WASHINGTON — The nation’s capital is supposed to be dead in August, when the politicians go back to their districts to reconnect with constituents, take family vacations and — in election years such as this one — campaign.

But Congress should cut short its break this year, says U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, who flew back to the Capitol last week to blast Republican leaders for failing to make sure that the rest of the House flew back with him.

His reason: national security.

Clyburn, whose district stretches from Columbia to Charleston, stood with other top-ranked Democrats on Tuesday and said that Congress needs to reconvene to turn the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission report into law.

“If the speaker (of the House) won’t do it, the president should move to bring us back here to Washington,” said Clyburn, vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Despite Republicans’ general ignoring of the Democratic request for a special session of Congress, the halls of the Capitol were crowded with politicians in the earlier part of the week.

More than 100 House Democrats, out of a total of 206, complied with their caucus’s request that they return to Washington for a presentation by the chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, the bipartisan body convened to make a complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

The members of the House Armed Services Committee also came back — for two days of hearings starring the 9/11 Commission chairmen: former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican, and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat from Indiana.

The hearings ensured that Armed Services members U.S. Reps. John Spratt, D-S.C., and Joe Wilson, R-S.C., were in Washington on Monday and Tuesday.

And this week, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., heads back to Washington for a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will listen to defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others on reorganizing the intelligence community.

Republicans generally considered the Democrats’ demand for a special session a publicity stunt.

Wilson said he doesn’t want to rush the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations into law.

“What we are doing is having an orderly process of hearings,” he said. “They are out of the ordinary because we are doing this in the August recess. The urgency is being addressed.”

And as much as he values the report, he is not ready to enact its every recommendation.

A “superagency” with authority over all intelligence gathering and analysis is one key aspect of the report that Wilson said he is not yet sure he would advocate.

The country is safe with Congress taking a little more time with the commission’s conclusions, because it is not as if the Bush administration hasn’t already been beefing up security around the country,” Wilson said.

“Tremendous steps have already been taken.”

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Literatim

“The South is problematic: John Edwards came to the Senate in 1998 with 42 percent of the white vote — and 92 percent of the black vote. No progressive candidate of the South wins on white votes; 85 to 90 percent of the black vote is essential.”

— Greenville native and one-time Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, in a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com