Whether Congress should be in Washington and if not, exactly how it should be operating remotely, is a tricky question with lots of moving parts: member and staff health and safety, transparency, quality of deliberation, information security, family responsibilities—and more.
But there’s a simmering undercurrent running under the debate: the pervasive sense that, even in a pandemic, members don’t want to be seen as having “gone Washington.”
It’s here, in this story about Eliot Engel: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
And here, in this story about whether members should be allowed to sleep in their offices: npr.org/2020/05/13/852…
And here, in this story from last week about Pelosi and McConnell declining rapid results testing: politico.com/news/2020/05/0…
Again, there are plenty of thorny, weeds-y (my favorite!) questions to work out here, and there may only be less bad answers. But there are structural forces at play, too.
