The House That Roared
In Ways and Means Brawl, Names, Police and Sergeant at Arms Are Called
By Juliet Eilperin and Albert B. Crenshaw Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 19, 2003; Page A01
It started with the mind-numbing reading of a 200-page pension overhaul bill, erupted into a remarkably bitter name-calling match between House Republicans and Democrats, and ended with a GOP lawmaker summoning Capitol Police to evict an outraged gaggle of Democratic colleagues from a congressional library.
Ultimately, nobody was assaulted or arrested. But the brouhaha that exploded yesterday morning in the Ways and Means Committee marked the most bitterly partisan spat thus far in the 108th Congress, a place already known for unusually angry relations between the Republican majority and the Democratic minority, especially in the House.
