The Tour

(Note - The following entry is about Wednesday, July 9. It wasn't posted until now because I took a long time writing it up carefully, and I was waiting for it to be approved for posting.)

Wednesday, July 9 was a very full day for me. I already wrote in an earlier blog about the Press Conference I attended that day at which Representative Altmire and Senator Casey announced that they were planning to introduce the SAVES Act to help volunteer fire fighters and volunteer EMS organizations to confront rising gas prices. The evening of this day was perhaps the most exciting day of my whole Congressional Fellowship. That evening, I not only got to see the floor of the House of Representatives for the first time, but Congressman Altmire also gave me a personal historical tour of the Capitol Building.

For two weeks I had looked forward to seeing the floor of the House of Representatives in person. I had asked the Scheduler if she would let me know when would be a good time for me to go observe a vote on a bill, and Wednesday was the day. Around 5:30pm, the Scheduler and I accompanied Congressman Altmire on his walk from his office to the floor of the House. The Representatives were going to vote on "Suspension Bills." In class, do you remember how I taught you that in order for a bill to pass the House it only needed to have a "simple majority" (half + 1, or the minimum needed to have a majority)? Well,
Suspension Bills are different. When the Representatives vote on Suspension Bills they vote to suspend the normal rules and to adopt new rules. Under these new rules, each bill must get 2/3 to pass, and you also cannot add amendments to these bills. Because the regular rules are suspended when voting on these bills, these bills are called "Suspension Bills." Suspension Bills are usually non-controversial bills.

I got to ride in the Members elevator and go through all sorts of security because we were with the Congressman. (Members of Congress are often referred to as "Members" for short). As we were crossing the street from the Longworth Building to the Capitol Building, Congressman Altmire explained that when a vote is about to occur, the policemen keep all the walk signals green and the traffic lights on red so the Congressmen are able to walk across the street. When we were walking into the Capitol Building, Senator Hagel walked in ahead of us and he said hello to Congressman Altmire. The Scheduler took me
up into the gallery and I got to see the floor of the House of Representatives in person for the first time. This is the room where they give the State of the Union Address. When I first looked down on the floor, all the Representatives were walking around and talking with each other. It's a really special thing to see almost every member of the House on the floor. On the back of each seat on the end of every other row is a little box. This is what the Members use to vote. Each Representative has a special card they insert into this box. After they insert their card in the box, they press "yes," "no," or "present," depending on how they want to vote.

On the floor of the House in addition to the Representatives themselves, there are only a few other people that are allowed to be there. These are the respective staffs of the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader, the Minority Leader, the Majority Whip, and the Minority Whip. The "Whip staff" passes out blue pieces of paper listing the bills that are being voted on. The Whip Staff also keep a close eye on the voting board that indicates how each of the Members has voted. This a "scoreboard" type screen located on the wall of the Gallery behind the Speaker's Chair. This screen shows the last names of all 435 Members of the House of Representatives. If a Member has the same last name as someone else, it will list their State's initials as well. Next to each name will be a green tally (yes), a red tally (no), or a yellow/orange tally (present). The Whip staff "run around the room" to try to get Members to change their votes or to try to convince Members to vote a certain way if they haven't yet voted. The scoreboard screen reminded me very much of a baseball game, which, after all, is America's pastime. When the vote is finished, the screen disappears - you can't even see where it was. It looks as though there is just fabric on the wall.

During the votes on the Suspension Bills, Congressman Altmire TWICE went up to the Gallery where I was sitting and answered my questions. He showed me his voting card and I got to examine it. He also gave me the blue paper from the Whip staff that lists the bills. Most significantly, while he was on the floor, he specifically walked around to a place where I could see him put his voting card in the box on the back of a chair to vote and looked up at me to make sure I was watching him vote.

I couldn't bring anything to write with into the Gallery, but I remember something I wanted to share with you that Congressman Altmire told me during one of the times he came up to the Gallery. When the Speaker of the House is not there, another Representative becomes "Speaker Pro Tem" (temporary Speaker). The Speaker's Chair always has to be occupied and there is only one person allowed on the Speaker's dais at one time. Congressman Altmire told me how, of all 435 Representatives, he has logged the fourth most amount of time in the Speakers Chair during this term of Congress. Congressman Altmire worked for 5 years as a staffer for former Representative Pete Peterson from Florida. He saw how presiding in the Speakers Chair worked and always wanted to do it.

Another nice thing I noticed was that Congressman Altmire at one point went up to the Congressman who was presiding in the Speaker's Chair and congratulated him. I found out later that it was this Congressman's first time in the Speaker's Chair since coming to Congress through a special election.

After legislative business was over, Congressman Altmire gave the Scheduler and me a special history tour of the Capitol Building. I knew from seeing all the history books in his office, most of which are biographies of Presidents, that Congressman Altmire loves history. This became especially clear as he took us on the tour. Since the Capitol Building was closed to public tours at that point, it was almost entirely empty. Congressman Altmire took us to Statuary Hall, which is where the House of Representatives met for about fifty years before moving to its current room. In Statuary Hall are two statues of people from every state (though these statues were not in the room when it was used as the House chamber). There is a great story about John Quincy Adams discovering a secret facet of this room. After he was President, John Quincy Adams (son of John Adams) served with distinction in the House of Representatives. He discovered that his desk was located in such a spot that he could hear the conversations of people across the room without them knowing it. He would put his
head down on his desk and pretend to be asleep, but in reality was listening to the conversations of Representatives on the other side of the room. Representative Altmire knew where the "magic" spot on the floor was and demonstrated to us. We stood where John Quincy Adams' desk was and he stood on the spot on the other side of the room where we could "overhear" him. Since the room was entirely empty except for us (quite rare since it's usually packed with tourists), it was easy to do the experiment. You could indeed hear him talk from across the room, though what you were hearing was not the sound coming from across the room. Rather, it appeared as though the sound was coming from right next to you. The echoes in this room were one of the main reasons the House had to move to a new chamber in 1857, where they are still serving today,

There is a special room in the Capitol Building called the Lyndon Baines Johnson room. LBJ is one of Congressman Altmire's favorite presidents, so he was excited to show us this room. Although the room was originally intended for the Senate Library, the first recorded tenant was the Senate Post Office, which occupied the room from 1859-1884. In 1885, the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia was assigned to this room, and used it until 1958. One important piece of history that occurred in this room was that the Senate Park Commission was established in it in 1901. The Commission had a significant effect on the development of Washington, DC as we know it today. Senator James McMillan, who persuaded the Senate to establish the Senate Park Commission in 1901, created a plan to organize the design of the city around "green parks, recreation areas, and grand public edifices." The Commission also stopped the construction of a railroad terminal on the Mall, and proposed that the area be planted with grass and lined with museums and government buildings. Union Station, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Cannon and Russell Congressional office buildings all were created under the McMillan
Plan.

Before Lyndon B. Johnson was president, he was a Senator and served as Senate Majority Leader. In 1959, when he was serving as Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson moved his leadership office from the third floor of the Senate wing to rooms S-211 and S212 (S-211 later became known as the LBJ Room). Johnson became vice President in 1961 and kept his office in the room until he took over the presidency in 1963. S-211 was Johnson's favorite room during this time. (Since
I didn't have anything to write with, I had to do a little research to fill in my memory with the above facts. So, much of the above comes from the following website):
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:FOsIu7C5Jf0J:www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/resources/pdf/Lyndon_B._Johnson_Room.pdf+Lyndon+Baines+Johnson+room&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

One of the last parts of Congressman Altmire's tour was my favorite. We started at the "House" side of the Capitol Building. There is a hall that goes all the way through the Capitol Building to the Senate side - if you look left and right you can see the doors at either end. He said to us to "remember this door." We walked all the way through the Capitol almost all the way to the other side. Shortly before the other end, on the Senate side, there is a short hallway off of which were rooms that Sam Rayburn used to use. Rayburn was Speaker of the House during FDR's presidency, when Harry S Truman was Vice President. Congressman Altmire told the story of how, one day, Truman was back in one of these rooms talking with Sam Rayburn. The phone rang. Truman picked up the phone, listened for a minute, and his "face went white." Without saying anything to Rayburn, he quickly left the room and ran all the way down the hallway of the Capitol to the door Congressman Altmire had said "to remember." Congressman Altmire said "You could hear the heels of his shoes clicking on the floor as he ran." I smiled when he said this because you could tell, by using this imagery, that he appreciated the "narrative," story-telling
nature of history. He explained that when Truman got to the other side of the Capitol, which is indeed a very long hallway, he got into a car waiting to pick him up. When he got to the White House, they welcomed him there as "Mr. President." FDR had died and Truman had ascended to the Presidency. It was so neat to hear this story told right where it had happened. I looked all the way down the hallway at the other door, and I imagined hearing the clicking of Truman's shoes as he ran down the hallway.

When we left the Capitol Building, we walked down the steps outside of it. When we were part of the way down the steps, Congressman Altmire said to turn around and look up. When I did, you could see this magnificent view of the Capitol dome above you. It was clear that Congressman Altmire had a real appreciation for where he was, for the job that he was doing, and for the history of the building and the office of Representative. He told me that the first time he saw that view was when he came for his interview to be a Congressional staffer.

As we were walking back to his office, he asked me if I had any other questions. I asked him, "What would you want my students to know?" He smiled and said "Now, you're getting all serious on me." He said simply that he would want them to know that he'll try "to accomplish as much as I can while I'm here and that I'm here to help my constituents."