Nearing the end

Well, the end is near. Last night, I attended a reception for the interns from the University of Connecticut's program, including for one of my fellow interns, Eric. Rep. Murphy spoke at the reception, and my entire office came out too. Chris spoke about his time as an intern in Senator Dodd's office in 1995, when our Chief of Staff, Josh, also interned with Dodd, something that they didn't know until two years ago when interviewing staff for the office. He spoke of how that internship inspired him to go into public service as a career, managing a congressional campaign against the woman he would beat ten years later, Nancy Johnson, and in two years, he was running for the State House. It was one of the few times which I have seen him speak about sort of personal issues, as opposed to a short floor speech about a given topic, such as health care, when we all know his position, and the gist of what he is going to say.

It was sad to say goodbye to Eric last night, though he is trying to get work on the Hill as a staffer somewhere, so we hope to stay in touch. I still have about two weeks, so I'll keep on blogging until the very end.

Tea Party

As you may know, yesterday, Tax Day, was Tea Party Day for many conservatives upset about the Administration's spending and stimulus policies. For the past several weeks, Murphy's office has received several tea bags in the mail, from people supposedly protesting Congress' actions. Tea bags don't make it through the intense security of the Congressional mail, because of the 2001 anthrax attacks. I don't really understand what these people are protesting, since the original tea party, in 1773, was protesting Taxation without Representation, and the only people who can legitimately complain about that are DC residents.

Congressional Recess

Greetings again, and apologies for my sporadic posting. I've had a busy few weeks, for a variety of reasons, including two papers which I have due this Monday, ahhhh!!

The Congress has passed its budget resolutions for FY 2010, which is only the beginning of the process, which will last at least through September, when the Fiscal Year starts, and that's assuming that the process is on time. The big question on that front is whether Democrats, especially in the Senate, will use the special "reconciliation" process to get universal healthcare reform and some other long-range programs through the budget process, so that it cannot be filibustered by Republicans and conservative Democrats, and only pass with 51 votes in the Senate. Personally, I think that this is a good idea to move forward on sweeping reforms which the country needs right now, and I don't think that people out in the country care how the policies are changed, that's largely just inside baseball, but they want change, and they don't care if some Republicans have hurt feelings at the end of it.

On the internship front, things are progressing along nicely. On Wednesday, I had to go around the three House office buildings getting signatures for a "Dear Colleague" letter about land and water conservation which Rep. Murphy is the point person on. I do not enjoy the Rayburn building, since it is enormous and has many dead ends, so I frequently got lost.

A two week congressional recess has begun, which means no legislation, just some planning for future things, and catching up on old work. Also, it is tour season in DC, especially for congressional tours, which means the other interns and myself will frequently find ourselves spending a few hours per day taking visitors through the capitol, or waiting on line to do so, fun.

I'll try to update soon.

Return from Spring Break

Hello again, we're one week in from Spring Break. I had a relaxing week at home in Connecticut, but its good to be back in DC as spring arrives.

I arrived in the office on Tuesday afternoon, and found the front reception area empty. Our scheduler, Jessica quickly came in, and was thrilled that I had arrived, because both of the other interns were off this week for break, and my boss, Liz, the administrative assistant, had gone home to CT for a family emergency.

For a while I sorted the stacks and stacks of mail on the desk, and then Jessica asked me to prepare to give a Capitol Tour to a visiting family. Linda, one of the LA's, asked me to find out contact info for some of the police forces in the district, most of which were in really small towns which don't have their own police, they rely on the CT State Troopers. Then Paul, the Leg. Director, in charge of healthcare policy, asked me to write another short one minute speech for the congressman. Eventually, all that was done, and no major disasters occurred.

Wednesday and Friday were pretty uneventful, Liz returned on Wednesday afternoon, and I didn't have to deal with too many phone calls about the whole AIG mess.

PS: Here's a video of Rep. Murphy delivering the one minute on healthcare myths I drafted for him a few weeks ago:

Sickness

Not much action this week for me, especially since I had to cut out early and skip Wednesday because of a pretty bad cold, which I'm still trying to get over.

Tuesday afternoon, I went to a briefing about US-Mexico relations sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Institute, which was pretty interesting, and provided a free lunch, which is always welcome.

Yesterday, I was loaned to Rep. Jim Himes' office for a bit, because their staff was short of hands for part of the afternoon. Anything to get away from the endless FOCA postcards in my office.

This coming week, I'll be in for Tuesday and Wednesday, but will be heading back to CT for Spring Break Thursday night.

Slow day

Another slow day on the Hill today, mostly because the House is out of session this week, so everyone gets to dress casually and there aren't a million things going on all at once. I spent much of the day preparing more letters to go out to constituents, including a visit down to the Democratic Caucus to use their fancy mail folding machine, tons of fun.

All stimulated again

First, my apologies for not posting in quite a while, I've been rather busy, and haven't developed blogging into a habit yet, which I should work on.

Anyways, the country is now stimulated again, I guess, with today's enactment of the economic relief and recovery act into law by President Obama in Denver. The final bill was passed by both houses last Friday, an unusual Friday session for Congress. It was a busy week on the phones, with many calls coming in all at once, often in waves, including a plethora of people pledging to vote, and campaign against Rep. Murphy next year if he voted for the bill, which of course he did. They finally voted at around 2 in the House, and things seemed to calm down afterwards.

Not too much else noteworthy has happened in the past week or so, but I will try to post more often.