Fencing encircling the Capitol, put up temporarily after the Jan. 6 riot, is now a hindrance to voters meeting their elected representatives, Republican House members say.
“We haven’t had visitors, to my knowledge, in here in a year. It’s been almost exactly a year. No constituents can come and see us. No groups or organizations can come and see us. Nobody can sit in the gallery and watch us. They’re not having regular committee hearings. They’re cramming all this stuff through,” Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican who leads the House Freedom Caucus, told the Washington Examiner.
Rep. Thomas Massie called the fencing “a joke” and said that “closing the People’s House to the people is an evolutionary cul-de-sac.”
SECURITY TASK FORCE BRIEFS LAWMAKERS ON RETRACTABLE FENCING AND OTHER SAFETY RECOMMENDATIONS
The Kentucky Republican added, “If the executive branch wanted to cancel the legislative branch, they would surround us with razor wire and soldiers and prevent people from seeing us. Yet, we have done this to ourselves.”
After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, by rioters upset with the certification of President Biden’s win over former President Donald Trump, security officials erected 8-foot nonscalable security fencing, wrapped with barbed wire, around the perimeter of the Capitol along with 5,000 National Guard members.
The new security measures became a deterrent to visitors who routinely visit lawmakers.
Rep. Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat, said he is fine with the current security situation, though constituents can’t visit him in his office.
“I’ve done a lot of phone calls to people who would have visited,” Pascrell told the Washington Examiner. “Safety is most important.”
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting representative in the House, introduced legislation on Feb. 11 to ban the government from spending money on permanent fencing on Capitol grounds.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer defended Democratic leadership’s position to support a congressional review panel’s suggestion to keep perimeter fencing around the Capitol.
“We’d like to get back to a place where we’re more open and more accessible,” Hoyer told the Washington Examiner. “Having said that, we also want to be a place where we’re safe, and the staff is safe, and the press is safe, and everybody who comes here is safe, and we’re trying to figure that out.”
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Hoyer noted constituents still have access to visit their lawmakers.
“[The congressmen] all go home on weekends for the most part, so they certainly have access to their lawmakers at home,” he said.
