political energy fails to translate into political action, it must flow into something else. Staffers are the most exposed to all of this.
Paying staffers more will not solve all of these problems. Yet improved staffer compensation will attract more capable individuals, who have more in common with the average American. And it will help retain them longer. In addition, it will help build staffers’ attachment to Congress as an institution, making them more attentive to infringements upon its constitutional rights. This will also encourage them to develop the expertise necessary to fulfill Congress’s rightful role.
And maybe, if we do all this, the radical young staffers will start to notice the most fundamental problems with 21st century America.
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