The Senate released their FY 22 spending bills last week, and it doesn’t include funding for the WH/EOP internship program or funding for State Department interns. This an unfortunate omission, since the House allocated $4.5 million for the WH/EOP program and $10 million for State Department Interns.

As the House and Senate go into conference, there’s still time to make a difference. Right now, our best strategy is to add pressure to ensure this provision will make it to the President’s desk.

Please sign onto the letter below, urging Senators Patrick Leahy, Richard Shelby, Chris Coons, Lindsey Graham, Chris Van Hollen, and Cindy Hyde-Smith to make sure that the funding for State Department and White House interns are included in the final bill.**

Please sign the letter by the EOD on Monday, November 8th. We’ll be sending the letter on Tuesday, November 9th, but you can continue to sign onto the letter and we’ll make sure it’s reflected on our website.

** Your support of this letter will only reflect your views, not your employers (unless your org is publicly signing on which we strongly encourage).

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Dear Chairman Leahy, Vice Chairman Shelby, Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Graham,
Chairman Van Hollen, and Ranking Member Hyde-Smith:
 
As you finalize the Fiscal Year  2022 Appropriations bills, we respectfully request that you include $10 million for the State Department internship program and $4.5 million for the White House internship program, which was incorporated in the House adopted bill. These funds would help open the doors to working in public service for all, regardless of a prospective intern’s socioeconomic status. Too many prospective public servants are limited by financial circumstances these funds can help fix.

This funding falls directly in line with recommendations made by Congress’s 2017 Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, which released a 2020 report recommending all federal government interns be paid to “expand the socioeconomic diversity of interested applicants and interns and improve competitiveness with private-sector internships.”

We know that paid internships work. Your recent decision to fund congressional internships has allowed thousands of young people from across the country to intern on Capitol Hill and in district offices, encouraging them to consider a future in government service. You’ve opened the door to one pathway to civil service. Let’s open another.

Our funding request is supported by approximately 300 alumni from the White House internship program spanning the last five  administrations. Similarly, support for the State Department internship program is also led and supported on a bipartisan basis by Senator Tim Scott (SC), Senator Cory Booker (NJ) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (TX), who introduced, S.599 - Department of State Student Internship Program Act to support funding for  State Department interns.

With fewer than 6% of the current federal workforce under the age of 30, we must find solutions that develop future generations of public leaders. Paid internships are a pathway to more diverse and representative civil servants and a federal government more capable of weathering the challenges ahead. An absence of family wealth should not be a barrier to public service.

Now is time for the Senate to expand paid federal internships beyond Congress, starting with the White House and State Department. Thank you for your leadership in strengthening our democracy.