Welcome to today's Deep Dive. We're really thrilled
to have you joining us. Now, if you are anything
like me, when you think about the United States
Senate, your mind immediately goes to the politicians.
Right. Absolutely. You picture the grand speeches,
the heated debates at the podium, those late
night votes on the floor and, you know, the cameras
flashing in the hallways. But today. We are going
to look right past all of that. Yeah, we are.
We're pulling from this fascinating Wikipedia
article detailing the role of the Secretary of
the United States Senate. Yeah. And our mission
for this deep dive is to uncover the invisible
engine that actually runs one of the most powerful
legislative bodies in the entire world. Exactly.
We want to prove to you that the real machinery
of government goes far, far beyond the elected
officials we see on television. It is a... It's
a completely different world once you pull back
that curtain. The scope of this position is honestly,
it's almost hard to overstate when you look at
the sheer breadth of what they are responsible
for on a day to day basis. Right. We spend so
much time analyzing the people who vote on the
laws and we just we completely ignore the people
who physically build and maintain the arena where
those votes happen. And just to tease the scope
of this role for you. This is a position that
currently pays a salary of $172 ,500 a year.
Wow. Yeah. It is a job that dates all the way
back to 1789. And it has evolved from essentially
buying quill pens and ink for the founding fathers
to managing highly classified national security
documents. Massive tech initiatives. Exactly.
Cutting -edge modern tech initiatives. It is
a wild trajectory. And that is exactly why you're
here with me today, to help us synthesize all
of this historical and administrative info and
really break down why this role matters to anyone
who wants to truly understand how the U .S. government
functions on a daily basis. Well, I'm very glad
to be here. It's it's incredibly easy to get
distracted by the politics of the Senate and
ignore the logistics. But without the logistics,
the politics literally cannot happen. I mean,
a senator cannot cast a vote if there is no one
there to record it, process it and archive it.
OK, let's unpack this from the very beginning,
because a job this massive doesn't just, you
know, appear out of nowhere. If we look back
at the origins of the United States government,
they basically had to build the airplane while
they were flying it. When did they actually realize
they needed a chief administrator? They realized
it almost immediately. Yeah, the role was officially
created on April 8, 1789. To put that timeline
into perspective for you, that is just two days
after the Senate achieved its very first quorum
for business. Wow. Just two days. Right at the
beginning of the first United States Congress.
They barely had enough people in the room to
officially conduct business. They had these monumental
tasks ahead of them regarding the foundation
of the country. And their immediate next thought
was. We need someone to actually run this place.
They needed an office manager, basically. Pretty
much. And that brings us to the very first person
to hold the job, a man named Samuel Alleyne Otis.
Now, you have to hear this detail because it
is absolutely mind boggling. Samuel Alleyne Otis
held the post of secretary for 25 years. 25 years.
And in those 25 years, he never missed a single
day that the Senate was in session. Not one day.
Not one single day. Think about the physical
toll of traveling and working in the 18th and
early 19th centuries. The lack of modern medicine,
the grueling conditions of those early legislative
sessions in drafty, poorly lit rooms. And he
was there for every single gavel drop. It is
a staggering level of dedication. And it really
speaks to the caliber of person they wanted for
this role. Right. He wasn't just anybody. Exactly.
Otis wasn't just some hired clerk pulled off
the street. He had previously been the speaker
of the Massachusetts legislature. Oh, wow. Yeah.
And a member of the Continental Congress. He
was a highly significant political figure in
his own right. But he dedicated a quarter of
a century to keeping the machinery of the Senate
moving without taking a single sick day. I mean,
I can barely go a week without needing a mental
health day. And this guy did 25 years through
the founding of the republic. It's unbelievable.
So let's talk about what he was actually doing
every day during those early years. The original
job description was a really interesting mix.
It was part high -level administrator, part errand
runner. Very hands -on. Yeah, he was responsible
for keeping the minutes and the records of the
Senate, including the vital records of the senators'
elections. He had to receive and transmit official
messages to and from the president and the House
of Representatives. He was also the one purchasing
the physical supplies. Like going to the store.
Basically, in 1789, that meant buying the quill
pens, the ink and the parchment that the senators
needed to literally draft legislation. And perhaps
most importantly to the senators themselves,
he served from the very beginning as the Senate's
dispersing officer. The payroll coordinator.
The guy with the money. He was literally handing
out the cash. He was paying the original senators
their salary, which was just $6 a day at the
time, plus travel expenses. Just imagine. Imagine
this role for a second. Think about being the
ultimate office manager, the head of the HR department,
the payroll coordinator, and the IT support all
rolled into one single job. A nightmare. Right.
But instead of a regular corporate startup, your
office is the foundational government of the
United States. You are literally buying the ink
that will write the laws of a new nation. What's
fascinating here is how that administrative foundation
naturally bled into actual legislative power.
How so? Well, the role didn't just stay in the
back office counting quills and handing out $6
paychecks. As the Senate grew into a major national
institution, the secretary's role became deeply
embedded in the actual daily floor operations
of the legislative branch. Okay, let's dive into
those floor operations because this is where
the invisible engine really starts to... flex
its muscle. The secretary isn't just watching
from a balcony taking notes anymore. No, not
at all. They are physically down there in the
mix. Very much so. The secretary regularly accompanies
the chaplain into the Senate chamber for the
opening of the day session. They actually have
a seat reserved for them right beside the presiding
officer. Front and center. Exactly. But their
most critical legislative function, and this
is something that often goes completely unnoticed
by the public, is that the secretary examines
and signs. Every single act that has been passed
by the Senate. Every single one. Every single
one. That is a massive bottleneck of power and
responsibility. Nothing gets through without
their signature. And if you think about the complexity
of modern legislation, we are talking about omnibus
spending bills that are thousands of pages long.
Oh yeah. Dictating trillions of dollars in national
and global funding. The secretary is the final
set of eyes, the ultimate quality control. If
a comma is out of place, if a page is missing,
if a procedural rule was violated in the drafting,
it stumps at their desk. To manage that kind
of workflow, the secretary supervises a whole
team of highly specialized floor staff. Because
the first secretary, Samuel Otis, took the minutes
of the proceedings by himself, but that function
obviously evolved significantly. Right. One person
can't do that today. Exactly. Today, that specific
duty is carried out by the journal clerk, who
operates directly under the secretary. The secretary
also oversees the parliamentarian. The referee
of the Senate rules. Basically, yes. The parliamentarian,
the bill clerk, the legislative clerk, and the
reporters of debates who prepare the Daily Digest
for the congressional record. They are the director
of the entire production that is the Senate floor.
I read this anecdote from June 2010 that completely
shifted how I view the weight of this role. It
was right after Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia
passed away. He had been serving as the president
pro tempore. At the same time, Vice President
Joseph Biden, who normally presides over the
Senate, was absent from the chamber. So you have
a literal power vacuum on the Senate floor. The
two people constitutionally mandated to sit in
the chair are gone. What actually happens in
that scenario? That is where the institutional
fail -safes kick in. The rules dictate that in
the absence of the vice president and the president
pro tempore, the secretary of the Senate literally
steps up and takes the chair. Wow. And that is
exactly what happened on June 28, 2010. Secretary
Nancy Erickson stepped up and briefly presided
over the United States Senate until they could
adopt a resolution to elect Senator Daniel Inouye
of Hawaii as the new president pro tempore. That
is incredible. The person in charge of the payroll
and the minutes suddenly holding the gavel for
the United States Senate. It perfectly illustrates
how vital the role is for the continuity of government.
The politicians are the ones debating and voting.
But when the structure itself fractures, it is
the administrator who steps into the breach and
keeps the institution from falling apart. It
is a failsafe built into the very fabric of the
Senate's parliamentary rules. Here's where it
gets really interesting, though. Because as much
as they are involved in the legislative process
on the floor, the modern administrative duties
of the secretary have expanded into an absolute
empire behind the scenes. Oh, empire is the perfect
word for it. We've moved way beyond ordering
quill pens and parchment. The modern jurisdiction
of the secretary is incredibly vast and frankly,
a bit of an administrative contradiction. What
do you mean by contradiction? Well, let's walk
through a few of the offices they oversee because
it paints a bizarre but fascinating picture.
You mentioned quill pens earlier. Well, today
the secretary has responsibility for the Senate
stationary room. OK. But this isn't a simple
supply closet where interns grab printer paper.
It is a multimillion dollar retail operation
that keeps all the senators offices fully supplied
with customized materials. A multimillion dollar
retail store just hiding inside the legislative
branch. Yes. And that's just the mundane side
of things. It gets much, much more intense. Consider
the friction between running a massive retail
operation and running national security. The
secretary also oversees the Office of Senate
Security. Wow. This is the office responsible
for maintaining highly classified documents.
They are managing the secure facilities where
senators go to review top secret intelligence
briefings. So you go from overseeing the procurement
of customized letterhead to overseeing the vault
containing the nation's most sensitive geopolitical
secrets. all under one job title. And the portfolio
just keeps expanding. They oversee the United
States Senate Library, the Senate Historical
Office, and the Office of Senate Curator. Right.
So they are the head librarians, the chief historians,
and the museum curators of the Senate. They are
responsible for preserving the physical history
of the building, the art. the antique furniture
and the historical records. But then there's
the Office of Public Records, which is arguably
one of the most important functions for modern
democratic transparency. The Office of Public
Records is vital. Under the Secretary's direction,
this office collects, processes, and makes publicly
available millions of pages of documents relating
to campaign finance, financial ethics, foreign
travel, and lobbying. That's huge. Whenever you
hear an investigative journalist or a news report
citing a senator's campaign finances or breaking
a story about lobbying disclosures, they are
relying entirely on an office managed by the
Secretary of the Senate. They are keeping the
receipts for the entire legislative branch. Literally.
And if a senator needs to travel internationally
to meet with foreign leaders or attend a summit,
the secretary is intimately involved there too.
That falls under the Office of Interparliamentary
Services, which the secretary maintains. This
office provides logistical and administrative
support for interparliamentary conferences that
the Senate participates in. And it handles the
incredibly complex logistics of assisting senators
with their international travel. Right. You are
talking about coordinating with the State Department,
foreign governments and security details. It
is staggering. multi -million dollar retail,
classified top secret documents, historical preservation,
ethics enforcement, and acting as a high -level
international travel agency, all under one person's
jurisdiction. But how did the staff itself evolve
to handle all of this? Because clearly one person
isn't doing all of this alone anymore. No. The
scale of these modern responsibilities required
a massive professionalization of the staff. We
see a major turning point highlighted in the
1960s. 60s. OK. During that decade. Under the
leadership of a secretary named Francis R. Vallejo,
the staff positions under the secretary of the
Senate were fundamentally redefined. Vallejo
essentially realized that an operation this critical
couldn't survive on the old spoil system. They
needed to stop handing out jobs as political
favors to loyalists and start building a dedicated
class of professionals. That makes total sense.
You are the middle of the Cold War. The U .S.
government is expanding exponentially and you
can't have the person guarding top secret documents
or managing international logistics be someone
who just got the job because they knocked on
doors for a winning senator. It's exact. You
need serious career driven experts. And that
trend towards strict professionalization was
continued by all of Vallejo's successors. It
is the only way the Senate can function as a
modern, complex organization. We also see that
evolution perfectly encapsulated in the role
of the assistant secretary. How so? Well, back
in 1789, the secretary was authorized to hire
exactly one principal clerk. And for many years,
this chief clerk essentially just stood on the
Senate floor and acted as a reading clerk, reading
the text of bills allowed to the room. But again,
during that pivotal 1960s era, in response to
that massive growth in administrative duties,
that principal clerk position evolved into the
modern assistant secretary of the Senate. Today,
that assistant secretary is essentially the chief
operating officer and chief technology officer
rolled into one. They oversee the administration
of the secretary's office, which includes managing
the vast computer networks and the secretary's
website. That's a massive job. They are currently
spearheading two of the largest technology initiatives
in Senate history, both designed to bring state
-of -the -art efficiency to the management of
legislative and financial information. Which
is crazy when you think about it. Right. Digitizing
the records of a body that operates on 18th century
parliamentary rules is a monumental task. And
on top of all that tech integration, the assistant
secretary actually steps in to perform the functions
of the secretary whenever the secretary is absent.
Which brings us to a really fascinating question.
With a job this powerful, this vast, and this
deeply entrenched in the daily survival of the
government, how do you actually get the job?
It's a great question. If the Constitution says
the Senate elects their own officers, you would
assume this involves a massive floor campaign.
But the reality of how this person is chosen
is much more backroom, right? Legally, the Constitution
is quite clear. Article 1, Section 3. known as
the Senate Officers Clause, states that the Senate
shall choose their other officers. And Article
6 requires that these officers take an oath to
support the Constitution, a mandate enforced
by the very first Congress. Okay. So officially,
the secretary is elected by a vote of the entire
Senate. However, by agreement of the two major
political parties, the majority leader is actually
the one who selects the secretary of the Senate.
Really? The actual election on the floor is merely
ceremonial. It's a rubber stamp. Whichever party
holds the majority, their leader picks the person
for the job. So, for instance, we know that the
current secretary for the 119th United States
Congress is Jackie Barber, who just took office
on January 3, 2025. It is incredible to think
about the unbroken chain of people stretching
from Samuel Otis in 1789 all the way to Jackie
Barber today. It really is. There have only been
35 people to hold this title in the entire history
of the United States. And looking at the list
of those 35 people, it is a surprisingly colorful
cast of characters. It hasn't always been strictly
administrative bureaucrats. Historically, the
role has attracted some very prominent figures
from entirely different walks of life. We've
seen significant military figures holding the
post, like General Anson McCook of New York served
as secretary. He was a former House member and
famously one of the fighting McCooks of the Civil
War. We also had William R. Cox of North Carolina
hold the role. He was a former congressman and
a former Confederate general. Wow. The post -Civil
War era saw a lot of military leaders transitioning
into these high -level administrative government
roles. We've also seen former elected officials
step into the role. Two former U .S. senators
actually came back to serve as the secretary,
Charles Cutts of New Hampshire and Walter Lowry
of Pennsylvania. It is an interesting dynamic
to consider. Yeah. You go from being a voting
member of the body, subject to the whims of the
electorate, to being the person running the building,
overseeing the finances, and managing the very
staff you used to rely on. We also saw a historic,
albeit long overdue, milestone during the 99th
Congress, from 1985 to 1987, when Joanne Coe
became the very first woman to serve as Secretary
of the Senate. That's amazing. It took nearly
200 years to break that specific ceiling, but
she paved the way for modern leadership in the
role. But perhaps the most interesting demographic
of people to hold this position is a group we
might call the lifers. I love this detail. The
people who... Basically grew up inside the Capitol
building. It has not been unusual for secretaries
of the Senate to have devoted their entire careers
to the Senate. Several of them actually started
their careers at the very bottom of the ladder
as Senate pages. No way. Yeah. They came in as
teenagers running messages across the floor,
learned every intricate detail of how the institution
operates over decades, and eventually rose to
the very top administrative job. That is such
a great visual. A 16 -year -old running a piece
of paper between Senate. senators eventually
growing up to be the person who signs every single
act passed by the United States Senate. Edwin
Halsey is a prime example of a lifer. He served
as secretary throughout the incredibly dramatic
and intense years of the New Deal. He started
as a page and worked his way up. That's wild.
Or consider Leslie Biffle, who served as secretary
during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Biffle
wasn't just a paper pusher. He became a very
close confidant of President Harry S. Truman.
Truman would actually slip over to the Capitol
to have private lunches in Biffle's office. Think
about the soft power that implies. The guy running
the logistics, the man managing the payroll and
the records, has the direct ear of the president
of the United States. He was a political barometer
for Truman. That's incredible. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, it reveals something
fundamental about how Congress operates. We tend
to view the government entirely through the lens
of elections, campaigns, and rotating political
parties. Right, the stuff on TV. But there is
a hidden, dedicated career track that exists
entirely separate from the politicians who cycle
in and out of office every six years. There is
an institutional memory maintained by people
who spend their entire lives ensuring the building
keeps standing. So what does this all mean for
you listening today? I think the big takeaway
from this deep dive is a massive shift in perspective.
The next time you see the Senate on the news,
the next time you see a contentious vote on a
major piece of legislation or a grand speech
at the podium, I want you to look past the politicians.
Look behind them. Yeah, look at the people sitting
near the presiding officer. Think about the massive
historic administrative apparatus led by the
secretary of the Senate that is quietly keeping
the lights on. They are the ones managing the
multimillion -dollar budgets, running the massive
tech initiatives, securing the classified documents
in underground vaults, and applying the final
signature to the legislation that dictates the
future of the country. They are the invisible
engine of the United States Senate. And it leaves
us with an interesting thought to consider as
we look toward the future. We just spent this
time discussing how this role evolved from a
man buying quill pens in 1789 to a team managing
massive state -of -the -art digital data cases
today. As artificial intelligence and machine
learning start automating massive administrative
tasks, how will the role of these lifelong institutional
anchors change in the next 50 years? If the goal
of the secretary is to be the ultimate infallible
nonpartisan administrator checking every comma
archiving every document processing every payroll
Is it possible that the invisible engine of the
Senate will eventually be an algorithm? Oh, well.
Could the ultimate failsafe of our democracy
one day be a piece of code rather than a person?
That is a phenomenal, slightly terrifying point
to end on. And I, Secretary of the Senate, a
huge thank you to you for joining us on this
deep dive. We hope you walk away with a totally
new understanding of the hidden mechanics of
how the government actually works. Keep questioning
the world around you. Keep looking past the obvious
headlines and we will catch you next time.