Taxpayer-funded caucuses may have been officially eliminated from the House of Representatives more than 15 years ago, but taxpayer money is still flowing to some caucuses.
According to a story in Roll Call today, taxpayer money for the caucuses was cut off by Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) shortly after he took leadership of the House in the aftermath of the 1994 election. At the time, members paid dues to the caucuses from their official budgets, and the caucus office paid staff.
Now, the caucuses aren't allowed to have offices in the Capitol. But many of them have set up non-profit groups, and several still have congressional staff. Instead of members paying dues, members of caucuses now pay portions of staffers' salaries from their official office budget. Staff generally are listed as "shared staffers" in the various offices. Occasionally they will be listed as a caucus staffer, but more often they are not.
Roll Call points to Alexis Marks, who as a shared employee was paid a total of $27,675 from 13 different offices. According to Roll Call, Marks is a full-time staffer of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation and is housed in Rep. Zoe Lofgren's (D-Calif.) office, although there's no indication if any office expenses are paid by the delegation rather than Lofgren's personal office budget.
Finding caucus staff is even more difficult because there are many shared staffers in Congress who do work such as bookkeeping for many offices. The salary records also list these workers as "shared employees," and there is no way to tell which shared staffers are which.
