In the summer of 2003, I interned with the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, gaining a good sense of Capitol Hill's inner workings and several first-rate mentors. The financial bottom line:
Duration: 8 weeks.
Work Hours: 50 p/wk.
Housing: GWU Dorms, $1800
Food: $800
Transport: $100
Total Costs: $2700
Pay: $0
How did I swing the expenses? I didn't. My parents did. As fortune would have it, I've been blessed with a selfless and encouraging mother and father who also have the financial means and willingness to support my ambitions.
But what of the guy who sat next to me in my spring semester political theory lecture? Much like me, he was interested in government and policy and was attracted by the allure of the U.S. Congress. He too wanted to intern on the Hill. Though for him there's a catch: he didn't have a parent willing and able to foot the bill for one of those famously unpaid Hill internships.
And so the question stands: did I have more of a right to an eye-opening position with the Senate Judiciary Committee than he did?
Members of Congress rightly have say over how their office management funds and staff salaries are allocated. And in spite of complaints about Congress's expenditures, Hill staffers very much live by the Washington D.C. mantra: overworked, overqualified and underpaid. Moreover, it's difficult for members to justify paying an intern when their entry level staff assistants bring home between just $20,000 and $24,000 a year.
Even so, some representatives admirably offer intern stipends. But at a high water mark of about $1000, these kind gestures are nonetheless insufficient (see my living costs) and from a structural standpoint they don't even begin to scratch the surface of the sustained unequal access to opportunity on Capitol Hill. Meritocratic internship and entry level opportunities in Congress remain the exceptions to the rule because of two key structural factors:
First, for any member of Congress, it just makes good political sense, ceteris paribus (and sometimes not), to offer intern and entry level positions to home district college students and recent graduates whose families and friends have established political connections. With this a member gets a good deal, what you might call the Hill hire multiplier effect: hardworking young blood plus the added benefit of more robust political ties meant to pave the way toward deeper campaign coffers.
Few would argue that it is not soundly within a member's professional rights to take this first factor into consideration in the hiring process and to argue that an elected simply ought not consider the new hire multiplier effect is rather naïve. Not much wiggle room for change here.
How about the second structural factor? As I've alluded to, it's no doubt the finance card. Hill internships are, by-and-large, unpaid and entry level positions offer salaries that make living in and around expensive Washington D.C. particularly difficult for recent graduates with college loans to pay off and parents unable to subsidize their ambitions.
In the long-run, the restrictive financial card for starting out on the Hill would not make much difference if it were the case that internships and entry level positions did not lead to higher-level Hill opportunities, but they most certainly do.
Congressional offices, particularly on the House side, tend to "promote from within." As first an intern you may be promoted to staff assistant and after six months to a year of earning your dues, working capably and depending on staff movements (which are fairly regular), you might anticipate a promotion to legislative correspondent (LC) for work with constituent services.
As an LC, living on an unsubsidized Hill wage becomes slightly more realistic - a 1999 Congressional Management Foundation study found that Senate LCs were making about $27,000. Today, an LC starts at around $30,000.
From here the combination of talent and timing may continue to take you up the ladder, the cream rising to the chief of staff's chair; and it is no secret that many chiefs of staff began their Hill careers as interns or staff assistants.
Hiring and promoting across congressional offices are also routine practices, and while outside hiring for upper level positions are common enough, getting your foot in the door often takes more than first-rate recommendations, a solid resume and a stellar interview.
In recent years, third party organizations are increasingly providing where tight congressional operating budgets are not:
In 2003, the United Leaders, a Boston-based youth group, began offering summer fellowships in Boston and Washington D.C. for college students committed to public service. Their D.C. Institute for Political Service places 12 students in two four-week internships on the Hill or with educational and civil rights groups. United Leaders Fellows earn a $2000 stipend over a summer, plus room and board.
That same summer, the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) began offering a Congressional Internship Program, placing up to 10 university students with disabilities in Capitol Hill offices for eight weeks with a stipend of $1,500, plus room and board.
Universities have also gotten into the act. For example, the University of Minnesota makes available the A.I. Johnson Scholarship to all undergraduates. Selected students are offered full-time paid positions and earn up to 13 internship credits. Importantly, the university takes on the responsibility of forging relationships with Minnesota's representatives such as Rep. Jim Ramstad (R) and Rep. Martin Sabo (D).
Through forging these ties and financing the Johnson Scholars, the University of Minnesota has interestingly removed both of the structural factors that do so much to limit equal opportunity in Congress. Still, the university could finance only two Johnson Scholarships in 2004-05.
Such programs offer invaluable opportunities on the Hill to our less fortunate best and brightest, but with Hill interns numbering in the thousands at any one time, the structural difference such programs make in leveling the ground floor remains marginal.
Capitol Hill staffs are not made up exclusively of the well off and I am not out to assert that the well off do not have every right to work hard and make meaningful careers in Congress, but no American college students or recent graduates should be locked out of a career in public service because of the size of their bank account. Today, in the supposed ivory tower of democracy, they are.