WASHINGTON, D.C. — While the U.S. House of Representatives is still not in session because of the coronavirus, the U.S. Senate returned to the nation’s capital this week for the first time since March.
- U.S. Senate returned to D.C. for first time since March
- Sen. Rob Portman is pushing Senate to adopt virtual work
- Sen. Sherrod Brown stayed in Ohio
But only one of Ohio’s senators made the trip back.
“In the past six weeks, since we haven’t been here in session working together, a lot has changed,” Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said.
The most normal thing Portman did all week was deliver a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday — his first since late March.
“We’ve been wearing our masks dutifully, when appropriate,” Portman said. “We’ve been keeping our social distance — my desk is actually over there, but there was another senator over there, so they’ve put me here, which is good.”
The coronavirus is changing how Capitol Hill operates.
Portman, who for years has supported the idea of Congress voting and working remotely in times of crisis, is starting to see some progress.
After he chaired the Senate’s first-ever remote hearing last week, several committees, like Senate Finance, held virtual hearings this week.
“Pat, can you hear me OK?” Portman said as he logged onto the hearing.
“Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) replied.
Senators joined from their D.C. offices or apartments to discuss how to safely reopen America — and worked through occasional technical glitches to hear from witnesses.
Ohio’s other U.S. senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, took working remotely to another level by not even returning to Washington. He was one of about a dozen senators who didn’t.
Brown said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) was “reckless” for bringing the Senate and many other Capitol employees back while D.C. is still under a stay-at-home order. And he criticized McConnell for not scheduling coronavirus-related votes.
“When it comes time to pass a bill that will actually help people in Ohio, I of course will be there,” Brown said in a video conference interview on Tuesday.
Brown did appear remotely at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Wednesday, which he’s the top Democrat on.
At one point during his time for questioning, one of the senator’s dogs could be heard barking in the distance.
At the banking hearing, only a few senators showed up in-person; they practiced social distancing by holding the hearing in the biggest room they could find.
Both witnesses, who were nominees for federal government jobs, wore masks and fielded questions from those in the room and those not.
Occasionally, some technical difficulties were experienced.
“Senator Warren, I believe, is trying to get her microphone to work,” the committee’s chairman said at one point after Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren encountered a problem.
Overall, it’s a new reality for an institution steeped in old ways.
“I’m convinced that, if we put our mind to it, the technology is not the problem,” Portman said in his floor speech. “The problem is tradition.”
Neither the Senate nor the House has approved remote voting yet, but Portman said it’s time for the government to “catch up.”
He mentioned in his floor speech that the United Kingdom, European Union, and 14 U.S. state governments have all embraced some form of remote voting or telework.