Little Punk Congressmen

The kerfuffule over the “little punk staffers” who populate congress in the thousands focuses on the wrong people.

Yes, there are too many of them and many are paid much more than they are worth. Yes, they wield too much power: in the case of this congress, dealing with a tsunami of nation-changing legislation, it falls to them to write the terms of the bills and the devils they create in the details – too often without the members’ knowledge – can damage the nation. And they are not accountable to the voters, just to the people who employ them.

Staffers, as I have learned in more than two decades of dealing with them, reflect the views and attitudes of the members they serve with near perfection. When Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Oh) derided the staffers writing the House financial reform measure as “little punk staffers” he was – intentionally or not – calling House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass) a punk. And he was correct.

But now a lot of them are taking offense. As Politico reported Monday, “‘Most members of Congress appreciate the hard work that the staff does, which enables members to do their jobs,” said Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. ‘It’s unfortunate that some of these Republican members are unnecessarily criticizing aides who are just doing their jobs.'”

Most staffers are intelligent, patient, and extraordinarily hard-working. But when they work for a member who is arrogant, they reflect his arrogance.

I remember my first meeting, more than twenty years ago, with the chief staffer for a certain Republican Senator from Pennsylvania who is still in office, though no longer a Republican. We exchanged cards and had a chat in which he made clear in arrogant terms that neither he nor his senator cared one whit about what I was saying. It was only after the meeting that I looked at his card, which stated his title to be “Deputy.” Deputy what? Deputy Senator, apparently. He, like the member he served, was a punk. And now that gent is a federal judge.

Sometimes the staffers – both good and bad – suffer the brunt of the criticism that is aimed at their members. In the 2007 immigration amnesty debate, I happened past the office of a South Carolina senator who has been John McCain’s acolyte on that bill and too much else. His outer office staff looked bleak. They were the typical outer office gaggle of kids, some serving summer internships and none looking more than twenty years old.

They were answering the flood of phone calls as quickly as they could, and their conversations with constituents weren’t happy ones. It’s no fun being insulted and shouted at all day. There was no arrogance among them, only gloom.

During the healthcare debate, that problem was solved by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo). She simply told the staff to not take constituent calls, and they didn’t. That ranks among the most arrogant of actions a member can take.

But for every little punk, there’s another superb, hard-working staffer. For journalists, they are an essential resource. When you need a question answered quickly or a quote from a member (especially among the conservatives) you call the right person and get a good answer. If you need help booking a radio guest, they’ll work hard to accommodate. And you’ll get answers to e-mails at about all hours of the day and night, weekends and holidays notwithstanding.

If you need it you will get a call from the member as soon as it can be managed. Some of the best members keep returning calls at odd hours and from odd places. One US Senator from Alabama – in my first conversation with him some years ago – called me from a department store a day or two before Christmas, taking ten minutes out of a highly important mission to do it: he was buying a present for his wife.

So to all those congressional staffers angry at Boehner’s words, think about this: if you are taking offense, you probably have good reason to. If you think you may be a little punk, you certainly are. And so is your boss.