Being out of sight on Capitol Hill doesn't mean being out of the money. Nearly 500 congressional aides earn $100,000 or more annually, including many who crossed that threshold for the first time this year.
Members of the six-figure club include a number of chiefs of staffs, legal counsels for congressional committees, House and Senate chaplains and many aides who toil behind the scenes for members of Congress.A couple of well-paid staffers have more-personal connections to their bosses. One six-figure chief of staff is also his boss' longtime Washington housemate. Another, who was paid just under $100,000, recently married her boss.
A review of House and Senate clerks reports shows 474 staffers were paid at an annual rate of $100,000 or more in the period that ended in March, the last for which there are figures.
That's up about 20 percent from 1995, when the number of six-figure staffers dropped after Republicans took control of Congress and cut jobs. The current number of six-figure House staffers still remains slightly below what it was in the last year of Democratic control.
The Associated Press reviewed the 1996 clerks' reports, while the 1995 and 1994 data comes from annual surveys by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
The number of chiefs of staff or other top aides on the personal staffs of senators and congressmen receiving six-figure salaries has increased from 90 in 1995 to 150 this year. Most were staffers whose bosses bumped up their top aides' salaries from the high-five figures to more than $100,000 during this period.
Among them were retiring House Democrats Tony Beilenson of California, Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas, Ray Thornton of Arkansas and Charles Wilson of Texas and retiring House Republicans Jack Fields of Texas and John Myers of Indiana. Their chiefs will have to find new jobs next year.
Two-thirds of senators - 35 Republicans and 30 Democrats - are paying at least one staff member a six-figure salary this year. In the House, one-sixth of representatives do so - 40 Republicans and 32 Democrats.
"These people making six-figure salaries are not political hacks," says Rick Shapiro, executive director of the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonprofit group providing management training, research and consulting services to Congress.
Instead, he said, they are "very well-educated people with very strong governmental backgrounds and experience who in most cases could easily get a job in the private sector lobbying the Hill for significantly more than they are making working on the Hill.
"The trend in Congress is significant belt-tightening, and the gap between congressional staff pay and the pay of executive branch staffers continues to widen every year," Shapiro added.
Congressional staff salaries have risen only marginally in recent years, he said. The foundation's figures indicate average pay increased just 3.6 percent for Senate chiefs of staff from 1993 to 1995.
In Ohio, a staffer's salary provided an opening for a campaign issue.
House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich pays $108,000 a year to his chief of staff, Donald Thibaut. The Budget Committee staff director gets even more, but it is Thibaut who has shared a home with Kasich in the Washington suburbs for 14 years. They have separate residences in Ohio.
The house-sharing arrangement prompted Kasich's Democratic opponent to file a complaint with the Justice Department alleging that the congressman benefits personally from Thibaut's salary.
Kasich responded that he's the victim of smear tactics.
The job of chaplain dates back to the First Continental Congress in 1774. The idea of having a volunteer chaplaincy has been floated periodically, but for now, it remains a six-figure job.
Senate chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie - known for his former nationally syndicated radio and TV program "Let God Love You" - receives $116,000 a year, while the House chaplain, the Rev. James Ford, gets $123,000.
Although their most visible function is opening daily legislative sessions with prayer, the chaplains also counsel members of Congress, their families and staff, and they preside at weddings and funerals.
"This office is the one office on the whole Hill" where "people come to you when they know you and they trust you and they know that you're not going to write a book," said House chaplain Ford.
Sonja Bates Skurdal, a top aide to and the new wife of Rep. Jim Bunn, R-Ore., left the public payroll last month amid controversy. Bunn divorced his wife of 17 years and married Skurdal, whom he was paying $97,500 annually to be his chief of staff.
The 31-year-old Skurdal quit that job after a press report characterized her as the highest-paid but least-experienced congressional aide among Oregon's House members. She started working on Capitol Hill in 1995.