Congressional Member Offices and Staff

Each of the 535 members of Congress runs what amounts to a small business, with an office in Washington and one or more offices in the district or state. House members pay for staff, travel, and office costs from a single annual Members' Representational Allowance, roughly two million dollars per member and adjusted for district distance and rents, and may employ up to eighteen permanent staff plus four others. Senators receive a larger allowance scaled to their state's population and have no fixed staff limit, so offices for large states can employ several dozen people.

A typical Washington office is led by a chief of staff and includes a legislative director, legislative assistants who each cover a set of issues, legislative correspondents who answer constituent mail, a scheduler, and a communications director. Home offices are run by a district or state director and staffed largely by caseworkers, who help constituents with problems involving federal agencies, such as Social Security checks, veterans benefits, passports, immigration cases, and tax disputes. Committee staff are hired separately and work for the committee rather than for an individual member.

Congressional staff are generally young, relatively low paid compared with the private sector, and experience high turnover, which critics argue increases Congress's reliance on lobbyists and executive agencies for expertise. Members themselves have been paid 174,000 dollars a year since 2009, with leaders paid more. Offices also use the franking privilege to send official mail, under rules that bar campaign material.