Capitol back to ‘almost normal’
WASHINGTON — The underbelly of the U.S. Capitol complex was a flurry of movement on Wednesday.
Below the Senate, rumbling trains ferried lawmakers to a major vote, surrounded by aidesclutching phones and coffee. Reporters staked out the lawmakers near escalators and elevators — Sen. Ted Cruz, RTexas, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, IVt., aired their hopes and grievances before being whisked away.
On the House side, representatives and staff crowded the cafeteria for lunch and huddled at the
Dunkin Donuts and Au Bon Pain for afternoon meetings.
“We’re back to almost normal,” U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Centre, said, gesturing happily toward a group of people in his waiting room after a sit-down interview with the Post-Gazette last week.
Yet that “almost normal” is far cry from a full return to life-as-usual in the U.S. Capitol following the COVID-19 pandemic and just six months after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the nation’s legislative chambers.
As the engine of Washington revs back up in some ways, the lingering political battles surrounding the Jan. 6 riot and fears of another wave of COVID-19 among unvaccinated Americans still disrupt the daily churn of lawmaking.
Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., rejected two House Republicans for a Jan. 6 committee, led by Democrats, because they voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, RCalif., promptly called reporters to a press briefing room to announce he would pull all the GOP nominees, railing against the commission as a sham.
After the mob was cleared from the Capitol on Jan. 6, 147 House Republicans, including every Republican from Western Pennsylvania, voted against certifying the election based on Mr. Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about widespread voter fraud.
Senate Republicans had earlier this month blocked a proposal that would have created a bipartisan commission — which, in the style of the 9/11 Commission, was aimed at getting to the root of the attack that led to five deaths and sent lawmakers and staff scrambling for safety during a routine joint session of Congress. House Democrats approved
the commission in May, but the Senate fell six votes short of what was needed to establish it.
The dispute further dimmed hopes that the Capitol Hill community — and country as a whole — would find some measure of closure after the first invasion of the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812.
Also last week, the delta variant, a highly contagious strain of COVID-19, infected a number of Capitol staffers, including a fully vaccinated senior aide to Ms. Pelosi. That aide met with a group of Texas Democrats who traveled to Washington to advocate for voting rights. At least six of the Texas lawmakers, all fully vaccinated, tested positive for the virus.
In a note to congressional offices, Brian P. Monahan, the Capitol physician, warned the delta variant is “much more contagious” and poses “a dire health risk to unvaccinated individuals.” He added he would not reinstate a mask mandate for the House and Senate office buildings.
Masks last week reappeared on the faces of many lawmakers, staff and reporters — along with fears of more prolonged restrictions after weeks of apparent progress.
“I was starting to get offers to go get coffee, let’s meet at the American Grille, things like that” said
Aaron Jones, director of congressional relations at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former Capitol Hill staffer. “I don’t know if that’s going to remain the same through August now that we’re seeing some of the breakthrough cases.”
Mr. Jones suggested, in an April 2020 op-ed published by The Hill, that Congress, over the long term, could focus more on local districts and spend less time in Washington, leading to a “total makeover” in the institution.
“On the whole, everybody, from members to staff, they want to get back to the way it was,” Mr. Jones said. “They like having their constituents able to access them.
“You really feel how much of a human institution it is when you have to deal with this situation,” he said.
Reasons for hope
There have, undoubtedly, been reasons for hope in Washington, where more than 70% of residents have received the COVID-19 vaccine, allowing in-person activities to cautiously resume.
Throngs of summer tourists have returned to the National Mall, riding doubledecker buses, zipping on scooters and lining up at street vendors hawking jumbo pretzels, chili dogs, tacos and novelty ice cream.
Museum and cultural sites offer timed passes so visitors can spread out.
This month, the last of the extra security fencing around the Capitol complex — a vestige of the Jan. 6 attack — was taken down. The National Guard troops and military check-points that popped up around the city are long gone, although extra U.S. Capitol Police presence is visible along the boundaries and through the marble halls.
Outside the U.S. Capitol last week, families took selfies in front of the dome cast against a sky heavy with afternoon thunderstorms and hazy with wildfire smoke blown in from the Western states.
At the same time, members of the public remain shut off from the Capitol complex. The Capitol Visitors Center has been eerily vacant, with its gift shops shuttered and tour-group headsets stowed away. Congressional hearings are available to watch online via live-streamed video, and often lawmakers will opt to attend virtually from their offices a short walk away.
Congressional offices were once destinations for hordes of people from across the country who would walk into lawmakers’ offices to advocate their cause.
Lobbying groups of all stripes would organize “flyins,” when ordinary Americans could meet with their representatives or attend important committee hearings to support or protest a specific policy.
In October 2019, for example,the United Steelworkers dispatched 600 members to Capitol Hill, dropping off fliers to urge members to vote for pro-union policies.
With continued restrictions, Mr. Jones said, it’s conceivable that “the people who can access the building are going to be former members of Congress and friends of members of Congress.”
“It’s going to be an even tighter circle now,” Mr. Jones said. “You’re going to have less people with more access.”
Congressional staff face the same back-to-the-office realities as workers in other sectors. They are easing back into the routine of donning dress clothes and hopping on a train for the commute to Capitol Hill and the physical demands of helping to carry out the schedule that lawmakers keep.
Television screens in the House cafeteria broadcast the Jan. 6 debate and delta variant news as Capitol staffers calmly munched on sandwiches and scrolled through their phones.
The turnover rate, by one measure, has soared in 2021. In the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30, Capitol Hill research firm LegiStorm found House offices already cycled through 62% of their staff and Senate offices cycled through more than a quarter of their staff.
That’s significantly higher than the average turnover rate the firm measured from 2001 to 2020: 21% in the House and18% in the Senate.
Mr. Thompson, whose 15th Congressional District spans roughly a quarter of Pennsylvania’s land mass, said he is holding about half of his D.C. meetings in person.
For in-person visits, “you have to schedule in advance and bring them up, which is just crazy,” said Mr. Thompson, who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in January. “You still have people not traveling to Washington just because of their issues with hotels or restaurants.”
The D.C. office of U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, who also voted against certifying the election results, has seen virtually no in-person visitors since the pandemic began, a reality that has forced the energetic former used car salesman to go virtual.
“This is a face-to-face business,” Mr. Kelly said last week, sitting at his desk on the seventh floor of the Longworth House Office Building. “I think we’re getting too comfortable with not doing that.”