Over the last 10 years or so, more and more players have emerged on the political satire scene — Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Al Franken, Andy Borowitz, etc.

But the Capitol Steps have been skewering the politicos for much longer — since the early 1980s. And the Steps operate in a different milieu than the above-mentioned satirists: Their satire is in the form of clever song parodies.

When the group started out, it was just seven Senate staffers who were looking for ways to liven up the office Christmas party. But the Steps have become so popular over the years that their cast now includes 25 members. And although the troupe consisted exclusively of former Senate staffers for the first 15 years or so, they eventually had to hire some professional performers for their live shows and albums.

And, as has been the tradition for many years now, the Steps will perform two shows on the 4th of July (Sunday), at the Power Center, as part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. In fact, this show will mark the 20th straight year the Steps have performed at the Summer Fest — and all but the first show, in 1991, have been on the Fourth.

When it comes to finding targets for their satire, the Steps embrace an equal-opportunity lampooning ethic. “We make fun of both sides, Republicans and Democrats — as well as those in the middle,” says co-founder, producer and head writer Elaina Newport, who describes her own political stance as “extreme moderate.”

“Our performers and writers run the whole spectrum, in terms of our political views,” says Newport. But, she adds, they set their political allegiances aside when it comes to creating the songs and doing their live shows. Their primary allegiance is to the work — creating the funniest and most entertaining and, sometimes, most biting — satirical songs they can.

The Steps’ latest album is titled “Liberal Shop of Horrors.” It’s not an entire album devoted to satirizing the left, however. The songs on the album, as on all of their albums, mock conservatives as well as liberals.

“We just liked the title,” says Newport with a laugh during a recent phone interview from Washington.

The songs also mock government programs, as well as entertainment and sports figures. One song on the disc is “Cash for Codgers” — a song that riffs on both the Cash for Clunkers program and the health-care debate.

During that debate, right-wing fear-mongers were claiming that health care reform would include “death panels.” So, in the song, Newport and her fellow writers imagine a program where “you can trade in your uncle if he gets too expensive to maintain,” says Newport, again laughing.

Given how ubiquitous the Tiger Woods sex scandal was in the last year, they also couldn’t resist working up “Fly of the Tiger.”

Like most comics / satirists, the Steps were sorry to see George W. Bush leave the national scene, since his chronic mangling of the English language was rich comic fodder. “But (Sarah) Palin certainly turned out to fill some of that void,” says Newport.

Indeed, on the latest album, one song is sung from Palin’s point of view, and is titled “Everything’s Coming Up Roguey” — a reference to Palin supposedly “going rogue” during the ’08 campaign. “The women in the group have a lot of fun playing Palin,” adds Newport

“Plus, I think Barack Obama had comics in mind when he chose Joe Biden to be VP,” jokes Newport, given Biden's reputation for being loquacious and gaffe-prone.

Newport says the group writes about one new song a week, just to keep up with the latest developments. One recent effort is “Ballad of the Queen Berets,” a comic commentary on the debate over the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy by the U.S. military.

On the day of this interview, in mid-June, the troupe was working up a bit about the BP oil spill. The BP spill, like Hurricane Katrina five years ago, is a dicey subject for satire, and Newport knows that the writers have to walk a fine line. “Obviously, the BP spill is a terrible disaster, like Katrina was, and those events in themselves clearly are not funny. But we can make jokes at the expense of the people in power, like we did in ’05, with our songs about FEMA and ‘Heck of a job, Brownie.’ And now we’re mocking BP executives.” Listen to Capitol Steps "Under BP" (MP3).

Initially, says Newport, it was difficult to make fun of President Obama, since he is so cool and unflappable. “But we eventually realized we could do something with that, because he is so unflappable” — to the extent that his critics have said he needed to show more anger over the BP spill.

Newport is a regular watcher of shows like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” But since she’s “in the business,” she’s even working when she’s watching those shows. “I tend to watch it from an analytical point of view, asking myself, ‘OK, now, what is it that makes that so funny?’”

Then, she adds, with another laugh, “Sometimes I think it would be nice to be able to just sit back and laugh at the jokes, like everyone else.”

Kevin Ransom, a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com, first interviewed the Capitol Steps’ Elaina Newport for The Ann Arbor News in 1991.

Watch Capitol Steps performing "401k" live: