Want to Get Rid of Congress?

January 4, 2011, 4:32 pm

 It’s Gone — Until Tomorrow, Anyway

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

For anybody who has ever been fed up at Washington and wanted to get rid of the United States Congress, today’s the day to celebrate. It’s gone. Sort of. But better enjoy it fast, because by noon on Wednesday, Congress will be back.

In accordance with the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, the terms of every member of the House expired at noon on Jan. 3. That was Monday, for anyone not sitting in front of a calendar. But in accordance with the adjournment resolution adopted by the House in December, the new Congress does not convene until noon on Wednesday. Only at that point will lawmakers be sworn into office and the new speaker, John A. Boehner, will take the gavel.

The Senate, meanwhile, still exists. Or at least two-thirds of its members (those who were not up for re-election in November) do not need to take the oath of office, and they remain in office even as the Senate has been in adjournment.

The result is an odd sort of limbo. From noon on Jan. 3 until noon on Jan. 5, “there is a Senate but not a House in my view,” said Norm Ornstein, an expert on the Congress at the American Enterprise Institute.

The issue may be highly technical and largely academic but not entirely. For instance, given that her term expired on Sunday, was Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, still the Speaker of the House and the second in line of succession to the presidency on Monday and Tuesday?

And who in fact was the House majority leader? Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, who held the job for the last four years, or Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, who will hold it for the next two?

Amid the confusion, it was a day when everyone seemed to be in the majority and no one was in the minority. An e-mail message from the majority leader press office announced a news briefing by Mr. Hoyer, while a message from a spokeswoman for Mr. Cantor, using her own e-mail account, announced a briefing by the “majority leader-elect.”

Presumably, sometime between now and noon on Wednesday, control of the “majority leader press” e-mail account will change hands. Exactly when that would happen, however, no one seemed to know for sure.