Not the wallop of ‘Snowmageddon,’ but storm still a pain for lawmakers

Scores of lawmakers had to rearrange their schedules Wednesday evening
as the largest snowstorm since last year’s “Snowmageddon” pummeled D.C.
and prevented them from traveling.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was stuck in traffic for seven
hours coming back from Dulles International Airport after his
Switzerland-bound flight to the World Economic Forum was canceled. Cantor is
no longer planning to attend the international finance conference.

{mosads}And Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) waited for six hours to fly
stand-by at Dulles on Thursday morning after her Wednesday flight was canceled,
along with Reps. Joe Baca (D-Calif.) and Lucille Roybal-Allard
(D-Calif.). Napolitano was forced to cancel her speaking engagement at
the University of La Verne, where she was scheduled to talk Thursday about
water policy.

After votes in the House concluded on Wednesday evening, many
airport-bound lawmakers braved the snowy roads as cars snarled their way
out of the city and left some commuters stuck in traffic for up to 13
hours.

Eyeing the treacherous road conditions, Napolitano, Baca and
Roybal-Allard opted to stay at a hotel near the airport to try and get
on the first fight Thursday morning.

Most members whose flights
were grounded on Wednesday had better luck today. Rep. Jim Matheson’s
(D-Utah) flight out of Reagan National Airport was canceled Wednesday
night but he was able to get another one this afternoon. And Rep. Mel
Watt’s (D-N.C.) flight that was scheduled to leave at 3:45 p.m.
yesterday was canceled but he’s scheduled to fly out to Charlotte, N.C.,
this afternoon.

Some lawmakers were already planning to stay in the D.C. area to attend the
Congressional Progressive Caucus Policy Summit early Thursday morning.
Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) successfully plowed through the slushy
streets in his Toyota Prius with his spokesman Michael Shank to the
event in Chantilly, Va. Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-Ill.) also attended the
conference, but his spokesman said he had no problem with the snow.

“As for getting around Washington, he’s a Chicagoan, so a few inches
of snow isn’t going to slow him down much,” said Andrew Wilson, a
spokesman for Jackson.

But even fellow Chicagoan President Obama had travel difficulties on Wednesday as he landed at Andrews
Air Force base after spending the day in Wisconsin. The trip from
Maryland, which normally takes about 20 minutes with a motorcade, ended
up taking nearly an hour.

The Architect of the Capitol’s (AoC) office said workers began clearing
sidewalks, streets and parking lots around the Capitol at 5 a.m. on
Thursday, and that by 6:30 a.m. nearly all of the snow had been removed.

“We’ll continue to monitor and treat any areas as the snow melts and
refreezes overnight,” said Eva Malecki, a spokeswoman for the AoC.

Several members from the East Coast, such as the chairman of the
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Rep. John Mica
(R-Fla.), said they had no trouble getting home on Wednesday night. Rep. Charlie Bass (R) easily hopped on a flight back to Manchester, N.H.,
after votes concluded for the week, while Chairman of the House Homeland
Security Committee Pete King (R-N.Y.) took a 3 p.m. train out of D.C. back
to New York and had no troubles.

Last year’s “snowmaggedon” brought a series of blizzards through
D.C. and left the city digging out for days, with several members skiing
to work on Capitol Hill. Federal workers were given four days off, at
an estimated productivity cost of about $100 million per day.
Wednesday’s snowstorm only amounted to a 2-hour delay on Thursday
morning. 

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs joked with reporters on Thursday that
“it was somewhat evident that we don’t get a lot of special treatment,”
as they too were snarled in traffic on the way back to the White House
from the airfield. Some White House staff, who were not part of the
motorcade, opted to leave their cars in Maryland and take the Metro.

In the event of a national emergency, the military and Secret
Service would have had the resources to ensure that Obama got back to
the White House more quickly, Gibbs said. But they did not consider it
necessary Wednesday evening.

“Based on the resources that it would take in this instance to get
enough equipment, manpower or what have you to fully block off that
route while we were having this emergency, they did not necessarily
think made sense at that time given, again, how many people were also
trying to get home,” Gibbs said.