Hundreds of members of Congress know how to legislate because Judy Schneider taught them.The specialist tasked with explaining procedural rules to lawmakers, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Congressional Management Foundation on Friday.Schneider has spent almost four decades at the Congressional Research Service. Before that, she worked for the Senate Ethics Committee, a Senate select committee and the House Commission on Administrative Review.“She was the one who got me going and taught me what I know today. I owe everything to Judy,” Rep. Dave Reichert said at CMF’s Democracy Awards. The Washington Republican was a winner too, honored in the “workplace environment” category.Accepting an award for Sen. Rob Portman, staffer Emily Benavides said the Ohio Republican was “very impressed to be recognized alongside Judy Schneider, a 42-year Capitol Hill veteran.”HOH sat down with Schneider to talk about how 9/11 changed Congress and how sledding could save the Hill.Q: What’s missing for staffers? A: Staffers would congregate more with each other. We didn’t need all of the, “Let’s have a staff association to do this.” We just kind of knew each other. We saw each other in the cafeteria or we saw each other at the shoe shine. I think we didn’t know what party people were. You were just, “so and so who was an [legislative correspondent].” You figured it out eventually, but if you liked the person, you liked the person. That’s why hallways were such a big deal.There were hall parties. ... The week before Thanksgiving, there would be a party. There were always hall parties at Christmastime. There were always hall parties around the Fourth of July break. It didn’t make a difference who was on the hall.[Latino Staffers Who Call the Shots on Capitol Hill]Q: When did you start to notice Capitol Hill was changing?A: The election of 2000, watching what happened in Florida, watching how long it look. The longer it took, the more people started getting, for lack of a better term, political. And we didn’t even have a chance to get over that when 9/11 came along.Then 9/11 happened and everything changed. You got a different group of people that came to Washington. Social policy was what we worried about … all of a sudden it became military policy. Policy issues changed, and members who spend their careers on certain things found themselves having to pivot to other things.Q: Has any recent event made you feel like Capitol Hill is the community it was when you first started here?A: I want to say the response to the [2017 Steve] Scalise shooting, but I’ll tell you why I don’t want to say that. Everybody did outrage and everybody prayed for him, but I don’t know how bipartisan the visits to the hospital were. I don’t know except when he came back how many ran over and hugged him. Outrage is one thing. The death of Louise Slaughter. [Members said,] “Oh what a horrible thing. So sad.” Both of those events should have brought us back to that.Probably the closest is when they finally allowed sledding back on the Capitol [in 2015], because both parties said it’s a good thing. It’s not a policy, but its one of the first times I saw both parties understand how important it is. [I’ve] gone down the West Front, except I didn’t use a sled. I used a tray from the Longworth cafeteria. But I was also much younger then.[Black Women Movers and Shakers on Capitol Hill]Q: What makes you crazy?A: People that take people out on [a Capitol] tour. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know, I’ll get back to you.” But I do have a favorite story, and it is an intern who was bringing through a bunch of visitors through the Cannon tunnel and showing off the artwork. I listened to the intern explain to the family that this is artwork done by children of members of Congress.[Editor’s note: the artwork is done by high school constituents.]Q: What’s your favorite office on Capitol Hill?A: A former member from Illinois who had an office in Rayburn … on the wall behind the receptionist, was a full body oil painting of the member. Now, the member, the guy’s name was Ken Gray, and he was known for several things — his hair was very frizzy and it looked like a Brillo pad and he dressed like a, I don’t know, cartoon character. I mean orange suits with a green bow tie. Texts, Baseball Bombshells and Snapper Fish: Congressional Hits and Misses[jwp-video n="1"]
