Empty House: When speechmaking and legislating become performative, not much happens

Because Guy Rose made encounters in the House room, he attracted national interest. The 6- yr- ancient accompanied his parents, Rep. John Rose ( R- TN), to operate and sat in the background when the three- expression Tennessee Republican spoke on the House floor. While his parents was defending past president Donald Trump, Guy snarled for the cameras enough to become the family’s cable news star for the day.

Young Guy Rose was n’t alone. I could n’t help but make faces, too, because I was perched far above him in the press gallery and frequently spent hours sitting alone by myself.

For all the coverage of Capitol Hill, the angry gaggles of reporters surrounding the typical handful of members who have become cable news stars, the all capital- letter SCOOPS of glorified press releases, and the banal drama where legislators nearly every flirt with political and economic catastrophe yet apparently often avoid going over the precipice — there’s very little about what happens inside the House chamber. &nbsp,

The actual method of policy is often ignored, and the conversation on the floor is not even an excuse. For hours, writers ignore the room, leaving it to tourists, government officials, and, of course, whoever is speaking. &nbsp,

Except for the few people on C-Span and the reporters ‘ furious Congressional Record viewers, no one else pays attention. But what if people did? That idea sparked my week-long stay in the House room. I was convinced that there would be something of value, soft diamond left to be found. I was thinking of H. L. Mencken’s famous account of having to sit through social conventions as well as the designers who write political sketches in Westminster.

” One sits through long periods wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell — and then suddenly there comes a present so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably intense and absurd that one lives a wonderful year in an hours”.

I spent the entire week in the House Press Gallery. From the moment that the chamber was gaveled in each morning to when there was finally the motion to adjourn in the evening, I was there every moment. And I’m still waiting to experience that stunning year.

Bringing down the gavel

A mundane ritual that combines the 20th century and the 18th is at the beginning of congressional day. Before the session starts, office equipment and binders are taken out of desks and the now exotic whirl of a pencil sharpener can be heard in the background. A silver ink stand that was removed from a drawer and placed on the speaker’s rostrum is put on by a clerk wearing gloves. A member or two lingers around in the chamber, getting directions on what to do when the House is called to order. Then, eventually, a ceremonial silver mace is brought into the chamber and the day officially begins.

Rose’s remarks, wedged between a celebration of the latest inductees to the Greater Savannah Athletic Hall of Fame and a complaint about President Joe Biden‘s border policy, were only memorable for his sidekick. After all, his coworker Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA ) had only recently made a much spicier defense of Trump that compared him to both Nelson Mandela and Sir Thomas More. But the prospect of starting the week with a redheaded child making silly faces while waving around a rubber toy seemed to promise greater entertainment once the real lawmaking began. The issue, however, was that the majority of the day’s legislation was about post office names.

Mailing it in

In fact, Congress gave the names of more than 20 post offices on Monday. They were named for an eclectic array of people, some living, most dead. Long-standing post office employees, soldiers who perished in combat, and Johnny Cash, of course. They all would be memorialized through an often pro forma process in which the sponsor of the bill would speak about the importance of the person about to be immortalized by the United States Postal Service. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI), the Republican in charge of this on the floor, would add a few more words if the sponsor was a Democrat. If the sponsor was a Republican, Grothman’s counterpart, Rep. Jamie Raskin ( D- MD), would speak. It was a mechanical procedure that was largely performed by rote. The only interruption was when Grothman went too fully on autopilot, and there was a brief moment when he asked that” all members have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks” before the House had agreed to consider a bill to name a post office in Glendale, California, after former Navy Secretary Paul Ignatius. &nbsp,

This kept going. Finally, after hours of debate, the reserve of unnamed post offices had finally been emptied for the day and time for votes to be cast. First, Congress would vote on a resolution that would recognize the contributions of the Jewish American community and condemn antisemitism. Then there would be a vote to name the post office in Lakeland, Georgia, after Nell Patten Roquemore, a former postmaster and longtime community leader. Due to the second vote, Vince Fong, a newly elected member of Congress, was given a pause for the swearing-in ceremony to take place in the seat that Kevin McCarthy’s resignation left open. There would be a ceremony and a brief speech, and then Fong would get to celebrate the culmination of months of campaigning and decades in politics by voting on the name of the a post office in rural south Georgia.

There were more speeches after the votes ended. The first were one- minute speeches, which provided members with 60 seconds in the well of the House to opine on the topic of their choice. Rep. G. T. Thompson (R-PA ) praised the national fish and boating week, and Rep. Donald Norcross (D- NJ) expressed his support for the South Jersey Sikh community. Finally, it was time for special order speeches, in which members are given 60 minutes apiece for whatever topics move them. It’s a free-flowing process that allows for other people to participate and even lends itself to real conversation on the House floor. Monday’s installment of this was Republicans remembering the anniversary of D- Day by reading first- person accounts from those who served and the Congressional Black Caucus taking an hour to talk about foster care in the U. S.

The Capitol was already dim and empty for the day, and it all finally came to an end at 9 p.m. There were no even tourists in the House chamber. The next day held the promise of being more entertaining. After all, watching post offices be named could n’t possibly be more tedious.

After going postal

The following day, events resumed at 9 a.m. with the same regimen as the previous day. The Pledge of Allegiance was said, and the first round of speeches was given. Members of Congress spent a significant portion of Tuesday’s morning hour honoring recently deceased constituents, including a Marine who died in a training accident and the CEO who founded the Cowboy Channel on digital television. This is how the newspaper obituaries section came to life. &nbsp,

Then the day’s legislative process began. The first bill to be considered was legislation to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court in The Hague for its decision to indict top Israeli officials for actions taken in the war against Hamas. &nbsp,

The bill itself was n’t being debated at first. Instead, there was a discussion of” the rule” to go over it as well as an appropriations bill to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction, which was also scheduled for the week. The rule is the method by which terms of debate are set on the floor of the House. A whole committee, known as the Rules Committee, serves as the traffic officer and determines how long a bill can be debated on the floor and what, if any, amendments are allowed. &nbsp,

Instead of focusing solely on the bill’s fundamentals, the debate over the rule focused solely on procedure. The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jim McGovern ( D- MA ), insisted that Republicans were treating the process with contempt and simply trying to steamroll legislation through. According to McGovern,” My Republican colleagues are making this a joke out loud and make a complete and mocking of the committee process.” His counterpart, Rep. Reschenthaler repeatedly claimed that Democrats were worse in the majority and that he was being “gaslit” at the end of the heated discussion. They shook hands and had a pleasant conversation as it was time to vote on the rule.

The dynamics of the House floor vary depending on the vote. The first vote is always supposed to last 15 minutes to give members enough time to drop what they are doing and come to the floor of the House. It lasts for the longest time invariably, lasting at least 30 minutes. As members start to trickle into the chamber, they take their voting cards out of their wallets and find voting machines on the aisles of the chamber and cast their votes. They frequently examine the projection on the wall behind the press gallery in front of the chamber to see who and how voted. Then they all start to mix. As members mumble and talk, there is a certain formula to the conversations. It’s not often that a Democrat goes to the Republican side of the chamber or vice versa. It is only unremarkable yet discernible enough. There are usual cliques that form. Around the chamber’s back-to-center aisle is the Republican Conference’s most conservative component. There are clusters scattered throughout where one normally finds centrist Republicans, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Texas Republicans, and California Democrats. Members interact and mingle. There are brief conversations, back slaps, and hugs. Some simply relax and enjoy their phones. It is all a constant churn. The patterns might reveal valuable insights about American politics and how Congress functions if all members of Congress were tagged like migratory birds. At the very least, it would produce a doctoral thesis that might get someone a tenure- track job even in this job market. However, it’s unlikely that any member of Congress will soon be permanently attached to an ankle monitor due to the expulsion of George Santos. &nbsp,

After the vote was over, a meaningful discussion was on the agenda. First, there was the ICC bill. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that nearly everyone in the room thought the court had made the” clearly outrageous” decision to charge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant. The question was whether this bill was the right way to address it. There also appeared to be bipartisan consensus on this. Rep. Mike McCaul ( R- TX ), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, acknowledged that the legislation being voted on was a political ploy that would go nowhere. He said,” A partisan messaging bill was not my intention here, nor was it Mr. Meeks’s intention, but that’s where we are right now.” McCaul blamed the Biden White House for pulling” a 180″ for this but expressed the hope that” we can still get back to a bipartisan bill”. The debate eventually came to an end, and the bill was eventually overwhelmingly passed. Forty- two Democrats voted for it, while no Republicans voted against it, though two voted present.

The appropriations bill was brought up once that was over. The effect in the chamber was like a shift change in hockey. The staff members carrying large folders of documents to deal with the numerous amendments being offered left, and those dealing with spending for veterans and military construction came in.

This had to be exciting. The House should be moving in accordance with legislation. The way Congress is supposed to work is that all federal spending comes from 12 annual appropriations bills every year. However, Congress stopped functioning a while ago. Instead, this appropriations bill, traditionally one of the least controversial, was yet another place for culture war fights. Before amendment after amendment was offered to the underlying legislation, the debate initially focused on those, which would likely be eliminated if the Democratic-controlled Senate even took the time to consider an individual appropriations bill.

Most of the amendments were uncontroversial. This was n’t because they were biased or contained ideas with such blinding common sense that no one could disagree with them. Instead, it was because they did n’t do anything. There were amendments to increase funding and then reduce it in the same amount in order to send different messages to the VA, including the need for more housing and better mental healthcare for veterans. There was the same repetitive routine with the Democrat managing the bill, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz ( D- FL ), prefacing all her remarks by saying she” claimed time in opposition but not oppose” before each amendment passed without a recorded vote. &nbsp,

This caused some confusion when Rep. August Pfluger ( R- TX ) took exception to her repeating this formula after his amendment to increase funding and then decrease it to encourage the VA to study cancer exposures for military aviators. He offered this amendment before turning aside to chat with a colleague, with little regard for Wasserman Schultz, who had already endorsed it as a cancer survivor. Pfluger then rose up to express his surprise that there was opposition. The second-term Republican was relieved and responded with “very good” with a thin smile as a result of Wasserman Schultz’s explanation of the procedural formula.

Even some amendments that actually did things did nothing. Instead, they were minor scuffles in the culture war, with amendments prohibiting the VA from using any funds to remove the iconic Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of a sailor clutching a woman and kissing her, and another that forbids the organization from updating the agency’s motto, which was derived from an Abraham Lincoln quote. &nbsp,

Up for discussion

Then the votes happened again. They piled onto one another under largely unintended circumstances. The one moment of excitement happened on an amendment offered by Rep. Brian Mast ( R- FL ) to enable veterans to get access to medical marijuana. Initially, some Democrats voted against it after a protracted partisan debate ( including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA ) most recently ) upholding the president’s (R-AZ ) position on gun ownership and Rep. Eli Crane’s (R-AZ ) effort to make it easier for veterans who were deemed “mentally incompetent” to purchase guns ). Then there was a last- minute scramble to change their votes when they realized they actually supported the legislation. Members hurriedly filled out the green cards to change their vote, and there were yells to keep the vote open. Not all of them were paying attention. At least one Democrat, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), later claimed that he had accidentally voted against the amendment. &nbsp,

However, by the time he had released the statement, the speeches were already going on and on. After the usual tributes to retirees and moments for members to share the thoughts that cable news bookers would n’t let them share on networks with a more expansive viewership than C- Span, it was time for a whole new round of special orders, two hours ‘ worth in fact.

This included a regular series of Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ ) speeches urging people to pay attention to the national debt. This was followed by a two- man show with Reps. Chip Roy ( R- TX ) and Scott Perry ( R- PA ) going back and forth to complain about the policies of Biden and the Left, which had both led to an “invasion” of the southern border and made it more expensive for Roy to replace his car’s windshield. It reached its peak when freshman Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA ) took the opportunity to deliver a number of shorter speeches. He got to share his thoughts on a variety of topics ranging from artificial intelligence to&nbsp, high- speed rail before getting to induct a number of local police officers in his district to the” 2024 Third Congressional District Police Honor Roll” .&nbsp,

Time to stop

The same process began again on Wednesday morning. It resembled a previous day’s repetition a little. There was the same pledge, the same morning hour speeches — Rep. Russ Fulcher ( R- ID ) warned about the threat on the northern border, while Rep. Don Davis ( D- ND ) talked about the” sound of freedom” emanating from an Air Force base in his district — and then the same dreary amendments to increase funding and then decrease by the same amount, followed by Wasserman Schultz rising once again” to claim time in opposition but not to oppose”.

The final votes eventually took place. The bill passed, and members rushed for the exits. Over 50 people were traveling to Normandy to celebrate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Others were simply headed home. One more round of speeches was scheduled. Rep. John Rutherford ( R- FL ) had to pay tribute to Swisher, the company that makes Swisher Sweets, Rep. Dan Meuser ( R- PA ) had to condemn the abuse of the justice system that Trump was facing, and Rep. Melanie Stansbury ( D- NM) had to share the insight that “in New Mexico, we say water is life”. Before Congress called it a week before noon on a Wednesday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA ) made the comparison between the United States administering Puerto Rico as a commonwealth and the British Empire administering India as a viceroyalty. &nbsp,

I might have chosen a slow week. Perhaps if I sat through another week, I would witness important and substantive things happening. But I doubt it. Instead, it often felt like I was watching a political pantomime as members acted out the forms of a procedure adopted for a different era of politics. Much of the discussion sounded like archaic formalities carried out for the sake of tradition at a time when few, if any, bills are able to be freely amended on the floor. No one was persuaded because no one was even there listening. As for the rest, it just seemed like fodder that could be hoped to be snagged for local news, not to mention what Roy put down as “72 people watching on C-Span” and, of course, me sitting alone in the press gallery.

But then again, if no one is watching, it’s rational for members to treat what happens on the floor of the House as an afterthought. It appears as though our society values oratory and debating abilities, rather than the fora where members of Congress are supposed to display their virtuosity on cable news and not in the House’s well. &nbsp,

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It was n’t always like this. After all, the audience is allowed to watch the spectacle on the floor in the chamber. There are clear sight lines, and sound carries — indeed, the building was built long before the invention of the microphone. &nbsp,  

The question is whether any of this would change if more people were paying attention. Would more House chamber members take what happened in the House chamber more seriously if more reporters braved the unrelenting grind of post office namings and symbolic amendments? It’s quite possible. However, I’m not willing to do it now that it happened last week.

Ben Jacobs is a writer based in Washington, D. C.

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