There are remarkable similarities between the Congress of 2001 and the current Congress.
For one, neither party held an overwhelming majority in either chamber. After the 2000 election, the Senate found itself for the first time with a 50-50 split, and in the House, Republicans led with nearly the same thin majority House Democrats have today.
Support our journalism. Subscribe today. ChevronRight
It was also a Congress where members would have to evacuate the Capitol, take shelter, and later the same day, vow to return to work.
What type of effect the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol will have on lawmakers in the long term is yet to be seen. But what is clear 20 years later is how much the Sept. 11terrorist attacks changed the careers and personal lives of many members of Congress.
Some lawmakers who were on Capitol Hill on Sept. 11, 2001, remember it as a turning point that has served as a basis of their work today, from what committees they sit on to how they draft legislation. Others said it was an event that changed the course of their careers and ultimately led to them running for Congress.
After evacuating the Capitol grounds, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) gathered with other lawmakers at a nearby Capitol Police post to hear updates. The group decided to walk over to the Capitol steps that evening, in an effort to show the nation that government was still functioning. All of sudden, Collins says a colleague began singing “God Bless America," and everyone joined in. “This wave of patriotism just swept over all of us,” she recalls, “it was incredibly emotional and reassuring at the same time.”
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Collins says her current focus on power grid vulnerabilities and cyber security is something she traces back to 9/11 and to her experience rotating between chair and ranking member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee as it took on oversight of the newly created Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Collins adds that 9/11 was also behind her decision years later to join the Senate Intelligence Committee, a panel she still sits on.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) says she told her staff to leave Washington, D.C., when she saw the smoke above the Pentagon from her office window. She then took a car to her district in New York City, and when she saw the skyline come into focus without the two towers, “It was like two arrows in my heart that they were down and gone,” Maloney said, “it was horrible.”
She spent years advocating the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund Act, even wearing an FDNY bunker jacket at events to start conversations about the health care needs of 9/11 victims and first responders. A bill to permanently authorize that fund was signed into law in 2019. Last year, she used that measure’s framework to author legislation to compensate essential workers who contracted covid while on the job. Maloney says 9/11 also drives her choices on what to take up as chair of the House Oversight committee. “I spend a lot of time on sort of defense issues because what was 9/11? We didn’t have our proper defenses in place.”
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Sept. 11 also began shaping future members of Congress. Three shared their stories with The Washington Post.
“It was a full sensory experience”
-Rep. Elissa Slotkin
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was a graduate student at Columbia University, nearly eight miles from the World Trade Center, and calls living in New York on Sept. 11, and during the aftermath, a “full sensory experience.”
There was the acrid smell of the smoldering buildings that she recalls filling the air for weeks. Then, as police and firehouses memorialized perished colleagues, the sound of bagpipes became routine while she sat in class.
Reminders of the extensive loss of life were all around. “I had a classmate who had to postpone her wedding because so many of her bridesmaids were killed at Cantor Fitzgerald,” says Slotkin, referring to the financial services firm located in the North Tower.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
All of this culminated into a turning point for the Michigan congresswoman. She decided to change her coursework and study international security.
When a CIA recruiter came to campus, Slotkin was hired as a Middle East analyst for the agency, later doing three tours in Iraq. She was also among the first hired at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, an agency created as a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) describes how living in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001 led to her career in national security. (The Washington Post)
“It changed the trajectory of my life”
-Rep. Adam Kinzinger
Days before he would be appointed as one of only two Republicans on the select house panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) walked in to the rotunda of the Cannon House building discussing the commute from his Illinois district.
Story continues below advertisement
“Just take off, throw on the autopilot, and chill,” Kinzinger said as he described how he occasionally flies himself in to D.C.
Advertisement
He is an Air Force pilot and still serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard. His decision to join the military was a direct reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Kinzinger was driving to his job at an IT services company in Bloomington, Ill., when he heard the news that the World Trade Center had been hit.
“9/11 was so impactful for me that I think it, it really comes into how I act today,” said Kinzinger. “I have to be willing to put everything on the line to defend this country, and if I lose an election because I’m telling people the truth, well, that needed to be done.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) says 9/11 was such a pivotal moment in his life, he doubts he would be a member of Congress had it not happened. (The Washington Post)
“I had to do my part”
-Rep. Jason Crow
Like many veterans of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said the news and images in the days leading up to the Aug. 31 withdrawal from Afghanistan have been difficult to absorb. “I knew that it wasn’t going to be a great ending, I was pretty confident of that,” says Crow, “but I’m not sure I really allowed my brain to kind of wrap around that.”
As a student at the University of Wisconsin, he was in the ROTC and an enlisted National Guardsman. Crow had planned to stick with the guard after graduation, but he says the events of 9/11 pushed him to enter active duty. That choice led to two tours in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) discusses the impact 9/11 had on him. (The Washington Post)
###