You better start appealing to the gods Michele, ’cause unpaid staffers write books and tell tales.

Congresswoman and unsuccessful presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, who has already complained this year of the “spending problem in Washington,” appears to have a spending problem of her own. A former staffer claims the Minnesota Republican is refusing to pay him and four other staffers for their work on the Iowa caucuses.

“I haven’t any idea, and I say that with great candor and humility, as to why Michele chooses not to pay a handful of staff,” said Peter Waldron, a consultant in charge of Christian outreach.

The money at stake is about $5,000, owed to the campaign staffers who were under the impression they would receive work for the final month they spent in Iowa cleaning up Bachmann’s campaign office.

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This time around, however, Bachmann apparently has more than $2 million in her campaign account, but is withholding the $5,000 Waldron says because he and four other staffers have refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement that would keep them from discussing “unethical, immoral, or criminal activity” they saw during the campaign.

Waldron says he decided to “go public” with his side of the story after a full year of “broken promises” by Bachmann’s finance chairman, Steven Pollack. He believes he and the other staffers are being punished for participating in a criminal investigation related to Bachmann’s alleged misuse of an email list.