(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Can We Stop Blathering About Pelosi's/Hoyer's Hideaway Offices? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-04 Come on, folks, this is getting ridiculous. Pelosi and Hoyer were NOT tossed out of their primary offices; those offices are located in the Longworth House Office Building. They were told to vacate their “hideaway” offices in the Capitol. As USA Today told us back in 2014: Every member of Congress has a regular office in one of the House or Senate buildings near the Capitol. But the hideaways are a second office — often just steps away from the Senate floor. (A few House members also have hideaways, but mostly they are reserved for members of the upper chamber.) Some are more luxurious than others. They are doled out according to seniority, with veteran lawmakers snagging plush space with sweeping views of the National Mall and newbies getting windowless basement digs. "It's all done by secret handshake. All of a sudden you're told you've got a hideaway and here are the keys," says Jim Manley, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. In other words, it’s a seniority and/or position perk. They’re controlled by the party in power in each chamber of Congress, and as noted in the quote above, it’s all done with handshakes and tradition. On the House side, it has been tradition (despite that fact that the House has far fewer hideaways than does the Senate) that former Speakers and Minority Leaders get to keep their “hideaway” perks after their tenure in either post; as Pelosi noted in her public comment, she allowed former GOP Speaker Hastert to keep a large “hideaway” suite after he left the Speakership. So, all the current hype/outrage boils down to: “The Acting Speaker told Pelosi and Hoyer to give up a perk of office.” That’s it...and does outrage over perks really sound like a winning strategem for us? I think not. There are folks suggesting that Democrats use this issue to bring a motion to vacate against Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry (R-NC). That seems like a MAJOR overreaction to me. The GOP is deep in internecine warfare, and folks are trying to argue that the Democrats should walk in Monday and try to toss out a GOP Speaker over the distribution of office perks? I understand that there’s a question over whether the Acting Speaker actually has the authority to assign office space under the House Rules. Some are asserting that he does not, but the authoritative voice on that question would be the Parliamentarian of the House, and we haven’t heard from them just yet. Now, if the House Parliamentarian rules that an Acting Speaker doesn’t have the authority to reassign office space, Democrats can demand that McHenry follow that ruling and maybe file a motion of censure against him if he refuses to do so. In any case, going after this with a motion to vacate is a 0-to-60 response that will accomplish nothing concrete (there’s no way it passes, and Republicans would probably unite temporarily to table it, anyway) and will give the media more ammunition with which to “both sides” the current GOP dysfunction. Doing that would toss the GOP a life preserver instead of an anvil. In my opinion, Pelosi’s statement hit just the right notes: Pelosi called the “eviction” a “sharp departure from tradition,” and said that in her first stint as speaker, from 2007 to 2011, she gave former Speaker Dennis Hastert “a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished.” [...] “Sadly, because I am in California to mourn the loss of and pay tribute to my dear friend Dianne Feinstein, I am unable to retrieve my belongings at this time,” Pelosi’s statement said. Her staff began to move belongings from the hideaway on Tuesday night. “Office space doesn’t matter to me, but it seems to be important to them,” Pelosi said in the statement. “Now that the new Republican Leadership has settled this important matter, let’s hope they get to work on what’s truly important for the American people.” This is the message we need to be spreading: “Dang, Repubilcans are petty...” “You know, we treated their former Speaker well...” “They did this while I was attending a Senator’s funeral, folks...” “Why are Republicans wasting their time with this anyway? They sent this out 90 minutes after firing their own Speaker. I wish they’d get back to the important stuff?” Anything else only provides cover for Republican disarray and chaos...at a time when, for the most part, we need to just get out of the way and let everyone watch. 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