At The Hill, I have an article about a little-known dip into the pork barrel: big bonuses for congressional staff if there’s money left over at the end of the year, especially if the money will fall into the hands of the other party at the end of the year.

How can there be money left over when the government is running multi-hundred-billion dollar deficits? Well, you might ask. But each department has its own appropriation, and those accounts often have “money left in the budget” as the end of the year approaches, necessitating the famous end-of-the-year spending spree.

In the congressional case, I found examples like this on committee staff budgets:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee showed similar patterns. In 2005, when the Republican leadership was spending its “own money” on year-end bonuses, several staffers received less than 10 percent of their annual salaries, while a few lucky staffers received extra payments of as much as 17 percent.

But when GOP Energy and Commerce bosses faced losing their chairmanship after the 2006 election, they decided to leave no dollar behind for the Democrats. Lucky staffers then got windfalls of 31 percent on a $35,000 salary, 30 percent on a $50,000 salary, 18 percent on a $100,000 salary, and so on. At least 15 committee staffers got bonuses of between $11,000 and $17,600.

And I concluded, cheekily:

Members of Congress are free to pay their staffers whatever they choose, up to an annual ceiling, so there’s nothing illegal about year-end bonuses, even year-end, post-election, before-the-other-party-gets-in bonuses.

But this pattern illustrates a big difference between the private and public sectors. In the private sector, if your customers become dissatisfied with your product, you tend to make less money. In the public sector, you get a couple of months to double-dip before you lose control of the money. For participating in a Congress that voters booted out of office, these bonuses are a handsome parting gift.

A big tip of the hat to Cato interns Schuyler Daum and Jonathan Slemrod for poring over payroll records, and to LegiStorm for making such information about Congress public and accessible.