Office of U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna, Washington, DC
This summer, I interned in the Office of Congressman Ro Khanna in Washington, DC as a Legislative Intern. This internship was an incredible experience which will greatly inform what I hope to accomplish in my career.
Every day in Rep. Khanna’s office was different. The other intern and I had some administrative tasks that we were in charge of, and also were assigned a variety of projects. Not every task that we were assigned was glamorous. I had to make the coffee every morning; I was charged with answering the phones; and I wrote letters responding to constituents about a variety of requests. These requests covered everything from expounding Congressman Khanna’s policy positions to commendations for an event or accomplishment. This taught me how to write formally and in the voice of a Congressional office. I found both letters and phone calls rewarding because they were direct lines to constituents where we could go back and forth with the people whom we served.
In addition to simpler office tasks, I went to Congressional briefings about government reform, ethics of artificial intelligence, rural broadband, child poverty, clean water, carbon storage, and other issues that I am passionate about. I found these briefings informative, and also met a lot of other interns and staffers through them.
I also was assigned to larger projects, and I will detail two of my favorite projects that I completed.
Towards the beginning of my internship a Legislative Aide asked me to do research on U.S.-Russia relations, especially on the ways that U.S. and Russian planes and ships have interacted in the past few years. Our office decided to draft an amendment to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act aimed at decreasing U.S.-Russian aggression in air and over waters. We saw that there has been an increasing number of dangerous intercepts conducted by both the U.S. and Russia over international waters and in international air. I was tasked with finding specific instances where dangerous intercepts were conducted by both the U.S. and Russia. With this research and specific action items given to me by this Legislative Aide, I then wrote the actual amendment to the NDAA. This amendment passed unanimously, committing the U.S. to revisiting U.S.-Russian agreements which govern the ways that U.S. and Russian planes and ships interact.
Near the end of my internship, a Legislative Aide asked me to attend a briefing on poverty and the way that it is measured. As a mathematics major, I became enamored with flaws in the poverty measurement system. The poverty line used today is extremely antiquated and has not been updated since 1963 when it was designed as part of LBJ’s New Deal. Back in 1963, the average family spends a third of their income on food; today, the average family now spends about half that on food, so this poverty line is completely undescriptive of actual poverty. It also fails to acknowledge that $25,100 (the current poverty threshold for a family of four) does not go nearly as far in urban centers as it does in rural America. So, I crafted a policy proposal on ways we can update the poverty line to make it a better measure of true poverty, and expand welfare access to people who need them and are unaccounted for by current poverty guidelines.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed the work that I did, the office environment made work that much more enjoyable. I was fortunate that my office only had two interns at a time, whereas many offices employ 4-6. Since there were only two of us I felt as though I always had a project on my plate. The other employees in the office were extremely accommodating and looked forward to giving me projects, viewing it as a way to take me under their wing. They did their best to expose me to what life on the Hill really looks like, and how the legislative process takes place. I am very grateful for this, as their eagerness to assign me their work made my internship extremely valuable.
This internship helped me develop many skills that will help me during my last year at Williams. It refined my writing skills and taught me how to delete filler words that weaken the meaning of a sentence. I learned how to conduct policy research and build a case for a policy stance. This often looks like persuasive writing, which helps performance in every subject. I learned how to productively talk about politics across the aisle, which helps me within my second major, political science. And, crunching numbers within excel spreadsheets and research projects helped keep my math skills sharp.
Because of this internship, I think that I want to return to the Hill at some point. I had such a wonderful experience in Congressman Khanna’s office where I felt like I was making real change. I can only imagine the feeling of being a Legislative Aide, running legislation that I care about through Congress. I want to thank the ’68 Center for Career Exploration and the Estate of George Mead for this opportunity. Without you, I could not have been in DC and could not have this incredible internship experience which has changed my worldview and shaped what I want to do after college.
Megamenu Social