January 13th, 2011

Jan 13th 2011 Today was pretty educational. My fellow interns and I were introduced to Capitol Tours which we will lead in the coming weeks. Just some overview of how the Capitol came to be about and how we will show visiting constituents around. Thanks to Dr. Euchner last semester when we watched about 5 hours of the CSPAN coverage of the intricacies of the Capitol on DVD. I am already halfway there when starting to study the things I need to know! I also got to go to the Library of Congress Madison building for an intern orientation about the various resources that LOC can provide for us. The Congressional Research Service or CRS provides lawmakers and their staff with unparallel research staff that can find anything about an issue. You have to be specific or you could wind up with wheelbarrows full of information when you are asking. It is nice to have research experts-about 500 in all that are at our disposal. If only I could have tapped this when writing research papers for my undergrad years! The LOC is so big it is in 3 different buildings, the Jefferson, Adams and Madison buildings. I only went in the Madison one but will visit the others in my travels around the Hill I’m sure. The day went fast which always helps and I am looking forward to Friday and no snow unlike at home where you guys are buried in it! I did also get to go onto the floor of the Senate! It’s a surreal experience that I enjoyed! Unfortunately no pictures of course. We went in through the Democratic cloakroom that the Senator’s themselves enter through. There are personal phone booths that are named after the senior senator that occupies the booth. Only Senators can utilize them for private phone calls. I saw quite a few desks as they all have nameplates and we went down to the majority leader and minority leader area in front. We weren’t allowed to sit in any of them but it was still interesting to see what the Senators see. The camera lights are really bright so that’s why they probably blink fast or not into the camera! It was relatively small but a very nice-sized room that would be fun to debate in. The cloakroom was the staging area and very busy when the Senate is in session. Freshman and Sophomore Senators mostly control the Rostrum and preside over the Senate since VP Biden only comes over for important issues. So they kind of fight over the job so they can get so many hours presiding. After 100 hours they get a golden gavel but Claire hasn’t presided enough yet, but she did preside the first day of the 112th Congress on the 5th. In the 80’s when the Republicans were naming all the rooms and other things in the Capitol, the Democrats were afraid they would have nothing to name after themselves. So they started naming the phone booths and Sen. Inouye received stationary that proclaimed him chairman of the phone booths as a joke from the staff. There is a copy of the stationary in his booth named after him.