EHsE

For a congressional job, you pretty much need to intern on the Hill, and express an interest in going down the press secretary route rather than the legislative aide route - though both will need to write up small speeches for members, the press folks usually do the bigger ones. You'll never see Congressional jobs on any job sites, it's 95% word of mouth and being there at the right time when a spot opens up.

The fact that the kids on the hill get paid now is a nice change at least - it really did gate the jobs to kids whose folks could support them while they did an unpaid stint, then prop them up when they were starving on those 30k staff assistant salaries.

Once they made that change, I used to joke with my old chief of staff that I expected back pay for my time interning.

Each office was allotted 25k a year to pay interns - they previously had to eat it out of their own office funds. They can decide to do so if they go over the 25k allotment.

https://cha.house.gov/member-services/house-paid-internship-program

How is that corrupt? You can call your local member's office right now and ask to apply for an internship.

Wouldn't they already know he was there? Considering they're the ones who put them there.

I think OP meant he has to hide it from other citizens.