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Ben Pershing’s Player of the Week: The Anonymous Army on Capitol Hill

Flip on C-SPAN late at night, and you may well see a lawmaker giving a lengthy and impassioned speech to a largely empty House chamber. But while the room may look deserted, off-camera and behind the scenes there are dozens of aides keeping the place running.

Congress works largely because an anonymous army of clerks, parliamentarians, doorkeepers, cops and even janitors toil away — sometimes late at night, sometimes on weekends or holidays — to make sure things go smoothly. Unfortunately, the only times those people do get public attention is when things don’t go smoothly, as was the case this week on the $307 billion Farm Bill.

FDC applauds Mr. Pershing for digging a little deeper to shine some light on the staffers burrowed in the Dome.

Ben also highlights the three previous biggest “clerical errors” from the past ten years:

May 2001- Budget Conference Report
August 2005 – Highway Bill
February 2006 – Deficit Reduction Act