Bullfinch Capitol Dome, DC

John Rubens Smith, [West Front of the Capitol with Gatehouses], c. 1828, Water color on paper, John Rubens Smith, Collection Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (Gift of the Madison Council and Mrs. Joseph Carson).




Built in 1828, these sandstone guardians silently watched over the U.S. Capitol grounds until 1874. In 1889, this gatehouse and its twin, located on Seventeenth Street and Constitution Avenue, were reconstructed in their present locations.

These houses have weathered several floods, water, and the effects of acid rain. On the southeast side are markers indicating the high-water marks during floods.

Ellicott's Engraving of L'Enfant's Plan For the City of Washington

1791

Fiscal Responsibility In The Coming Years

Life as a Republican has been rough of late. As it should be. Spending billions of dollar can cause a hangover the size of Texas that is as pleasant as Washington DC on a sultry August day when the temperature and the humidity are competing with each other. Then comes the Obama.

Obama, like most rookies playing a part, is looking to some of those in Congress for guidance who are showing how to spend some serious money. Trillions. More money than we have in the United States some say. It is a good thing that our most prestigious and respectable Secretary of State had the opportunity to crawl the halls of Beijing begging for more cash. No need for us to sell the rope to to our enemies as Stalin said of capitalists. We'll just give it to the Chinese Communists, with interest. It's easier that way.

Republicans had their day and a good day it was, but unfortunately they stayed to long at the ball and started acting like Democrats. Reagan and Newt Gingrich gave Republicans the weapons and the power to stay in control for a good while. Unfortunately, they did because Clinton got the credit for budget surpluses while Republicans spent money like drunken whores in Tijuana using our checkbooks. They handed the issue of fiscal responsibility back to the Democrats wrapped in pretty paper with a bow as if a gift and it's a gift that keeps on giving when you look at the last two elections which tumbled Republican power out of the House, the Senate and out of the White House.

Now the Obama has come.

He is whispering, stating aloud and shouting that he must spend, spend, spend in the name of fiscal responsibility. Oh, he will cut some things, taxes aren't one of them, but look for a fire sale at the Pentagon. The Brass will have to hock their gold just to keep the doors open.

Republicans know this and have answered appropriately. At least in their minds. They are responsible for approximately 40% of the nearly 9,000 earmarks just passed in the Pelosi-Reid-Obama-Soros (PROS) legislation this week.

The Republican Party and its elected legislators stretching across the country have a golden opportunity to return to their roots, which will bring the base back, to once again be the party of fiscal responsibility. This isn't done with lip service to principle nor by the copious display by aging legislators of photographs with Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.

Fiscal responsibility is cutting budgets, cutting taxes and shrinking the size and scope of government.

A long ago Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, once said, "Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master." That today's Republicans have forgotten this is not only a loss of Party identity, but a loss for our country and our society.

Jenkins Hill was bucolic pasture land for cattle when President Washington made it part of the permanent capital of the United States of America and specifically, Jenkins Hill the location of the Capitol itself. This capital with its Capitol Building soon became the shining city on the hill that was the guiding light for freedom around the world. Now it has become just another dull Euro-Socialist style home to a legislature that sees itself as a caretaker of society instead of a legislature leading a vision of a free and prosperous world. It's become a giant social service office afraid of the rod and spoiling the child. Think 435 nannies with lots of support staff.

Republicans helped take the luster off that shine and they need to repair not just their party, but the Capitol and the nation by being a true loyal opposition and bringing fiscal responsibility, real fiscal responsibility, back to Capitol Hill.

Otherwise, give the damned hill back to the cattle. They'll graze, digest and leave something less odious than what is there now.

Jenkins Hill And The Early Politics of the Federal Government

The new capital of the United States foretold the future of the young nation. The city needed to be placed in the South to placate Republicans led by Jefferson and Madison and to gain their support for any Federal City and Capital.

Thomas Jefferson offered a plan more modest than what President Washington envisioned, but Washington's plan was more modest than Secretary Alexander Hamilton's vision of the new federal seat of government. As the leader of the Federalists, Hamilton envisioned a strong central government with which President George Washington agreed, but it was President Washington who placed the capital district on and around Jenkins Hill in Maryland and Virginia along side of the Potomac River.

The Federal City, now know as Washington DC, was the compromise between opposing political forces and and agrarian interests in the south versus urban business interests in the north. In 1801 it was known as Washington City which resided with Georgetown in the District of Columbia on the Maryland side of the Potomac containing large tracts of low lying swampy land. The Virginia side of the Potomac which included the city Alexandria and a good port once was part of this federal district, but was retroceded to Virginia in 1846.

Recap: DC was a political compromise built on a swamp, split in two parts and after only 45 years of federal control, 32 percent of it was gone, much as things are still done by the federal government today.

To the Banks of the Tiber Stench

In the late 1700's in and around the area known as Jenkins Hill our current Capital City was begun. An earlier owner had named a creek that flowed through the area Tiber Creek after the Roman River. Later Congress changed Tiber Creek into the City Canal. The City Canal filled with garbage and waste that produced disease and a smell in the summer that drove the city's residents out of the city. Today, City Canal has been paved over and named Constitution Avenue which has become the norm for Congress to take something with a foreign name, mess it up and then cover up the garbage and give it a pretty name without doing anything about the stench.

July 16, 1790 - Congress designates land on the Maryland side of the Potomac to be the official capital territory of the United States including the town of Georgetown. In what became the norm, Congress left the details to someone else. President Washington picked the actual location.
February 24, 1791 - Feeling the need to control more land and people Congress adds land on the Virginia side of the Potomac to the federal territory making each of the 4 sides of the territory 10 miles.

November 1, 1800 - President John Adams moves into the President's House (The White House) and Congress, later in the month, leaves Philadelphia with the rest of the federal government to move into their unfinished building in the federal district with only 9 crates of federal documents. Those were the days. Adams referred to Congress' unfinished building, the Capitol, as "two wings without a body." It still is today.

February 24, 1801 - Congress names the federal territory the District of Columbia which included the City of Alexandria and Alexandria County in what was Virginia and on the Maryland side the City of Washington and the City of Georgetown and Alexandria County.

All of this was to be 100 square miles with each of its four straight borders to be 10 miles long. Later, Congress gave the Virginia side of the district, 32 square miles, back to Virginia, but forgot to revoke certain charters. On the Maryland side they decided that Georgetown and the City of Washington were to be separate entities, then decided they should merge and later made them separate again. By 1895 Congress had once again revoked the charter for the City of Georgetown merging it into the City of Washington. All during this time Congress took control of levy courts, forgot to do anything about Washington County, which technically still exists, and didn't really decide if it was all Washington City, Federal Town or the Federal City.

Such consistency in Congress still occurs today.