Whatever Happened to ‘the Silly Season’?

The phones are not ringing in Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s office. There are no lobbyists prowling the corridors outside her door, no savory pieces of legislation simmering in Congress. Her body is neatly outfitted in a navy blue suit in her Capitol Hill office, but her head is back in her San Jose district, where she clearly would rather be right now, getting some work done.

It didn’t begin this way, this 104th Congress. Remember those first 100 days, when the votes went on so long into the night that lawmakers were falling asleep on the House floor? When members showed up for work with viruses and raging fevers rather than miss one vote in Newt Gingrich’s unrelenting charge to raze the culture of Congress and rebuild?

Lofgren remembers. “It was early in the morning on Monday until late at night on Friday. Angry rhetoric. Lots of votes. The juggernaut of the freshman Republican revolutionaries,” the first-term Democrat recounts. And now? “Now, it’s nap time for the Republicans.”

There are an estimated seven days left (they can never settle on the date) until this history-making, tradition-breaking Congress adjourns for the term. And were it not for the flocks of geese honking at daybreak and the nights turning suddenly colder, it would be difficult to tell that this is fall at all.

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For climate-spoiled Californians in Washington, fall is the time of year between summer and Thanksgiving marked by increased precipitation, colorful defoliation and the generally stupid antics of federal lawmakers as they work to embarrass or glorify each other one last time before Congress adjourns and the voters go to the polls.

Some call it “The Silly Season,” and for decades it could be counted on to produce absurd stunts that were almost always entertaining, sort of the political version of watching an “I Love Lucy” rerun.

In the Senate, it can mean some delightful filibusters, like the time Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) staged a 15-hour and 15-minute tirade over some lost jobs at a New York typewriter factory. Or the 19-hour whopper by Wisconsin Republican Robert M. La Follette back in 1908, which went on so long somebody finally laced his glass of milk and eggs with enough ptomaine to kill an elephant. (One whiff told him something was amiss and he went on to set a Senate record.)

In virtually every other election year, there might be 20 major bills in various states of motion as Congress entered the home stretch. The cafeterias would be deserted. People would operate on pizza and adrenaline. Domino’s trucks would caravan to the Hill deep into the night. Amendments would be larded onto every moving bill, most of them completely unrelated to the subject at hand, as all parties scrambled to pass something they could go home and crow about.

But this is an unusual year: No one is certain which party will control the House next year. As a result, almost everyone is campaigning desperately to capture every seat. And anyway, if the GOP passed anything really big, President Clinton would get to sign it at one of those big White House ceremonies with all the photographers, while Bob Dole spent the day shaking hands at some factory in Kalamazoo.

(For example, the immigration reform bill only now looks like it may move through Congress. It passed both chambers handily weeks ago and then stalled--much to California’s dismay--partly because Republicans don’t want Clinton to claim the credit this close to November.)

“We did a lot before the August break: minimum wage, health care reform, welfare reform. There are no other big bills really ready,” one California Republican aide tried to explain, adding pointedly: “And nobody wants to give the president a photo op six or seven weeks before the election.”

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The only thing that seems to be keeping them here at all is the budget that must be disposed of before Oct. 1, lest there be a repeat of last year’s unfortunate government shutdown, and nobody wants that.

So they toil on through the final days, a particular annoyance for Californians, who can’t exactly run 3,000 miles home every weekend.

“If we are not actually going to do anything meaningful here, let’s do something meaningful at home,” Lofgren grumbled over a cup of coffee this week.

But this Congress is nothing if not unpredictable. There’s still plenty of time for high jinks if the mood strikes.

“It just hasn’t started yet. Wait until next week; that’s when we’ll see the intensity and the no lunches,” predicted Rep. Bill Thomas of Bakersfield, a no-nonsense Republican who seemed oblivious to the boredom Tuesday while ensconced in a hearing on something called “Medicare subvention.”

Yawn.

“This is like waiting for Godot,” one Democrat staffer from California said. “We don’t know if the storm is going to hit or how strong it’s going to be or if it will just pass right over.”

Maybe this will get entertaining yet. And if not, there’s always Lucy.