Over the last several years, under Republican rule, Congress’ schedule became shorter and shorter. The “work” week began late on Tuesday, and wrapped up early on Thursday. Single-day holidays for most of us (Memorial Day, for example), became an excuse to take off an entire week. Come adjournment, the 109th Congress will have worked just 103 days — seven fewer than the infamous “Do-Nothing Congress” of 1948.
To a certain extent, this should hardly come as a surprise. Republicans have lacked a policy agenda for quite a while, so bother working? And since they gave up on the basic mechanisms of the Legislative branch — administration oversight, passing budgets, holding hearings — lawmakers soon began to find utility in staying home a great majority of the time.
Those days are over.
Forget the minimum wage. Or outsourcing jobs overseas. The labor issue most on the minds of members of Congress yesterday was their own: They will have to work five days a week starting in January.
The horror.
Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to. “I have bad news for you,” Hoyer told reporters. “Those trips you had planned in January, forget ’em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th.” The reporters groaned. “I know, it’s awful, isn’t it?” Hoyer empathized.
Yes, perish the thought. Congress, with an ambitious agenda and actual work to do, plans to roll up their sleeves and actually start showing up to handle the business of state.
It’s the kind of move that will have a variety of positive effects, thought to hear GOP whining, you’d think Dems had proposed something truly radical.
“Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.”
Asking members of Congress to work the kind of hours most Americans work is anti-family? Please. If Kingston wants to spend less time in Washington handling the responsibilities that come with being a lawmaker, he has the option of resigning or retiring. (For that matter, if congressional Republicans really want to talk about mandates that “eats away at families,” perhaps they should address what happens to the personal lives of troops stationed in Iraq.)
Also, perhaps these guys should consider what Congress was like before the advent of modern air travel. Members would spend most of the year in Washington — and families managed to survive. Indeed, Congress was far less dysfunctional than it is now.
Which leads to a potential side benefit that the WaPo article didn’t mention. One possible explanation for the toxic political atmosphere in Washington the last several years is the fact that none of these guys have to deal with one another — ever. They fly in, work for a day or two, and fly out. There are no relationships forged, no cross-the-aisle partnerships formed. What was once common when lawmakers were actually stuck together in Washington for more than 48 hours at a time has largely disappeared, and this might play a small role in helping bring it back.
Or not, we’ll see. In either case, Republicans should probably keep in mind that complaining about working more than a couple of days a week, for a job that pays about $165,200 a year and includes amazing benefits, may not go over particularly well with voters. Just a thought.