The ethics rules of the U.S. House of Representative and U.S. Senate seek to minimize the use of government resources to support incumbents’ reelection campaigns. Government-paid congressional staff are prohibited from engaging in campaign activity during their working hours. However, congressional staff may engage in paid or uncompelled volunteer campaign activities outside of their working hours—on their “own time.” As applied, this rule allows incumbent members of Congress to pay their official staff additional salaries or stipends from their campaign accounts and task them with campaign responsibilities. This structure leaves open serious questions of fairness. Even when staff follow the rules and confine all campaign activity to their “own time,” this practice can reduce campaign staffing costs for incumbents, as government-paid staff can leverage the knowledge, experience, and relationships they accumulate on government time to more efficiently and expeditiously complete campaign tasks. Consequently, this practice can offer incumbents a financial advantage over non-incumbent challengers, which undermines the democratic principles at the core of our political system. This Note assesses the fairness of this practice, examines whether it indirectly enables government resources to bolster incumbents’ reelection campaigns, and proposes legislation prohibiting campaigns from disbursing funds to official congressional staff.
Part I provides an overview of the current House and Senate ethics rules as they relate to campaign activity and an assessment of the mechanisms available to enforce them. Part II explains how congressional staffers’ campaign activity during their “own time” undermines democratic principles by enabling government resources to flow indirectly to incumbents’ reelection campaigns. It then discusses the absence of mechanisms to challenge these rules and the practices they allow. Part III encourages Congress to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act to prohibit congressional campaigns from disbursing campaign funds to official congressional staff. This solution would limit official staff participation in campaigns to uncompelled volunteer activity, and it would provide the Federal Election Commission with enforcement authority. As a result, any volunteer campaign activity conducted by official staff would be subject to a higher level of scrutiny as to whether it is truly uncompelled.