Book Closes On U.S. House's Storied Page Program

STEVE INSKEEP, Host:

House leaders have announced a way to save $5 million this week. After some 200 years, the House page program is ending. NPR's Selena Simmons- Duffin has the story.

SELENA SIMMONS: If you walk through Congress when it's in session, you'll see these teenagers wandering the halls. They're exceptionally well-dressed, with blue blazers and conservative haircuts. Who are they?

GUY RAZ: I was a page in the spring semester of 1991.

SIMMONS: And this is?

RAZ: This is Guy Raz. I'm the weekend host of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

SIMMONS: Guy was fascinated by politics, and he wanted to see government up close.

RAZ: I was 16. I had never really been outside of Southern California. All of a sudden I'm in Washington, D.C. with a group of other 16-year- olds from all over the country.

SIMMONS: Pages live together in a dorm. They get up really early and go to school at the Library of Congress and then go across the street and do the kind of work pages have always done.

SIMMONS: The page program goes back to the very beginnings of Congress, even the Continental Congress.

SIMMONS: Former House historian Raymond Smock says then they were basically doorkeepers. In the 1820s, the first official pages came along.

SIMMONS: Their main job was to carry messages to and from the legislative chamber, and all kinds of little chores that made them indispensable to the daily functioning of the institution.

SIMMONS: Meanwhile, they got to witness history. For instance, when Congressman John Dingell of Michigan was a page...

RAZ: Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked us and we declared war on Japan.

SIMMONS: And that was...

SIMMONS: 1936 to 1941.

SIMMONS: Still, it wasn't anything scandalous that leaders Pelosi and Boehner pointed to in their statement about why the program is getting cancelled. It was the cost - over $5 million a year. Their argument is that's just too much, considering how technology has made some page tasks obsolete. Again, Congressman Dingell...

SIMMONS: In the old days, the pages carried written messages. Then the telephones came, then the pages had to answer the telephones. Then electronics came.

SIMMONS: Now congressmen can email a PDF file of a bill from their smartphones, their staff can just shoot them a quick text, they can tweet at their fellow members. What's left for pages to do?

SIMMONS: It's true. You are wasting a lot of time and taxpayer money and you're just sitting there in the House.

SIMMONS: But, says Ricky Kreitner, who was a page in 2007, just being in the House is majestic. Now 21, a college student at McGill, he says he didn't exactly witness legislative history - it was a slow session - but he brushed shoulders with congressmen, saw President Bush walk out of an elevator, and climbed through the Capitol attic to raise and lower the flag.

SIMMONS: You kind of climb through these really little passageways that are marked. All different pages from the past have written on the wall their experiences as a page. So then you climb up this little metal staircase and then you un-hatch the little door to get up to the roof, and then you go up there and the massive Capitol dome is just staring you right in the face.

SIMMONS: Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.