Many years ago during one of my first visits to Washington, Iowa Congressman H.R. Gross, a flinty Midwesterner who if he were still with us might look on Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn as something of a spendthrift, took me on a personal tour of the just-opened Rayburn House Office Building.

Gross was outraged by the cost of the place and the various built in “luxuries” he was convinced were neither needed nor justifiable. At the time the Rayburn building was, Gross contended, the second most expensive public building on a per square foot basis in the entire country.