![]() ![]() The idea that Congress needed to beat the heat stems in part from Vice President John Nance Garner, who famously said, “No good legislation ever comes out of Washington after June.” Another oft-cited quote comes from Maine Sen. (A truly heat-adverse legislative body would never have chosen to miss out on the mid-Atlantic’s lovely falls and mild winters.) “You’d start in December and then hope to adjourn by the beginning of the summer or sometimes, maybe, the middle of the summer.”īeing a congressman was still more of a part-time gig, and the federal fiscal year ended on June 30. “Prior to the adoption of the 20th Amendment in 1933, the congressional calendar was very different than what we see today,” he said. Holt, an assistant historian at the Senate Historical Office. That’s been the case since at least 1928, when the Carrier Corporation installed its “ manufactured weather” system in the Capitol, decades before air conditioning became a common amenity.īack then, it was still rare for Congress to stick around Washington into August, but that was more a product of the Constitution than the weather, said Daniel S. ![]() That’s par for the course: July is D.C.’s hottest month on average.Īnd there are few cooler places to beat the summertime heat than the halls of Congress, where the incessantly blasted air conditioning can make dressing in anything less than a full suit uncomfortably chilly. ![]() But the timing of the break has more to do with historical happenstance than heat and humidity.Īs Congress sprints around to finish work - or at least postpone it - before the August break, it does so in 90-degree weather. For the past half-century, August recess has served as both a welcome deadline and a needed respite from legislative work for lawmakers, staffers and others who live and breathe by the congressional calendar. The common assumption that Congress skips out of town for the shank end of summer because of the heat is wrong. It is no secret that Washington in general, and Capitol Hill in particular, is populated with a lot of conversationalists who enjoy nothing more than beginning a sentence with, “Well, actually …” ![]()
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