Thomas Griffin

This week was bustling with anticipation, particularly on the news networks, as conservatives headed to Washington, DC for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Particularly with Santorum’s big win in 3 primaries on Tuesday, people were wondering what kind of political roller coaster CPAC would be with continuous high profile speakers and a presidential straw poll. I had FFA friends (one from Montana, the other from Idaho) who were coming into town for the conference, and it was great to hear about the highlights from them.

I also had the rare experience of watching Congresswoman Bonamici getting sworn in on Tuesday. A part from at the beginning of each 2 year Congress, there aren’t many swearing-in ceremonies that take place. Some fellow Oregonians and I headed to the House Gallery to watch. The entire Oregon delegation (including Senators Merkley and Wyden) were present, as well as probably three quarters of all Congressmen. Its rare to see all of the Congressmen on the House floor at the same time, even during votes.

On Wednesday, Rep. Walden hosted another telephone town hall. This one was held at 8:30PM EST (or 5:30PM PST) so that our constituents could listen in after work. There was once again a wide variety of questions from the constituents, and its always a pleasure to watch Rep. Walden field questions from approximately 10,000 constituents who had called in. Even if he has a different opinion than a constituent, he logically and calmly explains his perspective on the issue. Having this event later in the evening made for a late night for all of the staff.

I enjoyed a few opportunities to catch up with my friends who were attending CPAC including exploring a new part of Washington, DC. We went out to Madame’s Organ (blues/jazz bar) in Adam’s Morgan (a DC community), notice the play on words. The following night, with some friends from work,  we went to the top of the W Hotel, which is basically right next to the White House. It offers a great view of the DC landscape and the nearby Washington Monument.

This week, various pieces of solutions to the Secure Rural School payments are coming together in a bipartisan manner from the Oregon delegation, as well as other wester states representatives. I am also very excited to attend the first Farm Bill Committee Hearing over in the Senate on Wednesday. There’s already been a lot of questions of whether a farm bill will be passed with how divisive Congress has been this session, and I think the first committee hearing will be very indicative of how the future hearings will go.

I started off the week by getting a much need haircut. There is a chain of hair places called “Bubbles” in DC that one of my coworkers recommended. As a guy, you aren’t looking for a whole lot in a haircut. Mostly just to get in, figure out what’s next on your to do list while they clip off some hair for 20 minutes, and get on with your day. Well this haircut was all that, plus a fancy shampooing (“Washabi” brand, play on words of Wasabi), just with a DC pricetag- $30 dollars. I normally spend $12 dollars on a haircut (including tip). Bottom line, everything is more expensive in DC.

In the office most of my week was spent working on research/spreadsheets regarding for the Secure Rural Schools and O&C county payments, which if you are in Oregon, you have probably been reading about during the last few weeks. In a bipartisan effort, the Oregon Congressional Delegation is working on both short term and long term options to give counties some stability, as the current legislation expired this month, and with its expiration, payments ceased to Oregon counties in lieu of the property taxes they would be receiving if the Federal government paid property taxes (states can’t tax the federal government or entities- see landmark Supreme Court case “McCulloch v Maryland”). Here’s a good overview article of the issue

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/01/loss_of_federal_forest_payment.html

I also spent a good chunk of my time reviewing voicemails and questions from the telephone town hall that the Congressman hosted the previous week. We had over 15,000 constituents call into the conference call, and look forward to having another one this week. While it may not be the same as a physical town hall (which the Congressman does dozens of times every year), it is a great opportunity to reach a magnitude of constituents, while also making it easier for them because they don’t have to drive to the town hall, which is particularly helpful for senior citizens and because our district is so large. Except for states that only have one Congressional District (ie Alaska, Montana, etc), our district is the 2nd largest in the country! If you put Oregon’s 2nd District on the Eastern Seaboard, it would stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to Ohio! Harney County, in Eastern Oregon, is larger than 8 states.

This weekend flew by as I had real sushi for the first time, using a “Living Social” coupon (basically same as GroupOn) with some fellow Oregonians. I also spent some time working on more scholarship applications for law school. I was very fortunate to receive my 3rd law school acceptance letter to Willamette University with about a %60 scholarship tuition, which is awesome! Willamette is very appealing to me particularly because of its extremely close proximity to the State Capitol in Salem.

I enjoyed watching the NY Giants win the Super Bowl from a Hill bar “Pour House” (clever, right?) on Pennsylvania Avenue. The party was being hosted by the Legislative Director for Rep Shrader’s office, where my OSU friend Liberty is interning. Oregon’s newest Congresswomen, Suzanne Bonamici, even made an appearance. Bonamici was elected on Tuesday in the special election to replace David Wu, who resigned after a long downward spiral of incidents. Bonamici will be representing Oregon’s 1st district and gets sworn in on the House floor tomorrow.

The end of this week marks the halfway point of my internship; it definitely is flying by!

Protesters from a few weeks ago

This sign in the metro made me happy- Promoting Agricultural Awareness

They had a Widmer Brothers Mirror, but no Hefeweizen

On Monday, the Capitol area was bustling as (rumored) 500,000 people were taking part in the pro-life march that corresponded with the anniversary of the landmark Roe v Wade decision. This was contrasted with following night in which the area surrounding the Capitol was almost completely empty, except for Secret Service agents in preparation for the State of the Union.

The tone of Obama’s SOTU speech was an intriguing one as he both bashed on Congress and discussed what he would do if Congress didn’t act. Congressman Walden has a great response to the SOTU which can be seen on his website.

My mom arrived in town on Wednesday, so I gave her a tour of the Capitol and then we toured the Kennedy Center and later had dinner with some family friends at Matchbox (a great personal pizza place).

On Friday we had dinner at a restaurant that is over 150 years old and was a favorite of President Teddy Roosevelt; Old Ebbits Grill. After trying my first ever oyster shooter, my mom and I enjoyed a play at Ford’s Theater which was an awesome experience. The play, Necessary Sacrifices, focused on the 2 documented meetings between President Lincoln and freed slave/abolitionist Frederick Douglas. The theater only seats around 150 people so it is very intimate, and the theater box where President Lincoln was shot has been maintained in the same arrangement as the night he was shot.

This week in the office involved a few tours for constituents, general intern duties, and research/projects relating to Secure Rural School (SRS) payments, also known as county payments in Oregon. Because the Federal Government owns a large portion of the forests in Oregon and counties don’t receive property taxes by land owed by the Feds, they receive county payments to compensate them for a small portion the lost taxes. The most recent reauthorization of SRS payments just expired, so Congressman Walden is currently working on legislation that would continue these payments for counties across the country. Some of my projects in support of this included categorizing payments by state and compiling spreadsheets that illustrate the decline of county payments over the years.

My mom left on Saturday; on Sunday a fellow Beaver interning in Congressman Shrader’s office (Liberty) and I explored the Georgetown campus and area, including a visit to Georgetown Cupcakes (apparently there is a TV show about them). On to another week in our nation’s Capitol!

Ford's Theater- Lincoln's Box

Georgetown Cupcakes

Georgetown

Georgetown

I took advantage of having the extra Monday off by visiting all of the major monuments, particularly the new MLK Memorial, which was of course packed because it is a new monument and because it was MLK Day. I also especially enjoyed visiting the FDR Memorial as I had never been there before.

Tuesday was a pretty uneventful day, other than the news that the Occupiers were marching on the Capitol. This time, we didn’t have any come by our office (although they did come by our office a couple months ago, and Rep Walden made time to meet with them) today, but I did walk by one of the Rayburn House Office Building entrances, and there was several hundred in line to come through security. There were also some amazing pictures online of them “occupying” the Capitol.

Wednesday unofficially SOPA day. You probably heard about or experienced that Wikipedia was blacked out in protest of the SOPA bill in the House and the PIPA bill in the Senate. Those bills are meant to help protect intellectual property and prevent piracy, but many are concerned about it taking away civil liberties and free speech by granting the federal government too much power in shutting down websites. I’m not sure on exactly how many calls our office received, but by my tally, I answered and logged around 150 calls. So I’m sure our office received 4-5 times that many, in addition to hundreds of emails and faxes. The phones were ringing almost non stop, and I was quite exhausted when it was finally time to head home. I did appreciate that most people were very courteous on the phone and just wanted to make sure that their thoughts were passed on to Greg, and they definitely were!

I was able to attend a White House Tour on Thursday, and the highlight was watching the Marine One helicopter land on the South Lawn. After about 5 minutes of waiting for someone to walk off of the helicopter, we (the tour group) finally realized that no one was arriving, but rather Obama would be leaving. About 10 minutes later, sure enough we had a glimpse of President Obama as he walked across the lawn, boarded Marine One, and then was up and away. He was headed down to Disney World for a speech. I was most impressed by the pilots finesse in maneuvering the rather large helicopter into a very precise position on the South Lawn. Its certainly not an easy job, with trees, fences, and buildings all in very close proximity.

MLK Memorial

This was my first week of work, and even though the House isn’t in session yet, there was plenty going on! The learning curve was definitely steep, and honestly, one of the most difficult parts thus far has been learning my way around the House Office Buildings and Capitol. As an intern, there are many common destinations in the buildings including the Office Supply Store, flag room (for flags to be flown over the Capitol), the Congressman’s office in the Capitol (versus main office in Rayburn House Office Building), and the route for giving tours to constituents. When you add that there are several tunnels and many of the hallways look exactly the same, finding your way around can be difficult at first. Growing up in Oregon, I’m used to having the mountains as an easy reference point, but when you are underground and going up and down escalators, it is easy to get turned around.

I learned many of my common duties as an intern this week like giving tours to constituents, sorting mail and faxes, running errands, and answering the constantly ringing phones. Those are supplemented with helping the legislative assistants on what they are working on and a little bit of policy work in my area of interest: environmental and agricultural policy.

I am thoroughly impressed by the dedication of the staff of the office! These passionate people are working 10-12 hour days (or longer when in session!) for frankly, not a lot of pay. Their plates are always full, but they still make time to show an intern the ropes of the office. I wish every citizen could see how hard these staff are working for the country and constituents. Every mail, phone call, email, and fax gets logged. While tracking all of this information seems like a lot of work, our office (and I assume most others) use an awesome database called IQ that we use to track any incoming AND outgoing communication with our constituents. I had an 2 hour training session on how to  use the system this week, and just barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Bottom line: communicating with your Congressman really can make a difference.

Also this week I was able to tour the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court, both of which are adjacent to the Capitol. The Library of Congress has over 115 million artifacts and receives 20,000 books per day! Its crazy to fathom. I really enjoyed my visit to the Supreme Court and hope to watch actual oral arguments at some point while I am back here. The Court is only in session 6-8 days per month, and you have to get in line for gallery tickets around 5am, but I think it would truly be worth it so see the highest court in the land in action, maybe pick up a few pointers for law school from the lawyers/justices

This weekend I visited Georgetown and George Washington University mostly to check out their law school buildings/libraries. I just love walking around DC because there is so much history everywhere. For example, on my way back from George Washington and the White House, I stumbled upon Ford’s Theater, where Lincoln was shot. I hope to watch a show there before I head back west. Tonight we have a Team Walden dinner. Tomorrow, since I have the day off, I plan on seeing more of the monuments (especially the MLK memorial since they have a few special events going on), and then getting ready for the upcoming week of the house being back in session. MLK Day is a great reminder that every citizen of our country has a voice, and that by exercising your right to free speech, your voice can be heard and make an impact. Cheers to democracy!

Occupy DC Camp

Supreme Court

Capitol at Night

I officially arrived in Washington, DC on Thursday night and made my way to new home for the next few months at NE 5th and NE E, about 3 blocks from the Senate Office buildings and 10 blocks from Rayburn House Office Building where I will be interning.

I decided to fly back a few days before I actually have to start work on Monday the 9th. I am quite grateful that I did because the weather during the last few days has been amazing for getting acquainted with the city. 65 Degrees in January! I took advantage of the weather on Friday and decided to walk around the Capitol, National Mall, some of the monuments, and the White House (pictures below). I also enjoyed seeing the EPA headquarters, as I have worked for the EPA for the last 3 years at their research lab in Corvallis. It was a great trip to get my bearings, but before I knew it, I had walked about 6 miles, and decided it was time to head home. Later that night I met up with my former FFA State Officer teammate, Quade Sheehan, for dinner and drinks in Alexandria. I was quickly reminded about how easy the DC Metro is to use. Quade recommended that I download a couple of apps (got to love iPhone technology) that make it even easier to use the metro.

I had a pretty low key Saturday with the primary activity of going grocery shopping. There is a small market about 3 blocks away, so I thought I would check it out first. While GoogleMaps may consider it a “grocery store”, it definitely has the “convenience store” prices. $3.95 is a little bit much for a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup. I grabbed a few of the essentials here though, as I was kind of crunched on time. I met up with Wade Foster (another former FFA State Officer, friend, and my new BOSS!) for dinner in Eastern Market, and he showed me more of the local Hill restaurants. It was also great to learn more about what exactly I will be doing as a congressional intern.

My first official day of work is tomorrow, and I’m quite excited to get started. I’m used to a quick pace, and am ready to get back to business. Wade also informed me that on days when the Congressman is out of the office, like tomorrow, I don’t have to get to the office until 9AM, so I’m hoping to get a run in before getting ready for work. My mom and grandma would be proud of me, I even went through and ironed all of my clothes for the week on Sunday night, so I won’t have to worry about it later in the week.

While my classmates head back to classes tomorrow, I am pumped to apply my education to real world situations while serving the Congressman. Cheers to experiential learning!