 Welcome to Free Thoughts. I'm Aaron Powell. And I'm Trevor Burris. Joining us today are Jeff VanderSleis and Matt Weibull, directors of government affairs at the Cato Institute. Welcome to Free Thoughts. Thanks for having us. What does a director of government affairs do? The main thing is really trying to convey the message that all of Cato's experts produce, the great research and commentary and so forth that you all produce, that it's conveyed to folks in government in an effective way. That's probably the way in which we go about our jobs, which is, you know, being prompt and responsive to folks who reach out to us, but also being proactive, figuring out who exactly needs to hear a particular message that you guys have created. Yeah, so we're on Capitol Hill a lot, talking to members of Congress and their staffs about, you know, the newest scholarship that's coming from Cato. And we make sure the scholars here know what's happening on Capitol Hill. If there's a healthcare bill coming up, if there's some other issue coming up, we make sure that our men and women here know exactly what's going on so we can be relevant for the policy discussion. So I will dig into what all of that entails in the logistics of how Cato talks to the Hill. But first, how does, what's your background? Like how does someone end up in a role like this? So I worked for Congress for almost a decade total, but left as Deputy Chief for Representative Justin Amash from Michigan. So I was with him for seven and a half years. And there's a lot of time researching bills, learning the legislative process, the ins and outs of how that works. And over that decade of time, you build relationships on the Hill with staffers who, they may have been a staff assistant in 2010, and now they're a legislative director or a chief of staff now. So I think both Jeff and I spent a lot of time on the Hill, and we just know a lot of people. And of course, not everybody stays on the Hill for a long time. So we also know people who were on the Hill and left and are somewhere else in D.C. So the networking aspect is a huge part of it. And I think also, having worked on the Hill, I worked for a little over a decade for a member from California Congressman Dana Rohrbacher and worked my way up through his office and left when, after I was his chief of staff for several years, I'm sorry, his legislative director for several years, gave myself a promotion. But being on the Hill and being the recipient of information from organizations like the Cato Institute, you really understand was most effective, what was not quite effective. Matt and I probably have various stories of instances in which we reached out to one organization or individual or another and either got a response that wasn't helpful or was not timely. And so those are the types of things that I think are helpful and that we were able to learn on the Hill. This will be a very general question and we can sort of get down into it more. But for American people who think Congress is broken and it's full of bunch of corrupt people who are taking money and not listening to the smart people involved and they wonder what is making Congress acts. Like what causes, what drives Congress, would you say? In the main thing, if Congress is dealing with something, it can be broadened out, like so they're going to do a healthcare bill tomorrow. But what causes that to happen? Is it because the president wants their healthcare bill? Did he give an administration? Is it because leadership wants a healthcare bill? Is it because of news stories all of a sudden come out about a healthcare bill and then you have other things that are just not being discussed at all? No one's doing gun control right now. So what tends to drive Congress's institution overall? So it's partially a leadership driven process. Leadership has an agenda and we're going to do these things in July. We're going to do this when we come back in September. Right now it's no secret they're planning on messaging bills that they want to go into the August recess having passed. So you can go home, have town hall meetings and tell your constituents, hey, we just did this in June and July. We did this right before the break. What makes something a messaging bill? Something with a good title. It sounds good, but it doesn't really do anything. And they know this. I mean, they know that these bills are basically for that. This is not like oops, this doesn't do anything. It intentionally does not do anything. Or I would say a messaging bill is something that would do something, but has zero chance of ever being enacted into law. And so they know they put this forward. They throw that out there just to appeal to a particular constituency or something. Yes. So Obamacare is a perfect example. In the 112th, 13th and 14th Congresses, all of the Republicans voted to repeal it. Straight repeal. That vote hasn't come up in the 115th Congress. They voted for it back then because they knew it wouldn't go anywhere. Now they know that with Republicans in control of government that it could go somewhere and maybe they don't want it to. Or before they knew President Obama wouldn't sign something into law, so let's just go home and say, hey, we fought hard to repeal Obamacare, but the president's not going to sign it. But some of the other messaging bills are maybe the opioid bills where we're talking about the opioid epidemic. And so there will be a very short bill and give it a good title, opioid addiction awareness act, and it might be $2 million of grant funding. And so that doesn't really do anything, but the congressman can go home and say, hey, I had a bill passed. It has my name on it. Look how effective I am. And leadership can say, look, this is in the news, but we're responding. Now that would imply that in any given Congress, the first year, what is the difference between the first year and then the election year? Is the behavior, is it a very big break? We're like, well next year we have an election coming up, so 2017, but then 2018, and this happens every two years. So you get in Congress and you can propose a bunch of things, but then when do you start, when do they start changing modes in that way? Yeah, I think the biggest difference between an off year and an election year is just that an election year tends to be a truncated year, right? If you intend to get anything through the legislative process, it probably needs to happen before the August recess. So July 31st is kind of an informal cutoff. After that is kind of a dead zone. You might be able to pass an appropriations bill or more likely just a continuing resolution that continues government funding through the election and into the lame duck. And then sometimes you can see a flurry of activity again immediately after the election before the new Congress is sworn in. So I'm sure someone has done research to show exactly how many pieces of legislation are signed in to law in an odd-numbered year versus an even-numbered year, but I think the most obvious thing to folks on the hill is that you hit the ground running after an election. You have that entire year to try and push things through. Going into an election year, you have about seven months and then things kind of freeze. So in this process, when there's legislation that they want to pass, whether it's, I mean, messaging legislation or substantive legislation, where do organizations like Cato fit into that? At what point do we come into the process and how do they use the material that we create? I think from at every stage along the way, really, sometimes research produced by an organization like Cato can be a catalyst for legislative change or it can serve to inform members as they go about working on a particular issue that's been set in motion by another event, say, a White House agenda, a state of the union address or leadership initiative in the House or Senate. So I think really there are multiple ways and multiple points at which an organization like Cato can really be beneficial to members. We get folks who reach out to us saying, we're looking to propose an amendment to a larger piece of legislation. Have you guys written anything about issue X? And if we can send that along to them and they find it useful, that may help them in their thinking as they formulate an amendment to a larger piece of legislation. Yeah, I'll just echo that and say it definitely happens where at the very beginning of the process, people will contact Jeff or myself and say, what scholarship do you have on this? What do you guys think of this idea for legislation? And then also at the very end of the process, for example, in May we did a Capitol Hill briefing on the Farm Bill and that was with a couple other groups that we work with on occasion and it was, hey, the Farm Bill is coming up for a vote next week. Let's break down what's in it and let's talk about some of the crop subsidies and ways that you could amend it. And so that's obviously at the very, very end of the process, but you're trying to make sure staff are aware of what's in the bill. When a member or his or her office reaches out for research, so they've got a bill they want to work on and they want to know if we have research, are they looking for research to inform what they are going to do or are they looking for research to support what they already want to do? Sometimes both. It'll depend on the member. Some will ask for feedback and we'll just say, you know, what do you have that's in line with this because it's helpful for them when they try to get co-sponsors for a bill to say, hey, the Cato Institute supports these types of policies. This is a good limited government bill and look what Cato wrote about this sort of policy. In terms of we talked about what drives Congress and obviously there are 435 or I guess 36, if you include Eleanor Holmes Norton, answers to this, but what drives the members or can you kind of, I mean, it depends on the member, but do they kind of break, you ever break them down into classes like true warriors of ideology versus people who are just there for the title versus people who have one thing that they care about and they don't really care about anything else versus sort of wallflowers or something like that. Maybe that's the categorization that makes sense. I don't know. Yeah. No, I think it's a lot of things that drive members. They all come from disparate districts from far-flung areas of the country who are hoping likely to be re-elected to Congress. So they're certainly responsive to their constituents as a whole, but also constituencies within their congressional districts or Senate districts if it's a Senator, of course. So I think it's multiple things. I think a lot of them also have aspirations to move up in their respective chambers. So there is certainly an element of the job that involves pleasing leadership so that eventually they can become chairman of a committee or ranking member of a committee. There are a lot of other organizations, caucuses like there's an ongoing jockeying to see who will become the next leader of the Republican Study Committee, for instance. There are lots of different groups within Congress that I think members kind of align themselves with in the hopes of gaining more influence within their own, within that very organization. Yeah, I think it's hard to say this generally, but some members are driven by status. That's why you see these self-funded politicians who will dump $1 or $2 million of their own money into a congressional race just so they can get the title of Congressman. I mean, if you're already a millionaire, why do you need to go to Congress? The congressional salaries are relatively low compared to what they're probably making off the hill. One thing, you know, status does drive people and they want to be reelected, but there are definitely the true warriors out there who are fighting for liberty on an everyday basis. Or something else. Or something else. Yeah, maybe some of them are fighting for universal healthcare, but they have an issue that is near and dear to their heart and they spend a lot of time focusing on that one issue. I would say my observation, and this is a general statement again, that most members seem to have a conviction, a policy conviction, an idea of how the world should look or how the country should work look. I think that is a major driving force for members of Congress. I think there's a lot of cynicism about, oh, well, it's just about status or it's all just about ego or an eventual payday once they join the local lobbying firm or something like that. I am not quite that cynical and of course I think that's a motivating factor to some extent for some members, but I think most members while they're on the hill hope and intend to do something specific policy-wise. And so on that point, because that leads to my next question, which is, and I tell students in classes and lectures, I give a bunch where I say that they're not bad people. Libertarians might overplay that hand. So let's assume they're all Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith goes to Washington and so he goes to Mr. Smith, new congressman, never been in Congress before, goes to Washington, you're going to clean up this town or do something. I'm going to have a specific agenda, let's say it's healthcare, they want to get in. So they come in and what is the biggest, you think, root awakening that some new bright-eyed bushy-tailed member of Congress comes in with Jimmy Stewart, I can't say Jimmy Stewart, style of thinking. In the first, I feel like in the first couple of months they might learn something that they didn't know before about how this town and that building actually works. What is that root awakening? You quickly learn that Washington is very much set in its ways. So I worked for a member who was a freshman at one time and within the first couple of months he had walked over to the opposite side of the aisle to talk to his colleagues and he came back over and an older member who had been around for a while said, what are you doing over there? That's the other side, we don't talk to the other side. And he says, my former boss says, these are my colleagues, if we're going to get something done, we have to work together. And this isn't to say that the sides don't talk to each other or the parties don't work together, but that was a way that was set where maybe you're not as friendly with the other side. And I think another thing that is sometimes a root awakening for some members is a lot of them are fairly accomplished in their whatever field they just came from. They were either a business owner or a doctor. Maybe they had their own law firm, something. And they got used to people doing what they told them to do. They said, I want this project completed within the next six months. And if that doesn't happen, you'll be in here explaining to me why that doesn't happen. Well, a member of Congress will not be all that successful if they say universal healthcare has to happen in six months. And staff, it's on your shoulders to make sure that happens or else you'll be back in here explaining to me why you weren't successful. And I think they very quickly realize that Congress is not a business. It can't run like a business. It won't. So acting like a business owner is not going... In a lot of those same ways is not going to result in success. And so I certainly saw that during my time on the Hill, I think. So move their goals down. Well, it's not... I don't know that it's necessarily that. If you're a business owner, you don't necessarily have an opposing force at your door pushing against everything that you're trying to accomplish. And if you're a member who's trying to achieve goal X, guess what? There's at least as many members opposed to the very thing you're trying to accomplish, right? So, yeah, maybe lower your goals or expectations, rather, not goals. What role do donors play in all of this? I mean, from the outside, people think that members of Congress are basically the beck and call of whoever contributed to their campaign. And obviously, there are people that contribute to their campaign. But do campaign contributors have the ear of members of Congress? Are members of Congress reactive to their interests? I think donors definitely have the ear because they have the access. If you pay a lot of money to go to an event, you expect some face time with the member of Congress. And so that's much more influential maybe than just the average person writing a letter. When you're there with the member of Congress talking face to face, you have that issue in their mind. And that's different from saying, hey, boss, we got a thousand letters on healthcare today. So they definitely have an influence because you just have the face time that ordinary citizens necessarily wouldn't get. And even at a town hall meeting that's open forum, a public event, you have a few seconds to ask your question and then the member has to move on to the next question. So there's not the type of discussion that a donor might be able to have at a separate time. I generally seem to think that members formulate their position or their opinion first, and the money follows after. And there's money to fund whatever point of view a member eventually takes. So if you're going to, let's just say you take a pro-business view, again talking in general terms, take a pro-business view on a particular bill versus an environmental view on the bill. Whatever position you take, there will probably be someone, some organization that will notice and will follow up with checks. And mostly because they want to make sure that that individual gets reelected. And so I think it is probably true that members of Congress who receive a donation from an individual may be more willing to meet with that individual at a later time or might be more likely to run into them at an event or something like that. But I generally, if you're talking about the chicken egg kind of thing, I generally think that the positions come first and then the money follows from groups that are interested in seeing those members reelected. What's the difference between think tanks like Cato and what we do on the Hill and lobbyists? So lobbyists, they have a specific action that they want Congress to take. You need to pass this bill because it's good for my client. And here's how it will affect them. Cato talks about policy rather than specific legislative action. And we say, okay, here, take this bill. Let's talk about the policy behind it and say, you know, this is a good policy for limited government or this, you know, this increases the size and scope of government. Libertarians shouldn't agree with this. It's more of a philosophical argument that we're trying to make as opposed to you should do this because it's good for my client. They have a factory in your district and it's a thousand jobs and therefore, you know, you have to support it. When between lobbyists and think tanks, it has always struck me as interesting that if you take something like the farm bill or another one of these thousand page pieces of legislation that we tend to pass now and it's full of a bunch of things like Obamacare was full of various subsidies and changes to insurance underwriting and all this stuff that I can't imagine that a lot of people who are Hill staffers, given the amount of stuff in legislation that a given member doesn't have, you know, someone on staff who knows everything about section 702 of the SEC code or something that might have been changed in some recent piece of legislation. And there's a paper that came out about 10 years ago, I think political science journal article called lobbying is a legislative subsidy. And the argument there is that staff is too small to know what government is doing. So members of people who work for members of Congress and senators have to call someone who knows what is going on when you're dealing with regulating peanut growers in Southern Georgia, which there's tons of laws. Trust me, I know there are tons of laws that regulate peanut growers in Southern Georgia, but I don't think that there's a specialist on a match of staff who knows about Southern peanut growing regulations. So how does the staff of members of Congress and senators deal with that information problem there? And maybe Kato can figure in there too, but also maybe lobbyists do? I think certainly a lot of members of Congress take kind of a 30,000 foot view of, you know, a particular piece of legislation, right? So they might look at the farm bill and say what's the bottom line? Does this expand the size and scope of the federal government? If it does, given my underlying philosophy, I'm going to oppose it, right? I don't need to know about peanut farmers in Georgia or elsewhere to know that the overall policy is moving in the wrong direction, right? So I think that's one way that it can be dealt with, but I think it also really illustrates one of the main frustrations of a lot of members of Congress, which is that the House and Senate generally don't vote on small pieces of legislation one issue at a time, right? They couple this massive farm bill together, which is not just farm subsidies, right? It's also SNAP, and they vote on them together. Appropriations bills, they might get through one chamber, one bill at a time, but at the end of the day, when whatever is going to be signed into law, usually it's packaged together with several other bills, and it's passed as either what they call a minibus or a megabus, which is usually all of the appropriations bills or an omnibus. I've always thought that if, and I think a lot of other members would prefer to see this too, is that if you broke things down into smaller pieces, you could actually achieve much greater policy advancements, right? I think the art of legislating in large part is, has everything to do with building and maintaining coalitions, right? We're probably not any time soon going to see 218 libertarians in the House of Representatives or 51 libertarians in the Senate at the same time that there's a libertarian in the White House, right? But if you take an issue like one that I worked on, which was marijuana policy, we had a legislative success using a coalition of libertarian-minded Republicans, moderate Republicans, and a whole lot of Democrats who came together and said, yes, on medical marijuana, we should not be, you know, basically sending the DOJ to lock up people who are acting in compliance with their state laws, right? And so that's really a libertarian position. Does that mean that everybody who voted for this ascribes to all of the other, you know, tenets of libertarian philosophy? Certainly not. But if you vote on things, you know, in a piecemeal enough fashion, I think there's a chance to, you know, really tackle some of these bigger issues. And to address the underlying question about the knowledge that lobbyists have, yes, they know more generally about their specific issue than your average congressional staffer and certainly more than the member of Congress. And so this is an argument people make of why we shouldn't have terminal limits, because if you have terminal limits, you have a new member come in, you have new staff, they're constantly turning over, you have no expertise on the process of how the House or the Senate are supposed to work or on the issues. So the lobbyists come in, they say, hey, we already have a white paper for you on this issue. And this is why it's good or bad. So that's one thing that people will do when they argue against terminal limits is that we need the staff expertise and the members need to be around for a while to learn the process so it's not outsourced, so to speak, to lobbyists. How much does it matter on this question of the huge bills? They bring them all together and they say, okay, Republicans are going to vote on this. I don't know if they, if like Paul Ryan or the Speaker sends out an email that says, we've decided the party is going to vote on this or something. They'll go put their hands on the orb. Yeah, they'll go put their hands on the orb and say, yeah, Republicans, whatever. But how much is being a team player matter in your standing in Congress? If you're constantly come in and say, no, I'm not going to vote on that because there's three lines in this omnibus farm bill, but I'm here to protest the size of the scope of government. So you're sort of a gadfly in the entire process. And then would that hurt you in the Republican side of the cafeteria and Congress will no one sit with you and therefore no one will sponsor your bills and therefore no one will return your phone calls. Is that another dynamic that goes on in Congress? I think it is a dynamic. I heard fairly early on in my time on the Hill that someone from one of the party's leaderships early on expressed to a new member who said, it's okay if you vote against us, but don't ever surprise us. And so I think there are varying levels of what's acceptable. And so if you oppose a measure on the floor, that's not the same as first telling the whip, yeah, I'm with you and then voting against it for obvious reasons. But there's definitely, I think, a culture in which leadership generally respects where members are coming from. They understand that they have their reelection prospects in mind that a lot of members should be free to a certain extent to vote however they need. But the way in which you conduct yourself as you oppose measures that leadership brings to the floor I think matters quite a bit to the leadership. And I think the general rank and file membership wants you to be a team player because they want to say, we know how to govern. We can get things passed. That's why you should vote for our party. And when you're not a team player, there certainly can be consequences. It's one thing if leadership understands where you're coming from and they have that, but they have the numbers to pass something. It's something else when you're in committee, for example, and this happened with my boss, he and another member, my former boss, he and another member voted against the budget and the budget committee. And Republicans were supposed to be able to pass this easily out of committee. Well, it was a terrible budget in our minds. It didn't reach balance in 10 years. And even some of the worst budgets will somehow reach balance in 10 years because they estimate huge economic growth or whatever. But a couple weeks later, he and another member were kicked off the budget committee. So there are consequences to not being a team player where you'll lose a prime committee assignment or maybe you do have to sit on the other side of the cafeteria or maybe when it comes to a primary challenge, your colleagues don't support you. And maybe they don't actively help the challenger, but they don't step in to support maybe somebody in the same delegation or from the same region. So these bills that they're discussing committee or eventually voting on on the floor, who writes those? Who's writing the actual legislation that might become law? So technically, House Legislative Council writes the bill. So this is a group of lawyers that work for the house where a member or a staffer can go to these lawyers and say, hey, we have an idea for a bill. This is what we want it to accomplish. That's one way to do it. The other way to do it is to have a lawyer on staff or have your staffer review the law and try to write it or at least an outline for themselves, which I think is a better way of doing it, at least a start. So that way you're doing some work and you have some hand in the process. And another way is where lobbyists come in and they have the bill drafted for you. They know exactly what they want changed in law or maybe it's a trade association, not necessarily a lobbyist, but a special interest where they know what section of law is affecting them and they come to your door and they say, hey, we think you should do this and here's legislative text. Here's what it would look like because we have lawyers in our corporation or our trade association or a lobbying firm that know exactly what needs to be changed. So that would be, I mean, the question, a member of Congress, I again think about like the first week of someone just getting to the hill and because there's like an orientation. Isn't there for new members of Congress? There is a member orientation. I think it's two weeks after the election. The election because it's, you know, you don't necessarily know how to be a member of Congress because you won an election. You may have, you have no idea and all the rules here, but he says, I want to legalize marijuana. So he says, okay, Jeff, get on that. You're working for a new member. I want to write a bill to legalize marijuana. And if you look at the bill, there's all these bills always just floating around that already do that too, right? I mean, there's tons, I don't even know how many on just de-scheduling marijuana out there, but, and they've been sitting around forever, but nothing ever happens. So do you first go look and see if there's an existing bill or what would the process be with the new member in that situation? Yeah, the process would usually, you know, I think most folks at legislative council, the organization that Matt just referenced, would prefer that you do some of your research first, right? So your first step might be going to the congressional research service and asking them that very question. Has anybody attempted to do that? Can you give us, you know, examples of past legislation that's been introduced on this topic? And, you know, there are also a lot of attorneys at CRS who could say, you know, this is precisely the section of law that you want to amend. And here are some things that you should take into consideration when talking to legislative council, right? And then your next, you know, message may be to legislative council with the information that you've gathered and asking them to draft a piece of legislation. And a lot of times it's a back and forth process, right? You get a draft back. Sometimes it's, you know, they put in the header, you know, discussion draft. And, you know, they have a lot of blanks depending on what exactly you're trying to accomplish. And you can, you know, have discussions with other staff, sometimes with committee staff, if they might be inclined to help you with a piece of legislation. You know, you might take it back to CRS and say, you know, what specifically would be the policy implications of taking approach A versus approach B in this space and going from there, yeah. We see a lot of metrics in Congress. So we just, last week was it had the hearing with the FBI agent where members were holding up signs. And it's, a lot of it feels pretty over the top and some, and frequently looks kind of silly. Do members of Congress, how earnest are they in their theatrics? Like, are they play acting? Do they know, like, do they know how ridiculous this can look? Do they not know? It's just, it's hard, it's sometimes it's hard when they're like, they're really getting into this to look at this and be like, this person is this person serious? I think a lot of it is for show. And that doesn't mean that there aren't members passionate about an issue who really would get fired up in a committee hearing. But what you see that you can say, wow, that's over the top. It happens on a regular basis, even if you don't think it's over at the top where, you know, the member could be arguing with a Republican, could be arguing with a Democrat. And then after the hearing, they can go laugh about it. And I'm not going to say that they would say, oh, yeah, this was a great show that we put on. But they, generally speaking, it's my impression that you want the media hit. You want to be on the news for a few minutes, because it looks like you're really passionate about something. And maybe you are. And it looks like you're doing your job. You're there. You're causing a fuss. You're asking this government agency why they spent money improperly or that sort of thing. But it does wear on you as a staffer because, you know, you see or it wore on me as a staffer, because I saw members who would always put on the show and it was just for the sake of the show. Well, getting that media hit is incredibly important. I always think it's amazing that, you know, I work here. I don't do what, I work in D.C., but I don't do what you guys do with government affairs. But I don't think, I mean, even if you're really informed about Congress, it would be hard to name more than 100 members of Congress off top of your head. How many can you guys name off the top of your head? We're going to start this right now. We got about 20 minutes left. I mean, even if people are really informed, like 100 would be a lot. And there's still 335 that you're missing who would love to be one of the names you remember. And one of the names you remember maybe come from getting a good histrionic media hit or thinking that Guam will capsize as Hank Johnson famously believed at one point. So it is interesting. How these committees you mentioned, they're not, they're just part of the tradition. They're not in the Constitution or anything, but they have these committees that Congress delegates certain responsibilities to. And then how do you become members of various committees? You get assigned committees when you get there, correct, if you're a member of Congress initially. Right, yeah. So leadership generally asks members what their committee preferences are. And what's the one no one wants to be on? What's like, is there like a real black small business or house administration which is very powerful in DC, but not outside of so few. So if you really make people mad, you'll find yourself transferred to house administration. Is everyone on the committee? Yes, I'm there have been instances in the past where again, because you're punished, members haven't had any committee assignments, but your office is now the broom closet. Yeah, okay. But otherwise, yes. But otherwise, yes. Yeah. So basically, yeah, you, you know, leadership gives you a list, a list asks you to rank, you know, your top, let's say, five preferences for committee assignments. I think it's a combination of that, what your background is, what you have to add to a particular committee. I think there is probably some internal selections so that they don't stack, you know, let's say, you know, a particular committee with, you know, let's say the agriculture committee with too many people who are skeptical of agriculture subsidies, right? They may be reticent to, you know, do that. But otherwise, you know, it's kind of a play between leadership's preferences and the members' preferences. You know, there are certain committee assignments that play better back home than others, right? So if you represent a major military base, you know, you as a member may want to be on the Armed Services Committee, and leadership may also want to give you Armed Services Committee because that's going to both well for your election, reelection prospects, you know, your knowledge and, you know, ability to effect change on that committee and so forth. Yeah. Becoming like a chair or a ranking member of that, you have to put in your time for that, correct? And if you do become a chair of at least, especially a very prominent committee, that really helps with your fundraising and electoral prospects, correct? Absolutely. I mean, a chair of the committee is extremely powerful. You control what legislation your committee passes for the most part. There are times when leadership has asked committees, hey, we need you to bring this bill through the committee because we want it to go through the normal process. So please have a markup. But otherwise, you know, it's basically at the discretion of the chair what comes through the committee. And, you know, that's a position that you have to work up to. And maybe it's just because you're an expert on an issue, you know, it matters how much money you raise for the party and how much of a team player you are that definitely is an aspect. But yeah, it takes time to get to the top of committee. What's the difference between a committee and a caucus? A committee is a formally recognized organization essentially within the house or the senate, right? So a committee is created through, you know, a procedure through, you know, a house resolution or a senate resolution. It's a formal entity that has a designated budget, designated staff, and so forth. A caucus is much more informal. Generally speaking, with the exception of the senate narcotics caucus or senate caucus on narcotics, whatever the name is, there, you know, that has essentially the same status as a committee. But what most people think of as caucuses, it's just a group of members who have a common interest that band together and say, we're going to try and elevate this particular policy issue and our standing as it relates to this issue through the formation of this caucus. Now, when did, so when did you get to DC Jeff originally? I came in 2006 originally to intern and then came back in 2007 to begin working full-time. And Matt? I started my internships in 2008 and then went full-time in 2010. So you guys have seen some interesting beginning of the Obama years, that first two years, 2008 to 2010, which was pretty contentious and a lot of, well, Rama manual, we have the votes FM kind of attitude. And now we have, of course, Trump and we have the latter half of the Obama years. Has anything significantly changed, I mean, in the way that Congress is behaving or have you seen much, do you put it to partisanship? If so, do you put it to the divided nation, to Obama people, how much Republicans hated Obama, to what Obama did to force Affordable Care Act through and the Tea Party movement, maybe or something else? There have been some changes with, I think, the most notable change that I've seen is when we had a Republican take the White House. Because like I said earlier, you could pass something in the House and say that you voted for it and campaign on it and you knew there was no danger or hope of the President actually signing it. People could rail against military action overseas because President Obama didn't have the authority to do it. But now that President Trump is doing it and he's a Republican, you hear crickets. So that's one of the biggest things I noticed is maybe a lack of consistency or the true partisan nature of DC where the letter after your name really determines whether you oppose something or support something. So that has become clear, unfortunately. But even from 2011 when Speaker Boehner took the speakership, the House process opened up more than it had been in the past. Members were allowed to offer amendments and that's been scaled back significantly over the years. But at first there was this desire to let members offer amendments and let the House vote on it. Let's not control the process and prevent people from taking tough votes. We should actually debate and vote on these things. In spirit, it was there. And I think February of 2010, whenever they did an appropriations bill, HR1, they did hundreds of amendments late into the night. And I think that was the most open of a process that I had seen and it's scaled back. But it's... I just have to clarify this. This is just House rules. They say that members can't offer amendments or something like this. But if this was... I think it's a constitutional scholar. If you're sitting on the floor of the House and we were in 1792 and James Madison wanted to stand up and said, I'd like to offer amendment and someone else tried to say, you're not allowed to offer an amendment. None of that is in the Constitution. I'd like to say a vote about whether or not we can amend this piece of legislation. And that's how it worked in the early 1790s. What does it mean to say you, Mr. Amash, cannot bring this amendment? Is it just the speaker using his power and the House rules? And is that where it comes from? Yeah. On the House side, it's the House Rules Committee, which makes those determinations on a case-by-case basis. So it's not a standing rule of the House that no amendments will be allowed. Each individual bill that comes forward, generally with the exception of bills considered under suspension of the rules, which we can set aside, only talk about those that are considered under House rule, those bills have a rule accompanying each piece of legislation that's considered on the House floor that, and the rule basically determines the nature of the debate. It outlines how long debate should last for, who will control time during general debate and what amendments are made in order, in what order those amendments should be made in order, and who will be recognized to offer those amendments. So as a Hill staffer, if your boss wants to offer an amendment, basically you submit those to the rules committee and then you plead to the rules committee to make that amendment in order and hope that the chairman and the members of the committee will make a decision in your favor, right? And the Constitution allows room for the House and the Senate to set their own rules. So there's that argument that they pass a rules package at the beginning of each Congress and then the House rules committee, which is established in the rules package, will then set the time and debate process for each bill. So there is flexibility there, though sometimes that flexibility can be annoying because your amendments don't get voted on and the process can be closed down. We've got a lot of movies and TV shows about Congress and government and Washington, many of them very popular. What do, what's the biggest thing that, you know, say you're watching House of Cards, you're sitting through episodes of the West Wing or whatever, that these shows get wrong about Congress? And what's the biggest thing they get right? I always say the, I always say that the VEEP is the biggest, the best documentary about DC ever in terms of the personalities involved. Well, what they get right is that it is very fast-paced and hectic. When you're in session, things are moving quickly and you could be focusing your time on one topic and then quickly on another topic and then some crisis is happening over here. I'm thinking more of the West Wing. There's a lot of walking and talking. And even, you know, when you're talking to your boss about how to vote on a bill, you might have two minutes to really fully brief the member and that's as you're walking to the floor and you're trying to dodge reporters and get into the House chamber and, but you have to have this conversation on the way because the schedules are just very hectic by nature. So that is one thing that they get right is that it is very, very busy, very hectic, long hours for sure. And maybe something they don't exactly have on point is that every day is not quite as exciting, obviously, as, you know, maybe an episode of the West Wing or of VEEP or House of Cards or something like that. Yeah. There are some, well, then they're out of session or they're, of course, yeah, a lot of different things. Is there, I mean, the thing that these, the thing that shows always show is like intrigue and backstabbing? Like, and so, I mean, I get that members disagree and all that, but is it as, is it as Game of Thrones intrigue laden as these shows make it out to be? Or is it, you mentioned that, I mean, they can go and have a drink together after having a big argument on the hill, but do you get those kinds of factions and infighting as much as we seem to think we do? I don't think it's functional enough to be that deliberate about it that you could be Game of Thrones style. I think I might still be there if it were, because... That's one reason why you left is that it wasn't functional. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, okay, on that point, is Congress broken, is in some way that a lot of people have said this as the approval rating of, you know, I think Eva Braun, I mean, it's below 10%, and it doesn't seem to be able to get stuff done. And now there's always political nostalgia where someone can say, back in my day, Congress got stuff done and, you know, passed Medicaid and Medicare and everything, but, you know, for long periods of time in history, Congress has been divided in different ways. But is there something different about now, or maybe it's just game as usual, that this is how governing works? I think this is how governing works. I don't think Congress is broken. The Framers set up the House and Senate differently, but they set up the legislative process to be slow and deliberate. The Senate was designed to give the states a voice and to be the less reactionary body. And it's proof, you know, when you see these mass shootings or, you know, incidents or anything in the news that the House is naturally the very reactionary body because of the two-year term limits. It's the body that's closest to the people, because they, by their nature, except for the states that have only one member, represent less people than what the Senate will do. So I think a slower legislative process is better. And I often think you're not getting anything done. Well, yeah, we need to get some things done, but let's make sure we do it the right way. And I don't think they're necessarily saying the same thing I'm saying, but I prefer a slower, more deliberative, let's not be so reactionary, let's not do the knee-jerk reaction and pass a bill, requiring some sort of adding, you know, this was the Fix Knicks Act where they added, you know, wanted to add thousands of names to the, you know, firearms database where, and we've seen this with the do not fly list, where people with the same name, you'd be put on the wrong list. And you weren't told why you're on the do not fly list, and it's very difficult to get off. So knee-jerk reactions, they might look good. Oh, Congress did something to solve this issue. When it comes to legislation, it has to be done very carefully. I also think that it's easy to beat up on Congress because it often does seem dysfunctional, right? Different people are saying different things. There doesn't seem to be any unified message, unlike, you know, the presidency, right? Generally speaking, they speak with one voice. Sometimes you get some dissenting voices, right? You know, the Supreme Court generally the same way, right? Or courts, you know, generally, you know, have an opinion. Of course, there might be, you know, dissents or concurring opinions and so forth, but there aren't just the sheer number of voices, right? And so, I mean, not only is it more difficult, actually more difficult to reach consensus in Congress, but you know, it also appears that way, right? It's obvious that, you know, folks are on different pages. I remember going home once and someone came up to me and said, you know, why can't the two sides just get together and agree, right? And he said, I'm a lawyer. And whenever I have a client who has an opposing point of view, I sit down with their lawyer and, or, you know, the two sides sit down together and we basically meet in the middle. And that's the solution, right? Well, you don't have just two sides in Congress. You have two sides plus this faction and, you know, also this faction and also this faction, you know, there could be as many as we discussed earlier, 435 in the House and, you know, 100 in the Senate and so forth. So, you know, it is very chaotic. It is very messy. But I don't know, you know, certainly there are issues, you know, with, you know, any number of areas, right? Some people talk about the budgetary process, you know, that needs to be reformed and so forth. But I don't think that means that the institution itself is broken. Thanks for listening. Free Thoughts is produced by Test Terrible. If you enjoyed today's show, please rate and review us on iTunes. And if you'd like to learn more about libertarianism, find us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.