WASHINGTON — Thanks to a conservative Supreme Court, Congress may do something it hasn’t done in living memory: dramatically increase the size of the legislative branch.A handful of recent decisions — most notably Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended the Chevron doctrine of judges deferring to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes — have set the stage for a tsunami of litigation challenging regulations and administrative rulings in the coming years.That has Congress — plus industry insiders, consumer advocates, environmental groups, unions and a host of other special interests — now considering how to respond. Some liberals want to see Congress resurrect Chevron deference legislatively, as a bill introduced last week by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren would do. Republicans are considering bills that would build on the court’s deregulatory momentum.But there is one potential response that seems to unite the right and the left: Congress needs more expertise and capacity, and that means more staff.“There is a growing bipartisan consensus for building capacity in a way that hasn’t existed in a long time,” said J.D. Rackey, a senior analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center.That consensus was already growing before the Loper Bright decision thanks to the work of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which issued a series of recommendations for improving the legislative branch. That work, now taken up by a House Administration subcommittee, has led to increased staff pay. Actually adding staff seems like the logical next step. “It’s more likely now than it ever has been,” said Rackey. “So I’m optimistic, in that sense, for long-term capacity growth.”At a House Administration hearing last week exploring how Congress could react to the end of Chevron deference, a panel of conservative and liberal experts all advocated more staff.Overall, staff levels in Congress haven’t changed much in the past half-century. According to the Congressional Research Service, there were an estimated 8,831 House staffers in 1977 and 9,247 in 2023, although a large part of that growth came from a roughly 300 percent increase in the number of leadership staffers. The number of committee staff, who are generally considered to be the subject matter experts of Congress, fell by more than a third, from upward of 2,000 in 1978 to just 1,170 in 2023.Similarly, even though staff levels in the Senate have risen, committee staff showed the smallest increase, growing just 10% over the period between 1977 and ...
