Reid: Constituents Welcome in Still-Sweaty D.C.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that the Capitol Visitors Center will end the days when visitors to the Capitol could “smell the tourists,” a phrase he had previously used to praise the newly-opened center, drawing ridicule from many political opponents.

“It is no secret that Washington gets terribly hot and humid during the summer, the peak season for tourists,” Reid said in a letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal inviting constituents to visit Washington. “Before the opening of this center, visitors to the Capitol were forced to wait out in the heat (or the bitter cold during the winter) for long periods of time before going through security and entering the building.”

“The days of freezing in the cold and sweating in Washington’s humidity while waiting to enter the Capitol are over,” Reid added.

“In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol,” Reid had previously said. “It may be descriptive but it’s true.”

Reid said in the letter that he is always pleased when the Capitol is filled with tourists, and that the new visitors’ center is an improvement in not only security, but in the environment tourists enjoy while exploring the home to Congress.