Capitol Hill Inside Scoop

I was working for the Asia/Pacific/Global Environment subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs committee. The short-term stint inside the Hill was to say the least, a steep learning curve. One aspect I'm sure all of you are aware of involves coping with power struggles, "red-tape", and all that unpleasant stuff people always complain about why our govt is painfully inefficient.

Even when I thought I was being low key and trying to avoid drama, I was caught in the middle of personal rivalry between two professional staffers to win favor from the congressman. One day I found myself being interrogated by a staffer about some phone calls to the State Department's under the direction of another staffer. So I got my hands painfully slapped by the one who interrogated me because she maintained a more loyal relationship with the congressman. Apparently I was given lots of work regarding an important summit that "I was not supposed to be working on" - stepping on someone else's turf can get you smashed in the head in congress. But the afternoon before the summit, the congressman charged another intern with the impossible task of coming up with a briefing book, so I secretly fed him my research articles after everybody had left since I'd been working on this issue for a few weeks already. That was hilarious but sad.

So the "red-tape" is not really what people think. It's not the layer upon layers of bureaucracy that you see in most agencies of the executive branch - state department particularly (where you have so many bosses above you and such), but it's all about how to maneuver in a maze of people-people relationships/allegiances/coalitions/fraternities/enemities. Even interns get direct assignments from the congressman for example. But it's a million times more complicated than that - and interns have to figure out how to build a really strange personal relationship with staffers who share your personality or at least care about you....Nothing related to your abilities or your interests...by pure association from chemistry.
There are lots of rules but it's all rules about how to deal with different types of people and watch out for stepping on someone's toes or someone else's turf. Everybody vying for a piece of pie with no written rules - and hence so easy for lobbyists and any other people with connection to influence policy. That's the beauty of our messy democracy. But what really struck me was how much cooperation/compromise and coalition building you need to get ANYTHING done.

Hence it makes a world's difference working for the right/nice congressman/senator. The entire office adopts the personality of the congressman/senator. If you have a strong congressman who is a leader of leaders and likes to be involved in everything, then you are in luck and the entire office works on exotic things (like anybody can work on the healthcare bill if they wanted to, but only the strongest will survive in this excruciating battle - sometime committee markups last until 6AM).

All the work is also dependent on the mood of the congressman/breaking news events. I remember a few hearings where we spent weeks preparing only to completely change directions on the day of the hearing....and the hearings would be delayed stoking anger among members of the public - some waiting outside the hearing room in the hallway for hours. Once there were lots of pacific island ambassadors who were here waiting to testify and the committee chairman wasn't even ready and I had to appease the poor public and these ambassadors, and it's just fascinating to experience the feeling of "getting blamed by the public" because they assume you become the image of the inefficient, tardy, incompetent government. By the way any member of the public can attend any open hearings because in theory, the government is open to the people (at least the legislative branch is the "most open") .....you don't even need a badge or anything to get in (unlike other agencies). Of course we also have classified briefings that are even more intersting but not open to the public - I attend some involving nuclear deals and guantanamo prison.

Increasingly I became a huge fan of Henry Waxman - the short bald jewish guy.. He articulates it 1000 times better than I do in his new book "How Congress really works". In a nutshell, we tend to forget about all the "good legislations" and only remember the ones that invited nasty abhorrent partisan bickerings. Congress passes dozens of resolutions each day on the floor and each committee considers dozens of legislations/bills at each session, 99% of all of these never receiving any media attention.

Many of the good legislations that have improved our quality of living/health for decades we completely take for granted. The Clean Air Act; funding for HIV research/treatment; banning indoor smoking; banning CFCs for example. The HIV battle lasted an entire decade in which many conservative members + the media stubbornly labeled it as a gay disease. Only after some famous people became diagnosed with HIV did these leaders pervailed and by then thousands already became infected. Now of course most people are educated about HIV and millions of lives have been saved but few can fathom this tumultuous battle..and gives little credit to those who sacrificed their careers to fight for saving people's lives.

Now I have to insert my two sents about this whole healthcare mess. The controversy loving media is really to blame for the crisis. The public gets all the information about what goes on in the government through CNN, FOX, MSNBC. So they see a constant barrage of town hall protesters and Senator Ensign or Mark Sanford affairs. C-SPAN is the only media that comes close to showing what the government is doing...but even they have to cut and choose and usually can only broadcast the most juicy events - walking into a room with Bernanke and you'll be pushed aside by paparazzi but even days of legislation involving improving student loan/federal grants is so unsexy - oh and you wonder where are all these young journalists?? can't help but wonder if it's really the case that only rich students become these writers/reporters - they don't care if their millions of poor classmates benefit??
It is kind of disturbing to see how the media doesn't care about some very important issues/events that goes on in the government and people wonder why congress's approval rating is always stuck at 30%.

If you walk into Harry Reid's office for example, you'll see three full time "receptionists" doing nothing but answering consecutive phone calls. Other fellows have to do that and they have to swallow entire days of cursing from unreasonable rude constituents (sometimes death threats also)....pretending to be polite/concerned. You can't help but feel bad for these poor interns who get home feeling depressed. I personally did not have to deal with all this crap because I was working in a committee office rather than personal office.

The healthcare struggles are very similar to the one endured by the climate bill (passed in the house in a breathtaking 219-212 vote)- cowritten by Waxman. Once they are passed and people's lives improve it's immediately forgotten about how much blood was spilled. Of course in the climate change case it may have been too little too late unlike the previous environmental bills.

HR 2454 (the climate bill) was THE THING in congress before this whole healthcare phenomenon and everybody was involved. We had a hearing in our own committee and I was tasked to come up with a witness list and ask them to testify...so I had to rely on our beloved Michael Oppenheimer to suggest relatively famous climate science people in DC. It's sad but true that Congress really cares about getting famous to the Hill to attract media attention (at least government internal media). Of course the most famous people will never testify for the House - senate hearings can get people like Al Gore, Secretary Locke, Secretary Chu, John Warner to testify on climate change.

Most of the time what interns do is preparing briefing books, opening statements and policy memos for Committee members. We in turn plagarize ideas from things like CSIS reports (for those of you working in the think-tank world rest assured that you have a fan of dozens of interns/staffers on the Hill, and your work gets directly read by members and incorporated into bills ...well at least if you work for a reputable organization) Not just for hearings, but members actually read resolutions/bills on the floors with languages written by lowly interns. But the smartest congressmen can just makeup speeches and stuff....so there is an inverse relationship between how hard the interns from an office works and the competence of the congressman.

Ordinary Americans would be scared when told that all these speeches/and even bills are written by 20 year olds. I was interviewed by some young journalists from canada trying to portray the American government as run by incompetent young privileged people who just do nothing but drink and party (My coworkers and I happened to be in some bar near the Hill on our last day). It is very true that so many interns get positions because of personal connections (it's not unusual for personal offices to hire all interns entirely from the pool of the children of politicians from his/her district).

Because of the sheer labor size (each office has at least 6+ interns + all the interns in the committees = a few thousand interns at any given time on the hill) and even the most professional staff/congressmen themselves delegate all most of the work - fact checking/news reporting tasks to interns (there are so many of us so everybody jumps on any project). Then there is this congressional research service (CRS)....you can literally abuse this service by completing your senior thesis research just by calling CRS people to do all the research for you.

So during downtime, we got to attend any hearing/briefing, and sometimes observing the house/senate floors. You navigate around the capitol hill via special subways connecting all the senate/house office buildings with the capitol building and each other. The coolest things I saw was Sotomayor confirmation hearing and floor debates. I was sitting next to an abortion heckler on the first day of the confirmation hearing (btw too bad I didn't see other orange/black Princetonian while I was there so we could've banded together...but then we would've been kicked out also since Patrick Leahy got so upset after that incident that anyone who made any noise was thrown out).

Another weird thing was when we had to chase down Capitol Police who detained some Uzbek dignitaries who apparently smuggled in ceremonial swords to present to my congressman.

And when you take these excursions you see so many congressman/staffers/senators that they all blend into each other, and I've heard of stories of interns mistaking a senator/congressman for a member of the public (there are special elevators for Members only), but sometimes senators/congressman dress casual ...some elite stuck-up well dressed intern may censure them for using the special elevator. Oops and the interns would get fired. So dress well is golden ...if you walk around capitol hill with business formal attire, not even the capitol police would bother you. Otherwise at every police check point they will card you which is every 10-15 feet.

But the best thing about the Hill downtime is the free food and free booze ... basically a continuation of the Princeton tradition - and it's usually paid for by lobbyists (like during the cap-trade bill days we had all these people from "green" coal and mining industries coming to the Hill displaying posters of what they do and why they are so important). When pressed about the climate bill, they were all against it and admitting that's the reason they were here. Oh and another big one industry is NASA...they always have these cool exhibits/receptions on their new voyages and space toys.

While lobbyists are now restricted from donating more than a few dollars to individual representative or congress staff, they still throw lavish parties that basically does nothing but satisfy hungry interns' stomachs. Very amusingly, when I was attending a Princeton lobbyist alum panel discussion session, I was forbidden from taking their chips/sandwiches home because that was supposedly unlawful since I was technically employed by the Hill.

You can't help but feel disgusted at times when you see who has money = influence and who doesn't....these defense/energy industries can throw elaborate dinners while the hundreds of kids/parents/teachers/veterans/elderly who walk around the House buildings everyday with placards and pink shirts and the such ....they can only influence policy through sheer body count/numbers/persistence/noise. But we already see their presence, then there are everybody else we don't see who are so disillusioned with the government that they don't even think about talking to politicians.

For the foreign affairs committee, we had to appease representatives from other embassies who were upset at our resolutions condemning their human rights. So the main function of congress regarding foreign affairs is to keep the administration in check: like accusing China as a "murderous regime" harshly condemning their Uyghur/Tibetan crackdowns in light of Obama, Clinton and Geithner's frantic efforts to court China so they would continue buying our dollars That's why the administration hates the congress for destroying their hardwork - by upsetting our allies, enemies, friends, foes everybody they worked so hard to construct positive diplomatic relationship. That's why the administration rarely lets the congress to hold open hearings on foreign affairs issues - especially on China. To get around this, Congress formed numerous special committees just to deal with China's human rights. And of course congress people regularly courts human rights activitists - like we all met Rebiya Kadeer's delegation (world Uyghur congress). The executive branch - whether Bush or Obama could careless/rather have nothing to do with what the congress says about China.
So the State Dept is really our big boss and my friends interning for the State have consistently worked well over 14 hours a day plus weekends...while for us it's a chill 9-6 day with almost indefinite periods for lunch/breaks.

Besides these industry receptions, many congressional activities are centered on cultural/ethnic events. The congressional black caucus is the most active but the most delicious food came from the celebrations on Guam's independence. Also there is the Asian/Pacific caucus, and that's how I personally met most of the Asian congressional members. By the way, David Wu of Oregon (near where I was from) was the nicest politician I've ever met. He actually approached me and introduced himself and inquired about my high school (yay Skyview!!). I was so shocked (I mean generally you can't even go up to any congressman to introduce lowly yourself to his honorable...let alone having the congressman himself introduce to you).

However Judy Chu, the newest congressman (first Chinese American woman) seemed a bit weird. It's hard to describe but you can definitely feel certain admiration/connection to some congressman while feel very uneasy about others just based on first impressions.....I clearly remember thinking about how John Kerry was a much nicer person than Barbara Boxer (from a climate change briefing conference). Some congress people embody the elitism while others are completely approachable/down to earth. Some are also particularly impressive in delivering impromptu speeches - Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Tom Coburn for example.

Besides the Capitol:
DC is a fantastic place for young professionals in the summer (DC people hate two kinds of people the most - toursts and interns). Besides all the cool free things you get...open bar and clubbing on K-street (the lobbyist street)
Du Pont Circle is my favorite place: it's a splendid little square with a lovely fountain in the yuppie district of DC. Everything happens there from impromptu rap performance to bike stunts to solo guitar and of course it's fun taking candid photos and counting how many pairs of couples occupying one bench. Oh and plus my roommate and I would be watching homeless people playing chess till midnight.
And then there is the sculpture garden.....jazz festival every fridays and every square inch of grass, floor, mulch would be occupied with even people sitting on sculptures. Once there was a huge thunderstorm and thousands of us all got completely soaked and it's a wild wet party with people jumping into the fountain in the end.