As voters weigh incumbents, U-M research complicates the case for congressional term limits

By Ava Emery and Rebecca Cohen

Ford School of Public Policy

Devin Judge-Lord’s research finds that offices led by experienced lawmakers often have more capacity to help constituents navigate the federal government.

Most voters see Congress through floor debates, campaign promises and partisan conflict.

Yet about half the work done by the average congressional office involves helping constituents, businesses, nonprofits, universities and local governments navigate federal agencies.

Experienced lawmakers do more of this work as their offices gain capacity, expertise and institutional knowledge, according to research from the University of Michigan.

Devin Judge-Lord, assistant professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and lead author of the study, calls this agency-facing work “interbranch representation” — the ways congressional offices represent constituents beyond writing and passing laws.

Devin Judge-Lord

Assistant professor, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

That finding challenges a common assumption that lawmakers become less responsive to constituents the longer they serve in Washington — an assumption that is often a justification for term limits.

Although new members may bring fresh perspectives, debates over term limits should also account for the steep startup costs of taking over offices responsible for constituent service, oversight and policy work.

“In retrospect, start-up costs seem obvious,” Judge-Lord said. “As anyone who has started a new job knows, it takes time to get up to speed. Members of Congress are no different.”

New members of Congress enter as new managers of understaffed offices during a major transition, Judge-Lord said, while working in a fast-moving environment with “a potentially infinite amount of work to be done.”

To understand what drives constituent service and policy work beyond legislating, the researchers analyzed congressional correspondence with federal agencies from 2007 to 2020. They submitted more than 400 Freedom of Information Act requests and spent nearly a decade assembling a database of more than 611,000 congressional communications with the executive branch.

The researchers found two dynamics operating at once.

As lawmakers gain experience and institutional power, they tend to do more policy work, such as crafting legislation, commenting on proposed agency rules and addressing broad systemic issues. At the same time, they build higher-capacity offices that can handle more constituent service, such as contacting the IRS about a constituent’s tax issues or the Department of Veterans Affairs about a benefits claim.

“We found evidence for both of those dynamics — it’s just that the capacity boost had a bigger effect than the shift toward policy work,” Judge-Lord said.

Asked what congressional staff handle day to day, Judge-Lord said the list is too long to summarize. While helping veterans obtain benefits remains a well-known responsibility, today’s congressional offices also assist families and businesses navigating the immigration system, and help nonprofits, universities and local governments pursue federal grants. They also support companies seeking federal contracts, advocate for disaster assistance, communicate with agencies about proposed regulations, seek information about government decisions and much more.

“Hearing about Congress in the news,” he said, “what you miss is the 16,000 staffers who do most of the work. You also miss that half of that work involves working with or overseeing federal agencies.”

Better-staffed offices, the research suggests, can conduct more oversight, more policy work and more constituent service at the same time.

That may also matter during election years, when candidates frequently campaign on promises of stronger oversight, more effective government and better constituent service. Judge-Lord said fulfilling those promises depends not only on political will, but also on whether congressional offices have the staffing and institutional capacity to carry them out.

“If you want politicians to deliver on their promises, they need both the will and the capacity to deliver,” he said.