After years of delay and hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns, the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center (CVC) opened last December. There have been the expected grumblings about the costs and the building, but now Congress itself is beginning to grumble about the new controls and what some members see as a rewriting of history.
All in all, the CVC is a magnificent constuction effort. Mind you, what visitors see is only about a third of the total underground building. Its size is mindboggling — the center is approximately three quarters the size of the Capitol itself. The structure is a bunker with meeting rooms and special air filtration where Congress can continue to function even if under attack.
The current controversy is not about the underground building itself but about the message that the CVC sends and the restrictions on access that the new center has imposed.
In a floor speech this week, Congressman Ted Poe, from Texas, took the Architect of the Capitol to task for making entrance to the Capitol harder that ever and ignoring the perogatives of Representatives and Senators — they, or their staff, can not personally take visitors through the Capitol according to the new rules.
Rep. Poe railed against the new rules:
Mr. Speaker, there was once a time when a family would come from my district. They would show up at my office and they would ask to see the Capitol. Myself or a staffer would bring them over to the Capitol, take them through these mighty halls by showing them the statues of the two famous people from Texas, Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, giving them a peek at the Old Supreme Court Chamber and could spend as much time in this building as they wanted to. But no more. Apparently the good ol’ times have been replaced by censored, controlled tours which can only be given by CVC-trained staff — the Red Coats.
Member offices have little control over scheduling tours. Once in a while someone will just show up in my office and they want to see this building. It is their first and only trip to Washington. You can’t do that anymore. You have to get on a list and you have to make that request a month ahead of time, at least before you can come into this building. Those “drop in” days are over, unfortunately, because the Red Coat police are in charge, and if they walk through the building and they get off the tour, the Red Coat Police dress them down.
He went on to decry the new “training” required for anyone escorting visitors through the Capitol, “… before a staff member can even help on a tour of this Capitol that person must attend a 6 hour or 2 day long propaganda school given by the CVC Red Coats.
He also echoed the concerns of other Congressmen and Senators about the sanitized version of American history that is presented in the displays of the museum and in the introduction video.
The actual tour that everybody must see before they come into this building starts with an opening video given by the Red Coats. It is a controlled and censored video and a controlled and censored trip through this building. The theme opens in the video by saying that the national motto of the United States is “E Pluribus Unum,” which means, according to the video, “Out of Many, One.”
Well, Mr. Speaker, I must have missed something. I thought that the United State’s motto was directly above your head, which says “In God We Trust.” But not according to the Red Coats. They just changed the national motto on their own. There is, in fact, no mention of those words or the religious history of our country in the entire CVC complex. This includes their exhibit halls which are supposed to chronicle the real history of America. But the Red Coats have rewritten the history of the United States and omitted religion or any reference to God.
Long before the new CVC opened, the Architect of the Capitol was warned by staff members about taking away the rights of Representatives, Senators and their staffs to give tours. There was an understanding expressed from the workers at the AOC who interacted with the legislators regularly that this would not sit well with the House and Senate members. However the CVC powers that be consciously decided to restrict Capitol tours to CVC tours and those run by CVC-trained tour guides.
So, be fore-warned — walking into your Senator’s or Congressperson’s office won’t score a visit to the Capitol. Everyone (at least for now) has to sign up for a tour through the CVC.
For more information (as presented by the Capitol Visitors Center itself) visit their website — www.visitthecapitol.gov.
To make advanced reservations for a CVC tour go to — http://tours.visitthecapitol.gov/.
