But fears that jobs were never coming back, which led to grandstanding about outsourcing, proved overwrought.
The quality of the debates has been poor — the members are given to grandstanding — and very little legislation has passed.
Lee said the bipartisan effort to craft a response to Flint amounted to "grandstanding".
"It could lead to the worse type of grandstanding," he told ScienceInsider, "with scientists making their case in public for why NSF should have funded their research.
The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, risked union anger by branding Dr Carter's warning that any attacks to unsocial hours pay would be a "red line" that could lead to industrial action, "ridiculous" and accusing the country's biggest nursing union of "grandstanding".
But as Mr. Oxley said in his speech, "Grandstanding by ambitious and publicity-hungry political officials will not lead to healthy and responsible securities markets".
"Grandstanding by ambitious and publicity-hungry political officials will not lead to healthy and responsible securities markets, in my estimation," Mr. Oxley said.
The Brazilian parliamentary style, it appeared, was instead to take grandstanding verbosity to new, oxygen-starved heights.
Not surprisingly, this lends itself more to grandstanding than to serious negotiation.
Mr Netanyahu said it was the Palestinians who needed to stop "grandstanding".
