Sex, Alcohol, and Dementia: 25 Legislators Reveal the True Nature of Congress

This article is based on interviews conducted by Ben Jacobs, Jasper Goodman, Jordain Carney, Jennifer Scholtes, Hailey Fuchs, Emma Dumain, Lisa Kashinsky, Connor O’Brien, Holly Otterbein, Adam Wren, Daniella Diaz, and Nicholas Wu.

Congress is often seen as one of the most disliked institutions in America, and it turns out many lawmakers share this sentiment about their work environment.

To gain insight into the realities of serving on Capitol Hill amidst years of partisan gridlock and instability, we spoke with 25 lawmakers who shared their perspectives.

During our conversations, lawmakers expressed their feelings about the frustrations and joys of working in Congress, why they believe the system is broken, and ideas for potential reforms. They also revealed surprising truths about the life of a legislator that might astonish the general public.

We engaged in sensitive discussions about the visible decline of some older members and speculated on reports of intoxication among lawmakers during sessions. We also explored the coping strategies that help them navigate their demanding schedules. Additionally, we delved into political insights, including whether Democrats have learned anything from prior defeats and the future of Speaker Mike Johnson.

Our group included Democrats and Republicans, male and female members from both the House and Senate. To encourage open dialogue, we allowed lawmakers to remain anonymous for any comments they wished, though most were happy to speak on the record.

Here are their comments, edited for brevity and clarity.

“How absolutely lame it is. You honestly think that life is full of House of Cards or snappy dialogue out of The West Wing. And it’s sad. You’re constantly living out of a suitcase.” — Sen. John Fetterman

“It is an endless grind that is far less romantic than people might think.” — Rep. Ritchie Torres

“Everybody thinks that we fly around on Air Force One and dine at the French embassy every night. But the reality is, I’m eating burritos and McDonald’s more often than I’m dining in any embassies. It’s also a lonely life. It’s really hard to establish friendships, just because the pace is so breakneck.” — Rep. Jim Himes

“If people knew the truth about the compensation of a congressman, they would be shocked. I have people who land in the airport here and call me and ask, can I send my car for them. I mean, my first term up here I didn’t even own a car.” — Rep. James Clyburn

“I got elected in 2018, and one of the first things I had to do was to go sit in a classified briefing. I’m sitting there and I’m furiously taking notes. And I look at Elissa Slotkin and raise my eyebrows to her, and she raises her eyebrows back at me. In my head, I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’m swimming with the big fish now. I’m vibing with the CIA officers.’ And we walk out and she goes, ‘The fuck are you doing taking notes in a classified briefing?’ You effectively get a security clearance without a background check.” — Rep. Sean Casten

“It’s common to book out members’ time in 15-minute increments. I can just be getting into a conversation with people that are sitting down with me, and then there’s the knock at my office door: ‘Congressman, we need to be wrapping up.’ It’s alien to me.” — Rep. Jefferson Shreve

“How good of friends some of us are, whose political ideologies are totally separate from each other. Some of my best friends up here are members of the progressive caucus. We go out, have dinner and a beer, and we can even tell jokes with each other, as long as nobody’s listening.” — Rep. Austin Scott

“A multitude of people in this body are committed to finding common ground, or when they share a goal on an issue, getting in the room and figuring out a pathway forward.” — Sen. Katie Britt

“I was surprised at how thirsty my colleagues are.” — Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove

“I just drink massive amounts of caffeine all the time.” — Rep. Riley Moore

“When things are going bad or when things get ugly, I’ll try to find me a thrift store. I’ll hit a thrift store in a heartbeat, walk around in the midst of all the things in those places. It’s soothing and quite comfortable.” — Rep. Emanuel Cleaver

“Watching old episodes of Columbo. Growing up, I used to watch reruns with my dad. Peter Falk’s character is maybe the greatest in TV history.” — Rep. Brendan Boyle

“Practicing radical self-care and recognizing that every person here is not an adult. Saying no is very important. Laughing. If you don’t laugh and you take it all too seriously, you’ll be in a fetal position on the floor in the corner.” — Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove

“The National Archives. I find it the most amazing thing of my midlife crisis. I think I’ve been there five times already, and I’ve only been here for 10 months.” — Rep. Mike Rulli

“Going to the gym is a big part of my day, but I also found that Whole Foods has some really good snickerdoodle cookies.” — Rep. Eli Crane

“I love to shop. I love shoes. It’s a good thing, good for the soul. My mother was a garment worker in the old sweatshops in New Haven. She made all of my clothes — coats, even hats, berets, etc. She was a real stickler for style, for color, for dress. It rubbed off.” — Rep. Rosa DeLauro

“I would start out with cigars and clean liquor. But no, seriously, I think you really either love your job or you don’t. I don’t think people that think they’re doing the country a favor, or that they’re sacrificing to serve, last very long.” — Rep. Tom Cole

“There’s a handful of my colleagues who, when they talk, it’s like fingernails on the chalkboard. But I can’t figure anyone in particular, because I’m not perfect either.” — Rep. Frank Lucas

“Right now, my least favorite lawmaker would be Mitch McConnell.” — Rep. Eli Crane

“The single least impressive person I have ever met in this job or any job I’ve ever had is Kevin McCarthy. He is just a vapid shell of a human being who stands for nothing, who never took his oath seriously.” — Rep. Sean Casten

“I’m hoping to find out real soon.” — Rep. James Clyburn

“It wasn’t eggs. People got eggs for brains, if they think it was eggs. It was social issues.” — Rep. Steve Cohen

“We cannot afford to cede the issue of border security to the Republican Party. I feel like that is a lesson that has been widely internalized.” — Rep. Ritchie Torres

“Every democracy in the world voted to throw the bums out in ’24, because every democracy in the world was faced with global inflation. The Democrats did better than the Tories, we did better than the LDP in Japan, we did better than the Dutch, we did better than Macron’s party in France. But everybody voted against the incumbents.” — Rep. Sean Casten

“I’ve always thought of the Democrats as the party of the little guy, the party of working Americans, and I think we are very much seen now as the party of the well-educated coastal elite.” — Rep. Don Beyer

“They should have been less dismissive of Bernie. They should not have run a status quo campaign. We should always run as change agents.” — Rep. Ro Khanna

“We would be well served to present a more coherent, better integrated view of the world and vision for the future, rather than constantly trying to read the tea leaves and say what we think people want to hear.” — Sen. Jon Ossoff

“Absolutely.” — Rep. Austin Scott

“Probably.” — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis

“I think it has everything to do with whether or not he falls out of favor with the president. The only reason Mike Johnson’s a speaker right now is because the president saved him multiple times.” — Rep. Eli Crane

“Never.” — Rep. Riley Moore

“As of now, no.” — Rep. Mike Rulli

“He’s never done anything so far that I thought was an impeachable offense.” — Rep. Austin Scott

“If he completely went off the rails, yeah. I don’t want to put anybody on a pedestal and give somebody a pass for completely unlawful, unconstitutional behavior. But I have not seen that from the president. He would have to completely break with everything that he’s doing.” — Rep. Eli Crane

“That’s impossible to answer.” — Rep. Frank Lucas

“The worst thing about the Democratic Party is that I think there’s a number of them in the conference who honestly don’t like this country. I think some of them border on hating it, even down to our foundational documents, such as the Constitution.” — Rep. Riley Moore

“The Republican Party, it’s their lack of a spine and willingness to politically stand up to Trump. A lot of the members who I know don’t like Trump, don’t trust him, and know that he’s out for himself and making money. A lot of knowing, but politically, if they speak it or vote in opposition, they’ll be canceled.” — Rep. Steve Cohen

“Their policies are destructive. It’s going to take a while to undo the mess they made.” — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis

“The worst thing about the Republicans is the House Freedom Caucus. The House Freedom Caucus consists of ideological arsonists who are willing to burn everything down — the federal government, the full faith and credit of the United States, the economy — in pursuit of their ideological agenda.” — Rep. Ritchie Torres

“I don’t know why they choose to pick on people in the LGBTQ community. You don’t have to embrace that identity, but I don’t know why they would choose to derive some political points by degrading a fellow human being just because of how they identify or who they love.” — Sen. John Fetterman

“Intolerance. We are sometimes self-righteous, judgmental, priggish.” — Rep. Jim Himes

“Too much of a stagnancy and deference to people who’ve been in office for a long time. There’s just this slowness in making way for a new generation of leadership.” — Rep. Ro Khanna

“There is no smoke-filled room. We all come here, we march to our own drum. It’s always a cat-herding exercise.” — Rep. Sean Casten

“We don’t stick together all the time, and we should be more of a united front. We’re individual thinkers, and that’s a good thing. But at the end of the day, we’re not as united as we should be.” — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis

“This proclivity towards conflict and war abroad. It seems like our party is shifting away from that, but there’s still elements of that in the party.” — Rep. Riley Moore

“Absolute half-measures, doing just enough to where you can go home and gaslight your voters that you’re doing the right thing.” — Rep. Eli Crane

“Just the scale of what you can do and the impact. Any time you think to yourself, ‘What would I do next?’ That answer is invariably, ‘It won’t matter as much.'” — Rep. Sean Casten

“The upside potential of what we can do here is so huge. I think we’re in one of those inflection points right now.” — Rep. Riley Moore

“I’m an introvert, so I don’t love the pressure to constantly perform publicly. But I love helping people.” — Sen. Jon Ossoff

“Being able to help people — constituent services type of work. People that you’ve never personally met before, but who have contacted your office and say, ‘Hey, thanks for the help with the VA.’” — Rep. Austin Scott

“The performance art and having to monetize everything. It’s turned all of us into OnlyFans models just monetizing your latest protest or your latest speech or whatever. There’s not a lot of dignity in it.” — Sen. John Fetterman

“The political theater. I feel like there’s so much time wasted on pointless political theatre in Washington, D.C.” — Rep. Ritchie Torres

“The single most frustrating thing to me is the dramatic turnover in membership. No one remembers how to really legislate anymore. That’s frustrating to me. I’m old school.” — Rep. Frank Lucas

“What I hate most is it’s a slow process to get things accomplished. It’s a slow process to get into leadership and really have a voice, especially on the Democratic side, where there are no term limits for speaker, chairman, etc.” — Rep. Steve Cohen

“It takes so damn long. Everything is really slow.” — Rep. Don Beyer

“Spineless people more interested in clicks than serving the country.” — Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove

“It is a sick puppy. And a bunch of this goes back to the way that the campaign finance laws have worked.” — Rep. Frank Lucas

“More than anything, unlimited money. This is the only business where you can spend unlimited money to destroy someone’s reputation. And then social media. That became a narcotic.” — Sen. John Fetterman

“It would either be when C-SPAN came in or social media, but it seems to me that members of Congress became entertainers as much as they did legislators, whether it’s celebrity TV personalities or social media provocateurs.” — Sen. Kevin Cramer

“It’s not clear the founders anticipated that partisan factionalism would swamp members of Congress’ imperative to defend our branch as a co-equal branch.” — Sen. Jon Ossoff

“I know that I’m supposed to say that it’s terribly broken. We have bursts of huge functionality. A lot of times when people say it’s broken, what they really mean is that Congress is doing things they don’t agree with. And sometimes when people say Congress is broken, they’re bemoaning the fact that Congress as a representative institution is not willing to do something that people are not yet ready for. Inaction — read the Constitution — is sort of a feature, not a bug.” — Rep. Jim Himes

“Get the money and the influence of these lobbyists out of Washington.” — Rep. Ro Khanna

“Decentralizing power and allowing the committee process to work. We’ve seen a power shift over the last 20 years or so, from individual members to it really being concentrated at the top. Instead of having 100 good, equal senators, you kind of had two super senators and 98 baby senators.” — Sen. Katie Britt

“I would say that there should be better direction signs in the tunnels of the Capitol. It should be easier for people to figure out where they are and where they’re going.” — Sen. Ed Markey

“I think it’s appropriate to talk about expanding the size of the House.” — Rep. Sean Casten

“I’ve worked for years on the Fair Representation Act, which is multi-member districts and ranked-choice voting, which, in theory, would eliminate some of the extremes.” — Rep. Don Beyer

“I wanted to create a new rule called the ‘BUDS’ resolution — Building Unity through Dual Sponsors. We could have two lead sponsors as long as both members are from different political parties. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is because it can help promote bipartisanship, which is desperately needed in today’s polarized politics.” — Rep. Emanuel Cleaver

“I’m an appropriator, so I’d like to see regular order. I think that that would do a lot to fix this place, if we could actually get all 12 of those [spending] bills on the floor, pass them out of the House, send them over to the Senate.” — Rep. Riley Moore

“I’d bring back the powdered wigs.” — Sen. Kevin Cramer

“There may be. If there is, I haven’t seen it. I go from the office to bed to the office, but the House is a wilder place by reputation.” — Sen. Jon Ossoff

“I would say D.C. is more like Veep [than House of Cards]. We’ve had a couple of Veep moments in my office.” — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis

“Absolutely. We’re human beings, right? We’re all sinners, so to even put on the facade that we’re not regular people that are tempted and do stupid things is laughable. It’s ridiculous. So, don’t act like your shit doesn’t stink.” — Rep. Eli Crane

“I have no idea. I’ve been doing this for 16 years, I don’t think anybody has ever come up to me and said, ‘Hey, I’m cheating on my wife.’” — Rep. Jim Himes

“Every time we do an 11 p.m. vote, a minority of the chamber has a zero blood alcohol content. Now, that’s different than voting drunk. I don’t think I’ve ever seen somebody demonstrably drunk on the floor.” — Rep. Jim Himes

“Well, I’ve seen one Republican who, unfortunately for you, has to go unnamed, show up drunk a number of times. There were one or two Dems I thought might be high on something but not drunk.” — Rep. Don Beyer

“Maybe I’m not in that club because I don’t drink.” — Rep. Riley Moore

“If you are prone to substance abuse, everything about this job probably makes it worse.” — Rep. Sean Casten

“I have never seen anybody drunk on the floor. I don’t think anybody drinks around the floor. I knew a couple of guys that might have had a drink, but the guys I knew that had a drink, they never showed it. They could hold their liquor well.” — Rep. Steve Cohen

“If people want to come onto the floor drunk and vote for Medicare for All, I’d rather they do that than be sober and be wondering how much pharma and insurance money they’ll be collecting at their next fundraiser.” — Rep. Ro Khanna

“There’s no question that somewhere between six and a dozen of my colleagues are at a point where they’re … I think they don’t have the faculties to do their job.” — Rep. Jim Himes

“I have a difficult time sometimes telling between the deterioration of members and a handful who are just not very smart.” — a House Republican

“I do think that leadership probably has a responsibility, on both sides, when somebody’s getting past their due date, to really encourage them to step aside, like Kay Granger last summer. I knew it was hard for them because the votes were so close, so they had a reason not to do it. But if they had a comfortable minority or majority, it would have been very good to say, ‘Please retire.’” — Rep. Don Beyer

“In Feinstein’s case, it was just not being able to do the job. If you’re missing votes, if you’re not participating in meetings — if someone is really in decline where they’re not being able to do the job, they need to step aside.” — Rep. Ro Khanna

“My relationship with my family is such that we all believe that it is our responsibility to protect each other. I can’t think of any way that they could be more effective at protecting me than to sit me down and say, ‘Dad, it’s time for you to come home,’ if I’m sitting in meetings and not recognizing people.” — Rep. James Clyburn

“I think imposing an age limit to serve in Congress is not a terrible idea.” — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis

“I’m not sure why some people would choose to hang on until the end, but I think ultimately that’s what the voters decide.” — Sen. John Fetterman

“When you no longer think you can make a difference, that’s when it’s time to retire.” — Rep. Austin Scott

“I’ve already got that date in mind. My goal was to come and do four to six years here, which is two or three terms, and get the hell out of here.” — Rep. Eli Crane

“If you become a shell of your former self, then it’s time for you to go.” — Rep. Ritchie Torres

“There are people whose life is inextricably connected with being in Congress and so some of the people, it’s like, ‘I don’t know what to do if I’m not in Congress.’ I thank God that I don’t have that problem.” — Rep. Emanuel Cleaver

“I bring every new staffer in and show them that picture [of me and 100-year-old Strom Thurmond]. I say, ‘That man had a wonderful legislative career. But by the end, he was tired. He was wore out. When I get to that point, if I don’t know it, you have a responsibility to tell me to go home. Not keep me propped up, not keep me stuffed in the chair.’” — Rep.

Lucas Dupont contributed to this report for TROIB News