One of the best jobs I’ve ever had was working defense policy on Capitol Hill. I had a great boss, great coworkers, and a sense of purpose and mission in a field that I’d spent my young adult life studying and writing about. I’d just come off active duty and was in grad school when a friend and ally in the China fight asked if I wanted to interview to be a Military Legislative Assistant (MLA). I’d never considered working on the Hill before. In my mind, hill staffers were preppy, underpaid, mindless slaves to their political bosses. And what the hell was an MLA? I had no idea what I was about to get into.
Yet I was imbued with a sense of purpose to do good policy and change things at a critical moment in our history. Soon enough, I found myself in a Congressional office building with no idea what I was doing. I had to learn, fast. I knew some stuff about the Pacific fight, sure. I’d done some writing, sure. But I had no idea what levers to pull, how to draft a bill or NDAA amendment, how to handle lobbyists, how to craft talking points in the boss’ voice, or even anything about the office’s home district. And I hated domestic politics. I joined an office with the tempo of a startup and the intellectual rigor of a major think tank and I’m not sure how I didn’t drown. It was a fun punch in the face and I loved it. I say all of this because to a degree, I know what the wave of energized, patriotic young staffers-to-be are about to go through as they settle into the offices of the 120th Congress with the momentum of the blue wave to their backs. So I want to offer some advice….my other reason for writing this article is because my former colleagues and I frequently disdain (and so it seems, do most pros) the decline in the quality of Hill staff. America needs you to do the job right.
The Job
Every office is structured a little bit different. House offices are smaller and cozier. They have smaller budgets for staff and are (obviously) only responsible for part of a state. So you end up with about one staffer per issue area that a member is focused on (usually the committees they’re assigned) and about .3 staffers per other issue areas. The more important the member (like say if they chair a committee) the more staff they have and usually the better talent. Don’t chase the big office on day one. A good office should be somewhat flat. Everyone answers the mail. You’re in first? Make the coffee. Staff assistant is giving a tour? Pick up the phone. The work of representing your district is not beneath you.
Senate offices are responsible for handling the issues, outreach, and representation of entire states. So they’re bigger, messier, and always felt more corporate to me. You might actually get small teams dedicated to issue areas (foreign policy, defense, intel as a unit for example) rather than just one poor soul who owns it all. The Senate also certainly think they’re cooler and more important than the House. Some members and House staff do not help that stereotype. Remember, the House is the fiery beating heart of the Republic with essentially a never ending election cycle. The Senate runs on a six year cycle and can afford to ride out opinion polls and media cycles, it is supposed to be the great deliberative body.
If this is your first time on the Hill, there’s a whole new language of roles and responsibilities. Let’s keep it simple: “assistant” (sometimes advisors) in the title means they own something: the interns, a policy area, the front desk. Staff assistant, legislative assistant, etc. A legislative coordinator might own constituent outreach. If you’re a policy assistant or advisor, it is your business to know everything and anything going on with the relevant committees. Know the members, their priorities, what the admin is up to, your member’s priorities, and how to craft legislation that works. This takes time and practice. A lot of practice. Don’t let the lobbyists write the legislation for you but you should absolutely talk to SMEs about ideas. Don’t suffer alone. Read the damn bills you want to contribute to.
Schedulers do the Lord’s work and keep the boss on track. Do not piss them off. Legislative Directors coordinate policy and lines of effort between the portfolios, track votes, basically they do the business of running the policy shop. Chiefs of Staff run the day to day, are your in-house HR, and act as the boss’ right hand. Your district/state director and their staff act as the local lightning rod for your member in the District, handle local outreach, and should keep a finger on the pulse of the people when the boss is off voting in DC. Some of these folks will also function as campaign support. Do not do campaign work on Congressional grounds.
Communications and Press
If you work in policy, the comms team (director and/or press secretary) will always be mildly annoyed at you but you should get them on your side and work with them. A good comms director knows the press at the national and local level, personally. They know what is worth the member’s precious airtime. One does not become a regular on the networks immediately. A well-coordinated comms+policy effort can really do some effective damage. Learn your boss’ strengths and weaknesses, where they seem comfortable (especially if on camera.) Learn their voice, their tolerance for media appearances. Stay away from cringe stuff. (BTW, if you want to get a feel for Congressional life, watch Alpha House, it’s VEEP but for Congress.)
Between the policy and comms shops, it helps when both shops have sympathy for the bigger picture. But do not, ever, let your comms shop run the policy show. They absolutely have to contribute because they should understand the media environment and what is going to get your boss re-elected/in the shit. Sometimes you gotta do some policy stuff for the press. But that can only be a piece of the pie. Congress loves a “messaging” bill that dominates a news cycle but that everyone knows will never get to a vote. It’s only gotten worse now that Claude and co can spit one out with a few keystrokes. It’s not legislating, it’s poasting masquerading as governance. And I’m pretty sure the midterms just repudiated that concept. Meanwhile, Comms team, do not ever let your policy team tweet things without review.
Knowing comms on a policy issue doesn’t automatically mean that you know the issue area like an SME. Simultaneously, being an expert on the subject does not mean how you talk about it should ever be heard by the public without a thorough rinsing by the comms team. Play nice.
Fellows
If your office has a fellow (military, tech, veteran, etc.) for the love of god use their network and expertise! Don’t just have them answering phones. I knew too many military officers excited to work on the Hill only to get stuck at the kids table answering phones. You’re basically getting a free extra staffer with some subject matter expertise. You are leaving money on the table by not using them to the best of their ability.
Blocking and Tackling
The first time my LD said to me that my job was “mostly blocking and tackling,” I had no idea what he meant. I nodded along. Different people call it different things, but what it means is the day to day business of being a legislative staffer. Not every day is whiteboarding with the PACFLEET commander, having dinner with an ambassador, writing groundbreaking speeches, or drinking with lobbyists (though there is a lot of drinking). Remember how I said you have to know everything and anything going on in your portfolio and figure out how to craft it into legislation? Yeah, that means a lot of calls with lobbyists, concerned citizens, think tanks, other government bodies, and more. Read, read, and read some more. You are clearing the field and figuring out what your Member really needs to care about. And the only way to do that is to be constantly learning. During peak NDAA season, it was not uncommon for me to have two sets of headphones with a lobbyist in one ear and another in the other. Learn the budget books, learn the program offices and policy shops in the executive branch. Demystify the very complex federal web of agencies, priorities, and money. (Former China Committee staffer Ike Harris and I talked about this on WarTalk earlier this year.) Yes, it will eventually feel like the Pepe Silvia meme but it will help in the long run.
Personal vs Committee Staff
So far I’ve focused on the personal office staff, because that is the bulk of Congressional staff. Committee staff, or PSMs, are more like your portfolio PhDs for committees. You have one member to deal with, they have all of them. They wield a lot of power and have very little time, do not waste their time or go against their warnings. Work with them. They are there to help align your member and the broader committee/party effort. Learn fast which PSM owns which part of your portfolio. Learn their approaches, expectations, attend the weekly meetings for your committee staff. Ask questions because they’ve probably seen a lot.
Crafting Legislation
The best way to learn how to craft legislation is to read it. A lot of legislation is like coding. It has similar structures with common beginnings, endings, and functions. Don’t duplicate what already exists if you can just borrow and adjust for your own purposes. This also means, much like coding, you need to have an eye for every comma, semicolon, and clever language that changes the entire structure of the piece. It is not enough to read, you must interrogate the bill. This sucks, but when you get good at it through practice, it gets a lot easier as you learn how to block out the noise. Learning the basics of a lot of policy areas, especially techy ones, can go a long way. You’d be surprised how often lobbyists rely on uninformed hill staff to advance their agendas. I’m reminded of a time that a lobbying team tried to tell me a certain weapon system had bias because of AI and needed to be shut down. I asked if that was social bias (racism, etc) or if they were referring to the weights and biases used to shape artificial intelligence. They took three days to get back to me, only to admit they’d confused the two. How many offices just ate that up without question?
Note: Use the Congressional Research Service! They’re there to help you!
Some legislation only takes a good staffer and a spot check by an LD or Member to make sure you’re not about to shoot your boss in the foot with the folks back home or the party. Don’t ever send something to a committee staffer (or out of office, generally) for their consideration without at least doing that. And then when you introduce that bill, you had better have already figured out who is gonna team up with you on it and gotten their consideration and input. Don’t just yeet something and hope for cosponsors. Especially when it comes to defense, bipartisan, bicameral (both house and senate) co-sponsors go a long way upon launch to getting the bill or amendment considered by leadership for passage.
Appropriations are even harder, especially if you’ve never worked in the executive branch. You have people asking and telling you how to allot the peoples’ money. How the hell are you supposed to do that? Well, talk to both private stakeholders and the relevant government agencies. If someone says they want to allot something to a particular program office or line item…call/email and ask that office. If you don’t have contact info, guarantee that office has a Legislative Affairs office that can direct you. If they’ve never heard of it, that person pushing you to allot that money done messed up. Finally, always be suspicious of round numbers. Exact figures are best, have some tolerance for minor errors, but round numbers in quantity or dollars are dangerous.
Oh, don’t forget to watch floor procedures. Learn the language and process.
Constituent Services
I admit it, constituent services weren’t my favorite thing. Note, I did not say they are not important. If you don’t hear people out and help them, then they will vote you out. And then you don’t get to do cool shit. Think of it like the old Hollywood rule about filmmaking: one for them, one for you. If you’re gonna put a lot of effort into national level efforts, make sure you can put in just as much time into the specific policy issues that matter to the folks back home. Sometimes those issues overlap like if you have shipyard or base in your district. Don’t forget the people that got you there. And don’t use chatbots to read and answer your constituent mail. In fact, that should be banned.
Don’t be the Story
There’s been this rash of active policy staffers putting themselves in the press or on social media. And I want to first say I recognize that I built my brand partially as a poaster. But it’s one thing to be a source, particularly on background or off the record (learn the difference), it’s another to be the one giving the story like you’re the member. You are not the story. I had that drilled into me. You work for the story. And no one wants to see your cringe TikToks about the day in the life of a staffer. No one cares if you sign any protest letters either. You’re part of a team.
Delegations (CODELS and STAFFDELS)
If you can travel, travel. Especially when you’re young and broke, delegations can be the only real way to see the world and learn about the impact of your job. But again, there’s balance. Don’t over do it and don’t turn every trip into a bender (though once again, there will be a lot of drinking.) You still have a real job to do. For the overseas travel, just remember you’re a target and the uh, more autocratic countries prey on the gullibility of young staffers as they show off the nice shiny parts of their brutal regimes.
Boundaries and Self-Advocacy
So with all that being said about you working for the story and to keep your head down, I want to point out that you should not be mindless preppy zombie I described at the beginning of this article. You can have your own opinions, you can set boundaries about when and how you work. You can hunt for your own future. It’s just about how you do it. Let me give some examples.
Work group chats are a blessing and a curse. Getting messages about policy issues at 0500 are part of the curse. It took me time to learn that I didn’t need to respond the second I woke up and to wait until I at least finished at the gym. Waiting to hit send on my responses did wonders for my mental health. I made space for myself. But I didn’t identify that until my partner called me out on it. That was a military habit that I had to kick, and feeling like you always need to be responsive is a common staffer response. To be clear, you kind of are expected to nearly always be on when it matters. NDAA season? Political crisis? Ukraine get invaded? It’s 24/7. Boss is out of town and Congress is out of session? Get some rest, enjoy the people around you, reset. Put on Do Not Disturb. You’re not gonna make it long if you don’t manage some self care. You also have cheap health insurance. Schedule those therapy sessions. I used to take mine in one of the Congressional parks between calls.
What about self-advocacy? Well, the nice thing about the Hill is that everyone kind of expects you to be on the hunt for advancement. Which is also why it’s a major red flag if it’s excessively noticeable. No one expects you to sit in a single role for long. As an example, during my first annual review as an MLA, my chief looked at me and said “well, you made it a year, that’s the average lifespan of an MLA.” If you make it one NDAA cycle as an MLA, you’ve probably done a lot. Usually folks are always on the hunt for a better member or position. I wasn’t looking for either, so I stuck around for another NDAA (until I burned out and wanted to try something new.) The Hill turns over fast, so it’s okay to keep an ear to the ground, get coffees with other offices, etc. Just be good to your team and your boss if they treat you well.
One more thing, journalists value you for your information and will use any sense of self-promotion to get more information out of you. They don’t actually like you.
Know When to Walk Away
I was reminded of this particular rule during the Haley Stevens fiasco this past week. Not everyone is as lucky as my office was (I’m so gonna catch shit for being this nice.) A lot of members are or turn insane. Remember what I said about quick turnovers, you don’t have to put up with that shit. And when you’re job hunting, you shouldn’t just look at the members’ stances or interview styles or TikToks. You should read up and ask around about how they pay their staff, how they behave, how they treat their staff. Political favorability and personality do not always align. You are not there to fix them (mostly.) And when they do truly insane stuff, walk away. I assure you, walking away with your self-respect will be better for your career than going down with the ship.
Now, go forward and do great things. It’s only the fate of the Republic.
Thanks for reading! If you would like to read more about the future of war and technology, check out my novel, EX SUPRA. It’s all about the world after the fall of Taiwan, an isolationist and hyper-partisan America, and World War III. It was nominated for a Prometheus Award for best science fiction novel and there’s a sequel in the works! And if you liked this, check out WarTalk, a podcast I co-host on defense tech, history, and foreign policy w/ Justin Mc Jordan Schneider and Bryan Clark. And if you’re a Member of Congress, we’d love to have you on the show! It’s meant to teach you things! Don’t forget to share and subscribe!