Before reading about what’s going on in Congress, I decided to turn on C-SPAN to watch live coverage of the House of Representatives. It didn’t take long for me to realize two things: first, I had little idea of what they were talking about or why – something about counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan. Second, despite my best attempts, I could not find it very interesting. There was no voting, no debating, and no flaring tempers. Apparently, I watch too much West Wing.

Reading the schedules for the House and Senate basically dissuaded me from ever running for office. They have so many bills to read and vote on. It made me wonder: does every member of the House and Senate thoroughly read every bill, or is there a SparkNotes version somewhere along the way? Do they know the details of everything they vote on? After that, the Congressmen spend time in meetings and hearings for the committees. My favorite was probably the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which had a hearing to look at pension plans. I’m on one committee in my music fraternity, and I’m already worried about the work involved. Meanwhile, the senators are on as many as 11 committees. Clearly, they’re passionate about what they do.

I saw that the Senate had set aside two hours for debate on the Inouye amendment. I did some research to find out what it was about. It was proposed by Daniel Inouye, a senator from Hawaii. Its purpose was “To prohibit funding to transfer, release, or incarcerate detainees detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to or within the United States.” In other words, they voted to deny the funding to transfer the Guantanamo prisoners to the United States. It was agreed to by a vote of 90-6.