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House members aflutter over new rules on clutter
Some members of Congress are refusing to clean up the corridors outside their offices; they say their hallway memorials to war dead should be left where they are.
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WASHINGTON
A standoff is developing in the halls of Congress -- but not over such pressing issues as the war in Iraq or health care. Instead, the fight is over exactly what can be placed inside those congressional corridors.
House leaders are trying to clean up the hallways, which have long been littered with cast-off computer equipment and discarded furniture, and they are cracking down with a new policy that bans almost any freestanding item from the corridors of the three House office buildings.
Caught in the cleanup: easel-mounted displays honoring soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, guest books on podiums outside office doors and even the occasional welcome mat.
Dozens of lawmakers have been issued citations and warned that the hallway displays and furniture violate the new policy. House Office Buildings Superintendent Frank Tiscione and the House Chief Administrative Officer, Daniel Beard, warned the lawmakers that they had until today to comply -- or else the offending items could be removed.
Some lawmakers are fighting back.
Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said he is going to "respectfully refuse to comply" with the edict and is refusing to take down a poster with photos and names of 26 men and women from southeast Texas who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Our poster isn't going anywhere," Poe said, before issuing a challenge to House management during a floor speech: "Come and take it if you dare."
Poe threatens to keep putting up a new memorial every time it is removed.
The issue has united an unlikely foursome in Congress, bringing the conservative Poe together with liberal stalwart Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., as well as Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.
Like Poe, the other three have hallway memorials honoring fallen soldiers.
They are pressing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to relax the rule and make an exception for war memorials.
McDermott, a Vietnam-era veteran, says his three easel-mounted posters, which memorialize 99 dead servicemen and women from the Seattle area, deserve to stay on display outside his office.
"Having had that experience, if someone died from my neighborhood ... I want to (honor that)," McDermott said. "I don't want people to forget" the casualties of the war, McDermott added.
Jones said his "Faces of the Fallen" memorial should not be lumped together with hallway trash.
The new policy went into effect April 17 after approval from Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. They sit on the commission that oversees much of the Capitol complex.
The new clean-up rule was designed to make it easier for staffers and tourists to flee the building in case of an evacuation and make it easier for people using wheelchairs to navigate congressional corridors.
The halls in the three House office buildings have grown increasingly cluttered in recent years as staff workers in crowded offices stashed unwanted furniture, cardboard boxes and discarded equipment in the hallways for janitorial staff to remove -- eventually.
Lawmakers also have increasingly used the area outside their main office doors to display posters and draw attention to issues. For instance, members of the Blue Dog coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats, such as Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., have put signs near their doorways pointing out the national debt.
In a July 21 letter to Jones, Pelosi defended the new rule, saying it was "intended to facilitate evacuation of the buildings in the event of an emergency, to bring the House office buildings into compliance with safety and disability access codes and to provide consistent application of signage and posting rules."
Pelosi said she shared the foursome's "commitment to our fallen soldiers," but she held firm. "Members may erect memorials or displays within their offices, but not in hallways where they present hazards to the disabled, visitors and congressional staff," she said.
An informal survey of House office buildings reveals that more than a dozen lawmakers still had memorials to fallen soldiers on hallway display as of July 24.
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