(21) The Capitol full of lawyers

By Jay Kim

When I was a House representative, I had 16 aides. The number of aides is left to personal preference within the limit of an assigned budget. So, it can be that one congressman has 20 aides, while another has only 12.

The annual budget assigned to a congressman is around $1.3 to $1.5 million that includes $1 million to cover personnel expenses as well as travel and other costs. Within this limit, some reduce the number of aides while paying them a higher rate, and others hire more aides that have just graduated from college and pay them less.

A congressman usually hires a specialist with experience and knowledge of the workings of Congress as chief of staff, but it is not easy to find a good one. The annual salary of a chief of staff is quite high, which was already around $100,000 even 15 years ago.

My chief aide moved on to the State Department after my congressional days were over and he was recently promoted to an assistant secretary. It is a position, I heard, that is nearly the same as the U.S. ambassador to Korea.

Among my 16 aides, eight of them helped me in my Washington office, and the other eight took care of my district. The role of the aides in the Washington office was mainly to research proposed bills and issues in their areas of expertise and to give me advice on them.

For example, if a bill related to agriculture came up, since I know nothing about that area, an aide who had expertise on this studied the bill and gave me written advice on which position would best fit the interests of my constituents.

Since I was on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, my aides on this area always attended the committee meetings with me. They often sat behind me to give me necessary information or to whisper explanations.

When I ran a subcommittee session as a chairman, facing an audience, the chief lawyer of the committee sat to my right side and the ranking member of the Democratic Party, the opposition party, sat to my left side. To the left of the Democratic ranking member sat the lawyer that represented the Democratic Party. My aide often sat in the front row of the audience seats.

The aides working in my district were busy dealing with local issues there and setting up a schedule for me to meet with various local organizations. They attended various meetings and gave presentations when I was away.

A congressman represents 600,000 or so people (five times as many as Korean assemblymen). My district was a suburb 25 miles away from Los Angeles. Since its population density is not as high as a big city like Seoul or New York, I set up two offices due to the size of the area to be covered.

It took one hour and 45 minutes for me to go from one office to the other, which was not so bad. In the districts with low population density, like those in Texas, they often rent small planes for the purpose of visiting their district offices and so on.

Congressional budgets supports car for the district. Since foreign cars were not acceptable, I drove a Ford. In Washington, I commuted by subway. When a session continued past midnight I would miss the final train, the police gave me a ride home.

I attended local meetings held in my district on weekends. After those meetings, I went to LA catch the red eye to Washington, which left at 11:30 that night and arrived at 7 the next morning. This trip was repeated countless times so I did not feel tired.

When I became subcommittee chairman, three more aides were added to the 16, and they were the committee chief lawyer, a regular aide, and a secretary.

In the case of the chairman of a standing committee, the number of staff members that belong to the committee is over 10. So his entire staff is quite a big group. Anyway, the Capitol is full of lawyers. Almost two out of three lawmakers are lawyers, and at least one aide is usually a lawyer too. Since for each committee, more than five members are lawyers, their number would be enormous if one counted. Even the Ethics Committee has three or four lawyers.

Apart from aides, a congressman also hires one or two interns. So, almost 10,000 people, including 435 House Representatives, their interns, and 20 or so aides each, plus committee staff, work in the Capitol.

If one includes tourists from all over the world, tens of thousands of people fill the inside, outside, and underground of the Capitol. The buildings are connected to a not-so-well laid out underground system, and it is full of people lost because of the old, complex structure built in 1868.

The Capitol building is a really proud historical heritage. Facing the front, there is a dome in the center, to its left the House building, and to its right the Senate building. It is hard to describe its majesty. The construction of this grand building started in 1793, but it burnt down during the war against the British in 1814 when it was near completion. 50 years later, it was reconstructed using just horses and ropes.

I cannot but admire how they could build such a grand building without equipment like bulldozers or computers. The building of Korea’s National Assembly also has a dome, but it would be better if there were sculptures inside it, that represent the history of Korea. Its outside is stylish but its interior looks somewhat dark and not so grand.

Having heard that four or five aides support each assemblyman in Korea, I sometimes wonder why an assemblyman needs a driver. I wonder how nice it would be for him to take the subway like a U.S. congressman once did.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).