The Practical Reality of Change in DC

I know I’ve already covered what might happen in the next administration, but an oft overlooked aspect of legislating and regulating is understanding how, exactly, each step in the process works on different levels to execute an administration’s (and a Congress’s) prerogatives.

My perspective comes from 15 years spent working from the outside to effect outcomes in Congress and with federal agencies. While each individual body may have slight variations, the general themes tend to hold regardless of who you’re dealing with. For this article, I’m going to speak to each level of legislating/policy making collectively and point out any distinctions worth knowing.

But you’re asking already, why should I care about how things happen? The short answer is it explains why some campaign promises fall short – not because of a change of heart, but because the machinations required to effect change are intentionally designed to be slow and allow for public input. Knowing who sets the agenda, who gets tasked with execution, and how the two work together is vital not only for setting expectations around things you may wish to see changed, but to know which levers can be affected by those of us outside of government.

One last point: The goal here is not to express views on government or bureaucracy generally – I know everyone has an opinion, but regardless of your views this is the current reality of how work gets done in Washington.

Setting the Agenda

Legislative and policy priorities come from the very top – the President of the United States. Obviously, incoming President Trump does not have the time or bandwidth to work directly on any one issue in the depth required to effect change, so the federal government has several different actors also involved.

Legislatively, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader hold tremendous sway over what bills are considered in Congress. Given the aligned nature of the next Congress with the President, there will be close coordination to ensure that the President’s goals and campaign promises are reflected in the work of Congress. Each leader in the House and Senate then works with a leadership team to ensure that party members are in alignment on votes to advance bills (eventually) to the President’s desk.

From the regulatory side, each federal agency has a certain umber of top leaders who are political appointees under the President. Some appointments, such as Cabinet-level positions, require the Senate to confirm the nomination under its “advise and consent” role. For many smaller agencies, though, political appointees are installed in various roles – bringing the total number of appointees to around 9,000. Every four years, the Government Publishing Office publishes the “Plum Book”, that spells out for each incoming administrations the roles they need to fill.

It takes a while for this process to be completed – roles at smaller agencies can take months or even years to fill, while independent agencies have their own terms of service and appointment schedules outside of the general process. While roles await their appointee, agencies rely on “acting” directors or other leaders, many of whom are often career civil service employees, to keep the day-to-day work moving.

Collectively, these political leaders are tasked with implementing the broad strokes of an administration’s prerogatives in an agency to the regulatory process. I’ll note here how different this might look now – instead of seeing new regulations proposed, we will likely see a raft of regulations proposed for withdrawal, meaning they will no longer be effective. But whether through withdrawals or affirmative regulatory efforts, agencies execute on the policy side.

Doing the Work in Congress

As Congress and agencies set out direction, a small army of individuals work to execute on the direction they receive. Within a presidential administration, a host of advisors, czars, and others begin the detail work of translating broad strokes into discrete efforts. This can mean drafting executive orders for the President to sign into effect, drafting the proposed annual budget, working with Congress on draft legislation, and coordinating with agencies on regulatory actions.

In Congress, each elected official has a professional staff that works on bills, prepares for committee hearings, and interacts with constituents. Generally, there’s a Chief of Staff and Legislative Director (LD) in each office, along with a number of Legislative Aides (LA) that often cover several different issue areas. While LDs and LAs have more issue depth than the elected members they work for, they generally are not experts in any one area.

Beyond each member’s office is committee staff for each party (referred to as majority and minority staff). These individuals are more versed in the issues covered by their respective committees and, insulated from the outcomes of individual elections, tend to be more seasoned than member staff. Each bill generally is referred to the committee of jurisdiction for hearings with relevant witnesses and markups, a fancy word for making amendments to a bill, before reporting it back out to the whole of a branch of Congress. Committee staff are often unsung yet are among the most effective at translating general ideas into effective concepts.

Lastly is legislative counsel, attorneys representing each party who are tasked with ensuring that changes to existing laws are correctly inserted into legislative language and check to ensure that proposed bills are not duplicative of existing statutes. While these individuals don’t generally address the substance of bills, they can prevent unintended outcomes and are essential to the legislative process.

Agencies and Their Work

Under the political appointees of each agency are established career civil service professionals, who carry on their work regardless of the administration in power. This can range from 100,000 staff at the US Department of Agriculture to a couple dozen employees at the Appraisal Subcommittee. While agencies and their staff execute a number of critical functions as part of fulfilling statutory requirements, we’ll focus on the work involved in regulation writing or withdrawal.

One critical agency whose role is generally lesser known is that of the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB. OMB acts as the central hub for all federal agency rulemaking efforts – no regulation is proposed or finalized without OMB approval. This ensures agency work aligns with the priorities of the current administration and avoids the implementation of conflicting regulations from agencies whose responsibilities may overlap.

Each agency is responsible for crafting regulations where Congress has delegated such authority to the agency – this happens when an area requires specific technical or professional knowledge to effective implement Congress’s intent, and not simply where Congress has been ambiguous on an issue. (Previously agencies crafted regulations in spaces of ambiguity – called the Chevron doctrine – but this was overturned in June of 2024.)

Agencies generally go through a process of exposing a proposed regulation, called a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, that identifies the specific legal authority and the actions proposed and solicits feedback generally or on a range of specific questions. The public then has a fixed period to offer comments in and, occasionally, a public hearing with the relevant agency.

Once all feedback has been received, each agency must review individual comments and feedback and, critically, respond to each point made for or against the proposed regulation. If the agency believes the regulation is sound in light of public comment, it then moves to publishing a Final Rule subject to OMB approval.

I know many are cynical as to whether federal agencies really listen to public feedback, or simply gloss over substantive concerns in favor of advancing the priorities of the sitting administration. I will say from personal experience that career staff are concerned most about getting it right, and not just getting it through – while this is not an absolute rule, credit is due to career staff who are genuinely invested in their work regardless of who’s in charge and whether it aligns with their personal views.

Takeaways

That’s a lot of words to make a very short point: Nothing happens overnight in Washington. Laws can take months, regulations can take years, and the courts (not covered here) can add decades to the process before something takes effect.

No administration, regardless of their views, can turn the ship overnight – and for good reason. If these processes were designed to be more malleable, individuals and businesses would be whipsawed by each incoming administration, left scrambling to respond to changing laws and regulations at great cost and potential legal or regulatory risk.

That same deliberate process also means that, generally, laws and regulations remain in place for a significant length of time once enacted, so being thoughtful in how to implement change ensures we avoid unintended negative outcomes.