Being “less popular than dog poop, traffic jams, and lines at the DMV,” Congress still has its perks. Take its two on-site gyms, for example, one for the House and one for the Senate.
The House gym, called the Wellness Center, is open to current and some former members of Congress. It includes a swimming pool, a sauna and stream room, flat-screen TVs, and paddleball and basketball courts.
The gym was featured in a 2011 selfie taken by the now-infamous, former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who took and sent a shot of himself wrapped in a towel, TMZ reported. When he was vice president, Joe Biden would occasionally lift weights and ride a stationary bike in one of the gyms while his Secret Service detail waited outside.
During two government shutdowns, when Congress failed to pass its annual spending bills, the House gym stayed open. Apparently towel service was discontinued during the 2018 shutdown, however.
Perhaps slightly justifiable in a time of long hours and dawn-to-dusk voting, the perk is harder to justify with Congress working remotely or in session around 200 days a year.
After the free gym came under political fire, Congress turned its free perk into a dues-paying perk back in 1992, and in 2007 banned former members of Congress turned lobbyists and agents of a “foreign principal,” as well, a ban that remains in place today (H.Res.8, Sec. 3(d)).
The Senate has a similar lobbyist ban, though former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the press in 2006 he’d never been lobbied in 24 years of using the gym, adding “Of course, I’m pretty ugly naked. So maybe that’s why.”
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