Congress Used to Be a Part-Time Job
It wasn’t always this way. For most of American history, serving in Congress wasn’t even a full-time job. From the first congressional session in 1789 through the 1930s, the House and Senate usually convened in December and adjourned in the spring. One reason for the short sessions was that the duties of the federal government were relatively sparse.
“In the early days of the country, the federal government wasn't looked upon to do a whole lot,” says Jason Roberts, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina. “There were years in the 1800s where Congress ran budget surpluses because they didn’t have anything to spend money on.”
Travel to the capital was also incredibly difficult. Senator Gouverneur Morris of New York wrote in 1801 that "from Annapolis to Washington was one sea of mud so deep that the stage was stalled and stuck fast. It took ten hours to go twenty-five miles." When California became a state in 1850, it took 75 days for its representatives to reach Washington, D.C. by ship and an overland crossing of Panama.
But one of the biggest reasons Congress continued taking a long recess into the early 20th century was the brutal summer heat of Washington, D.C.
“Before air conditioning, being in D.C. in the summer was literally hazardous to members of Congress's health,” says Roberts.
From 1859 to 1932, senators met in a stifling, poorly ventilated Capitol chamber that one senator from New Hampshire called "the most unhealthful, uncomfortable, ill-contrived place I was ever in my life.” Others complained that the air inside the legislative chambers was “poisonous” and “has caused much sickness and even death among the members of the House."
They may have been right. According to a 2005 analysis, members of Congress died at a much higher rate than the general U.S. population before air conditioning was finally installed in the Capitol chambers in 1928. Even then, summer was considered a bad time to be in D.C.
John Nance Garner, who served 30 years in Congress, famously said, “No good legislation ever comes out of Washington after June.”
Bigger Government, Longer Sessions
The role of the federal government began to expand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as rapid urbanization and industrialization prompted the creation of new agencies to regulate banks, break up monopolies and safeguard food. But the real turning point was the Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal legislation.
“That's really when the federal government started playing an enormous role in people's lives,” says Roberts. “That leads to Congress needing to be in session more, because there's just more for Congress to do.”
In 1949, the House met in a continuous legislative session from January 3 to October 19 with a single short recess from April 15-24. By the 1950s, the longer sessions and relentless workload were taking a toll on members of Congress, especially during the summer.
In September 1959, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine echoed earlier generations of legislators when she said, “The pressures under which Congress works every year at this time of year... create disorder... confused thinking, harmful emotions, destructive tempers, unsound and unwise legislation, and ill health with the very specter of death hanging over members of Congress.”
The Fight for an August Recess
To alleviate some of the pressures of the office, Smith proposed a regularly scheduled congressional recess from August through November, but the Senate didn’t take up her proposal.
It was another senator, Gale McGee of Wyoming, who relaunched the campaign for a fixed summer recess in the 1960s. Elected at 44, McGee was part of a younger contingent of senators who wanted a summer break to spend more time with their families in distant states. Although McGee’s suggestion was criticized by older legislators as “nonsense,” he won the support of an important constituency—the wives of senators and representatives.
In 1965, the Joint Committee on the Reorganization of Congress agreed with McGee that an August recess would make it “easier, more orderly and more predictable to pace ourselves during the arduous full legislative year.” But it took five more years of wrangling votes before Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, which mandated an August recess in odd-numbered years. (The law left more flexibility in even-numbered years for elections and campaigning.)
Since then, the August recess has become a congressional mainstay. It even fostered a new trick for breaking up legislative gridlock, says Roberts.
“You'll often see the Speaker of the House or another leader says, ‘If this doesn't get done, it's going to eat into our August recess.’ And that tends to get people motivated. It's amazing how things that were intractable are suddenly able to be solved when August recess is at risk.”
