At the beginning there was the desk. Actually 48 desks that New York cabinet maker Thomas Constantine made for the Senate Chamber at newly reconstructed Capitol building in 1819. You can see it in the first picture – simple desk, one drawer, ink bottle and powder on top.

The US Senators actually did their work on that desk. They were all together in the Senate Chamber. Talking, debating and occasionally fighting. As the country became bigger and bureaucracy and paperwork volume followed proportionally the Senator desks were modified. Not much. In 100 years the space for books was doubled and ventilation was added to the work space as you can see from the second and third image of the evolution of the Senator’s desk.

The things really got out of control at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tiny red mahogany desks were the Senate primary working space until the first Senate office building opened in 1909.

Russell Senate Office Building provided plenty of space for the growing bureaucracy. You can see the lavish office floor plan. The tiny desks were no more. And senators started doing business behind closed doors. There was also more room for staffers. Senators found out that those are handy helpers and more and more of them were needed and hired.

As a result in 1941 on the eve of the World War II Senators voted themselves a second office building. The reason they stated was the growing importance of the federal government at home and across the world. The Federal Bureaucracy was going global and more and more staffers needed desks and offices.

Dirksen Senate Office Building was complete in 1958 and was supposed to fix the problem with overcrowding. Senate at the time had own cabinet shop creating new desks that were at high demand in the exploding bureaucracy. Yep, Senate was manufacturing their own desks (to save tax-payer money I guess), but nobody thought cutting of the number of stuffer was a good idea. No. The federal government was behaving like a super power super hero that saves the day.

Bureaucracy’s main product is… more bureaucracy and US Senate outgrew the two buildings office space by 1970.

Hart Senate Office Building was finished in 1982. The offices floor plans were the same as the one in Dirksen Senate Building. The number of stuffers in between the construction of the two buildings grew from 2500 to 7000 bureaucrats in need of desks and office space.

No wonder the C-Span cameras cannot catch the action today. It is hard to find all the 100 US Senators at the same time because their negotiations take place in different spots somewhere in the 4 buildings.
As I drink my tea I wonder if we can leave the Senate Office buildings to the stuffers and drag the Senators back to their original work space: the tiny red mahogany desks in the Old Senate Chamber. They can have a phone and a computer – there is enough space for that. They can sit again all together in one room – shoulder to shoulder – look each other in the eye and talk, debate and sometimes fight like in the good old days. Stuffers are doing Senator’s work anyway. The least people’s representatives can do for us is sit on their Senator’s desk and smile for the C-Span cameras 100% of the time they are at work explaining what their stuffers are coming up with. Senators can just sit for hours on their desk and read the bills and then debate the issues. It will be all in the open. No closed door and fancy offices. Just a tiny desk with no distractions so some work can actually get done. This is why we hire the US Senate.