CVC opens, can’t shake controversy

Following years of delays and skyrocketing costs, Tuesday’s opening of the $621 million Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) was marked by more controversy and criticism.

At a morning dedication ceremony, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) offhand comment about how the taxpayer-funded center meant he and other lawmakers would not have to smell sweaty tourists raised eyebrows.

{mosads}By the afternoon, a Republican senator had claimed the center was godless, while a budget watchdog raised familiar arguments about the project’s wasteful spending. That followed poor reviews of the center’s architecture in two newspapers.

House and Senate leaders largely ignored the four years of delays and the center’s price tag, which ballooned to more than eight times its original estimation, as they spoke at the center’s opening ceremony in the newly christened Emancipation Hall.

“This new addition to our majestic Capitol embodies our nation’s ability to adapt while preserving our essential American character,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said to a crowd of about 500. “As both members and visitors enjoy the educational benefits of [the] Capitol Visitor Center, we will be inspired to explore new paths and to write new chapters in our nation’s great history.”

Reid’s comment came as he noted the long lines of tourists who come to visit the Capitol during the bitter cold of winter and sweltering heat of a Washington summer. By constructing the CVC, lawmakers hoped to provide a more comfortable and educational introduction to the Capitol with tighter security measures.

“Tourists line up in summer and winter,” said Reid. “In the summertime, because of the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.”

Many of the staffers and lawmakers in the crowded 20,000-square-foot hall laughed and nodded in agreement at Reid’s remark. Besides Reid and Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) heaped praise on the CVC.

The CVC includes grandeur and comfort. It hosts a 530-person restaurant and two 250-person theaters, which show a 13-minute educational film. It also includes 26 bathrooms, addressing one common complaint of those visiting the Capitol.

Though only open to the public for a half-day on Tuesday, officials are expecting to see about 3 million visitors come through the doors and magnetometers over the next year.

Boehner and the other congressional leaders paid respects to the families of Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, the two U.S. Capitol Police officers killed in the line of duty in 1998. The slayings helped make increasing security at the Capitol through a new visitors’ center a higher priority for Congress.

Lawmakers also acknowledged the African-American slaves who helped build the Capitol, giving credit to Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) for heading up legislation that changed the name of the center hall to “Emancipation Hall.”

“That day we talked about the fact that the Capitol was built by slaves,” Pelosi said of working on the bill.

“Today I want to talk about the fact that it’s so appropriate that, though long overdue, this Capitol Visitor Center is ready for 2009, which is the 200th anniversary, the bicentennial, of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator.”

At about three-fourths the size of the Capitol, dozens of employees spent the day before the CVC’s opening washing the giant 30-by-70-foot skylights, installing last-minute railings and stocking the gift shop, said Sharon Gang, the marketing and communications manager for the CVC.

Staff also conducted last-minute climate control tests and made final lighting adjustments in the Exhibition Hall, where dozens of artifacts are on display, including the Lincoln catafalque. President Abraham Lincoln’s casket was placed atop the catafalque after he was assassinated, and it has been used ever since when presidents and military leaders have lain in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

Still, some expressed unhappiness on Tuesday.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) practically described the CVC as godless in a press release criticizing the center for not honoring the country’s religious heritage. He said the current educational display is “left-leaning and in some cases distort[s] our true history.”

“The Capitol Visitor Center is designed to tell the history and purpose of our nation’s Capitol, but it fails to appropriately honor our religious heritage that has been critical to America’s success,” said DeMint in the release.

DeMint called attention to an engraving welcoming visitors to the CVC that quotes Rufus Choate, a 19th-century congressman from Massachusetts: “We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution.”

“This is an intentional misrepresentation of our nation’s real history, and an offensive refusal to honor America’s God-given blessings,” DeMint said. “The fundamental principles of the freedom we enjoy in this country stem from our Founding Fathers’ beliefs in a higher power, beliefs put forth in the Declaration of Independence and manifest throughout our Constitution.”

Boehner, however, thanked Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) and the Congressional Prayer Caucus “for ensuring this historic building includes appropriate references to our nation’s spiritual heritage including our national motto, ‘In God We Trust.’ ”

More criticism of the new center came from Steve Ellis, vice president of the nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, who called the project a “boondoggle.” Ellis is concerned that the grandiose CVC could be used as an excuse in the event that officials, for whatever reason, want to restrict access to the Capitol.

“We spent $621 million of taxpayers’ money in this project and I hope that it doesn’t end up restricting or limiting access or become an impediment to access to the Capitol, the ‘people’s house,’ where they can interact with their elected representatives,” Ellis said.