This piece originally appeared at The Fulcrum.
Congress writes laws but rarely follows up on how they are implemented. When things inevitably go wrong, it passes the buck to agencies, which often hire consultants to investigate the problem at great expense. However, Congress could do the job itself for free. Congress already employs a cadre of staff that knows the gory details of government programs—namely, caseworkers.
Caseworkers are staff employed by members of Congress to help their constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy. When the public has problems with federal agencies—everything from mishandled disability applications to poor postal service—caseworkers are the go-between to sort things out. In helping the public, caseworkers learn how the implementation of government programs can go awry.
Congress invests heavily in casework; by our calculations, caseworkers are about 15 percent of Congressional office staff. But Congress does not tap into their knowledge, largely because caseworkers are based in their home districts, where they work with constituents in person. As caseworkers are far from the politics of the U.S. Capitol, the Washington establishment often wrongly thinks of them as merely entry-level customer service representatives.
