WASHINGTON — Congress, having passed a stopgap funding bill four weeks before the government’s Sept. 30 deadline, will mark the date with a full historical reenactment of a last-minute funding fight, according to a senior House aide who asked not to be named because he was standing in a supply closet that he said was the only quiet room in the building.
The bill, which keeps the government funded at current levels through Dec. 11, passed the House 370-48 on Tuesday after passing the Senate 90-6 earlier in the summer. It was signed into law Wednesday. The early passage left lawmakers with 28 days in September with no deadline to approach, a situation aides described as “unprecedented in living memory, at least the living memory of anyone who works here.”
“Nobody here knows how to do anything with 28 days. We know how to do things with 11 minutes,” the aide said. “On Wednesday morning I saw a member walk to the floor, stand there checking his watch, and walk back. He did it four times. He said it felt wrong to be in the building without something about to expire.”
Under plans circulated to offices Wednesday afternoon, the reenactment will begin at 6 p.m. Sept. 30 and run until 12:01 a.m. Oct. 1. Members will appear in period attire, which the memo specifies as a suit that has been slept in, a loosened tie, and a paper cup of coffee from no later than 4 p.m. Staff volunteers will portray the clock. At 11:14 p.m., a page in a tricorn hat will carry an 1,800-page bill, printed for the occasion and containing no text, through Statuary Hall at a run, while members who have not read it argue about what is in it. At 11:52 p.m., the House will vote on whether to vote. At 11:59 p.m., the entire chamber will hold its breath, a moment the memo describes as “the emotional center of the evening.” Members have been asked not to actually fund anything, since the government is already funded, and several have said that is the part they will find hardest to portray.
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said the urge to reenact was understandable. “The scholarship holds that the legislative deadline was invented in 1789 specifically so that it could be approached,” Achterberg said. “A deadline that is met early is, in the tradition, not met at all. It is merely avoided. Lawmakers are right to feel that something has been taken from them.”
Ron Gilchrist, senior spokesperson for the Department of Agricultural Common Sense, which is funded under the bill, was asked whether the department had prepared for a possible lapse in funding. “Soybean yields are strong this year across much of the Midwest, and we are encouraged by what we’re seeing in sorghum,” Gilchrist said. He declined to comment further.
The reenactment is open to the public. A gift shop near the Senate side will sell commemorative continuing resolutions, each extending the visitor’s current situation through Dec. 11.
Aides said a sign-up sheet for members who wish to stay up until midnight was posted Wednesday at 10 a.m. and was full by 10:04, which the aide in the supply closet described as “the fastest anybody has moved around here in weeks.”
Glenn Whitacre filed this report by phone from a rental car on Interstate 95, where he said he had been in the left lane since Tuesday, approaching an exit.