In Defense of Congressional Vacations

ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf Reports: Just about every time Congress takes a vacation, you can bet on seeing a story about how many vacations Congress takes. Its an easy story to do; Congress takes a lot of vacations.

While most Americans – to the extent they get a week off for Spring Break – get a week off, Congress, in the latter part of March took two. Congress takes at least a month off in August and at least a month around the December holidays. It’s a cush gig.

The press likes to point out that Congress takes so many vacations and the out of power party, Democrat or Republican, gleefully complains that the in-party power, Democrat or Republican, isn’t working hard enough for the American people.

But there is a flip-side argument to the caricature of the lazy, do-nothing lawmaker basking in the free travel to and fro and all that vacation time. Namely, it is only after a vacation that the floodgates open, the wheels grease, and important and timely legislation actually moves to become law.

In the Senate this week, a bipartisan bill to help stem the tide of foreclosures nationwide is sliding through the senate like water on Teflon.

A similar bill fell prey to partisan bickering at the end of February when Republicans blocked it after Democrats refused to allow unrelated amendments.

What happened between then and now to end the partisanship? Vacation. That’s what. Because while most people take vacation to forget about their jobs, in Congress they take vacation to go talk to their bosses, the people.

"I suspect the other major event was the fact we went home for a couple of weeks. Nothing like going home, Mr.. president, to get a message," said Sen. Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who engineered the bipartisan bill in a marathon 20 hour bipartisan brainstorming session with Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

"Democrats and Republicans went home and heard from their constituents and watched what happened in Wall Street, in New York, when there was an arrangement which was the right one, probably, with some minor differences here that saved a major collapse in our financial institutions," he said, referring to the federally-backed bailout of the investment bank Bear Stearns.

"But they asked the legitimate question, if it was good enough for people to get together to solve a problem on Wall Street, what about the problem on my street?  What are you doing here to see to it I can stay in my home? That our neighborhood will not collapse? That our taxes and properties and neighborhoods will not further deteriorate? I suspect more than anything else, going homemade a big difference and — going home made a big difference."

Democrats aren’t entirely happy with the compromise and Republicans aren’t either, but unlike the bill in February, which Democrats were happier with, this bill has got a good chance of passing because lawmakers got an earful from their constituents on Spring Break.

This — lets call it the ‘vacation effect’ — is not a new phenomenon.

The bipartisan stimulus package, that one-time economic aid bill that will, among other things, try to spur the flagging economy with tax rebate checks later this year, gained steam only over the holidays last year. Lawmakers returned in January ready to cooperate with each other.

Usually, it is an impending vacation that shifts Congress into high gear. Spending bills in particular have a tendency to be pushed through the Congress, seemingly without appropriate consideration, so that lawmakers don’t have to stay in Washington any longer than necessary. The old saying is that there is nothing like smell of jet fumes at National Airport to get the legislative process moving.

And to be sure, there are plenty of vacations from which lawmakers return without any inter-party bonhomie. But this year, with the economy in dire straits and Americans lowing their homes in the mortgage crisis, the vacation effect is having a new and productive effect.