Wx Dispatch: Tuesday edition
So I’m sitting in the U.S. House press gallery Tuesday night, watching the federal honorables take their only three controversial votes of the day. I focus in on Rep. Howard Coble as the Speaker and the clerk struggle to make themselves heard over the din of an unruly chamber.
At the end of the Speaker’s spiel on the bill - honoring the Florida Gators for their BCS victory - Coble leans over a chair, inserts a small plastic card into a slot on the back and pushes a button. It was an obviously practiced move that took all of a second or two.
The bill, one could argue, was hardly the most important piece of legislation to move that day. However, the act is important. It is at once at the core of a Congressman’s job – to vote on business before the legislature – and the official duty on which they spend the least time, despite voting on dozens and dozens of bills in a given month.
A few more random thoughts, quotes and observations from my day on the hill:
- Although he didn’t know it, a reader who recently e-mailed John Robinson provided our first reader-supplied question of the trip. The question: why did Coble vote against HR 2, which would raise the federal minimum wage. His answer:
“I don’t think a very minor increase in wage has any real impact for those who are suffering financially . . . . Many of them are youngsters, high school kids. And small business people tell me that even though it’s a small increase that many times they’ll be forced to got from five employees to three employees. So I just don’t believe it address the problem of people who are at the bottom of the financial poll.”
Coble did note that he had so far gotten one piece of negative correspondence on that vote so far, addressed to “You damned SOB…”
- If you’re wondering how it is that Congress can seem like its off in its own little world, it’s because, well, it is. Congressmen and their staffers can get three squares a day, go to the dry cleaners, get a hair cut and a shoe shine and never leave their security perimeter, which encompasses the Capitol Building as well as the office buildings that flank it.
- People look at you funny here if you don’t have a Blackberry. I think they all look odd walking about staring in the direction of their feet.
- Democrats are still getting used to being in the majority. “It’s the little things,” one staffer told me, “like being able to book a conference room.”
- On some down time I went up and watched part of the afternoon session in the House. Basically, they were running through bills deemed not to be controversial and basically passing them with little or no rancor (and few people in the chamber, although that’s another post). There’s a fair amount that gets done up here with Democrats and Republicans cooperating. You’ll rarely see that stuff in the paper – often its technical in nature – and it’s duller than dog poop to watch on C-Span. But it’s sort of heartening to know this place isn’t as dysfunctional as it seems. It’s just looks that way when they try to do anything really important, like, say, pass a budget.
More here tomorrow Wednesday evening and next week in the paper.