Members of Congress and Congressional Staff Allocation

Abstract

Finding the factors that cause Members of Congress (MCs) to allocate more staff in the district allows me to answer important questions about the value of congressional staffs and their MCs. It will allow me to present, which factors cause an MC to worry more about their district than the work they are doing in D.C. It will also show that MCs may be able to use staffs to their advantage, and how MCs should allocate their staff to maximize this advantage. It will also reveal that different MCs have different needs, and the congressional staff can be used to fit those needs. My analysis of congressional staffs focuses on the 104th to the 110th Congresses (1995-2008). In this dataset there are 3001 MC observations. I will study such factors as staff allocation proportions, seniority, number of cosponsorships,closeness of elections, heterogeneity of the district, district location, party majority. I hope to find which variables have a strong influence on staff allocation.