The Young, the Underpaid, the Overqualified--the Folks to See

The nation’s capital is full of secrets. Everybody knows that.

But some are less secret than others.

Take Felix Bloch, the reputed spy, for example. Unlike most Newport Beach real estate agents, Bloch has a telephone number--and address--that’s listed plain as day in the directory of the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co.

Unlike most spies, Bloch is rather chatty with the platoon of FBI agents and reporters who follow him around. Just the other day, he led his shadowers on a pleasant, 20-mile jaunt through the city, pausing and trading pleasantries along the way.

There is another equally open yet more significant secret that I’ve stumbled upon in my two months in Washington. Open, that is, among the reporters, lobbyists, politicians and other hangers-on who ply their trade inside the Beltway, the freeway that rings the capital.

The United States of America is run by kids. Really.

Just by way of example, the staff director for the powerful House Government Operations Committee is a fellow by the name of Julian Epstein. He was born in 1961.

If you’ve been reading the papers or watching TV, you know that one of that panel’s subcommittees has been conducting a major investigation of alleged wrongdoing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. One of the two staff members leading the charge against HUD was graduated from a British university all of six years ago.

According to a 1977 book entitled, “Congressional Staff: The Invisible Force in American Lawmaking,” about two-thirds of the personal staff working directly for members of the House of Representatives were under 30. No new research on the subject has been done in the intervening years.

But Susan Hammond, an American University professor who was a co-author for the book, believes that if anything, the average age of Hill staffers is declining.

One summer intern was quoted in Roll Call, the newspaper that covers Congress, as saying of congressional staff members: “It’s so hard to find anyone over 40 here.”

There’s nothing wrong with youth, of course. I myself was young once. But even some of the Hill’s own voice concern occasionally about placing so much responsibility in the relatively untried hands of the “ Kongressional Kids. “

“The members rely very, very heavily on staff for the issues that are not their personal priorities,” an aide to one California congressman said.

However, the aide said, youth really is not the problem. It is only a symptom of an underlying crisis in continuity.

According to a 1987 study by the nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation, 41% of the Hill’s legislative assistants, responsible for drafting bills and guiding their bosses’ judgment on key legislation, had been in their jobs for less than a year.

More than two-thirds of the staff members who write the replies to constituent letters, often interpreting complex policy positions, have also been on the job for less than a year.

Why the tremendous turnover?

A newspaper reporter can understand that low pay, long hours and tremendous job insecurity lead to burnout and resignation. And that leads to the loss of institutional memory.

By law, the most senior congressional staff member, regardless of law degree or doctorate, can make no more than $82,500 a year--not a small piece of change. But very few make that much.

On the House side, for example, members each year receive $461,760 to spend on staff salaries. A representative could hire six people and pay each close to the max. But the lawmaker knows that far more than six people are needed to run offices in Washington and back home. And the lawmaker also knows that an army of overqualified workers is waiting to land any empty job.

“I’ve never seen a better example of the free-market economy than labor on Capitol Hill,” said David Eisner, who at 28 makes about $30,000 as press secretary to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita). “There are hundreds of people at any given time, desperately looking to break in and get a job.”

As a result, according to the latest available figures, the average salary for all House staff members in 1987 was $26,118. Administrative assistants, the top aides in the office, averaged $55,140 a year, even though many of them have law and other graduate degrees. Chief legislative assistants earned an average of $36,600 a year, while press secretaries averaged $29,000.

These are jobs that pay no overtime and routinely require workweeks of 70 and 80 hours.

“It’s very difficult to have a family when you get a call from a member at six o’clock in the evening and he says, ‘I need a floor statement on this (issue) tomorrow,’ said Rick Shapiro, who is still single at 34 after having worked on the Hill for a dozen years.

“The expectation is when you work for a member of Congress, you’re on 24-hour call,” said Shapiro, who is executive director of the nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation, the group that conducted the 1987 study of House staff pay.

Why do young people flock to take these jobs?

“Part of the reward is working for the Congress and working in Washington,” said David DuBose, a South Carolinian who at 26 is press secretary to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad).

“I can’t imagine another job,” Eisner added. “The closer you can be to the center of the decision-making process, the more you’re willing to sacrifice.”

One 27-year-old woman who works on the staff of a powerful House committee insisted that youth has its advantages.

It’s important for the Congress, she said, to “get a bunch of little people in there who aren’t cynical yet, who haven’t been told it can’t be done.”