House pages with Vice President Joe Biden in 2010. Photo courtesy of the Save the House Pages Facebook page.

There’s simply nothing glorious about most D.C. internships, nor will there much to crow about in a congressional internship program that D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton seeks to create.

Yesterday, Norton announced that she would seek to replace the House Page Program, which was discontinued in August after 200 years in operation due to budget concerns, with a volunteer summer internship program. Said a release from Norton’s office:

Based on the old Page Program, Norton’s bill requires summer interns in the program to have much of the same duties and responsibilities as House Pages. Unlike the House Page Program, however, Norton’s proposed internship program requires applicants to be in college or college-bound, and to provide for their own housing during the internship, as well as being unpaid.

The House Page Program used high school students to deliver documents and provide other clerical services to members; it cost $5 million a year to sustain due to housing that was provided to pages and the $1,800 monthly paychecks they drew. During the fall and spring semesters, anywhere between 60 and 72 pages worked on the Hill, while during the summer months the number usually rose to between 70 and 75.

“The need for Pages has become apparent to House Members in the short time since the House Page Program ended. The Page Program provided a uniquely valuable learning experience to students and performed important tasks for Members and their offices. My bill removes the traditional impediments that brought down the Page Program—the costs associated with providing education and housing to the Pages, and caring for minors,” said Norton in the release.

The curiosity of Norton’s proposal is its redundancy — most congressional offices already bring on interns to work the phones, sort mail and otherwise do the sorts of things that most staffers don’t want to. These new interns, though, will take on the exclusively clerical tasks handled by former pages — though, unlike the pages, they’ll be college-aged students for whom the experience may not be as useful or memorable.

Earlier this month, Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) introduced legislation that would reinstate the House Page Program; it only has 10 co-sponsors so far. There’s also a movement to save the program.