Additional Continuing Appropriations Amendments, 2011

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. NORTON. Look, the majority has chosen to run the government, the Federal Government, from CR to CR. But the majority has no right to inflict this operational outrage on the local funds of a local jurisdiction, the District of Columbia.

The majority may want to incur for the Federal Government the operational difficulties. After all, the District of Columbia delivers services to Federal officials, including the President, Federal buildings, foreign embassies, and the like. But does the majority really want to risk, to put the District and its operations at risk or to place, what Wall Street almost surely will do, a risk premium on the District due to the uncertainty that we are at bay from CR to CR?

This is a fragile economy for every big city, but D.C.'s local budget was approved a year ago in the city and last summer by the Appropriations Committees. Yet the District of Columbia is being held hostage to a Federal fight, although the District of Columbia can do nothing to free itself from this Federal fight.

I have tried to get the District on successive CRs so that we could spend our own money all year. There is no disapproval of that here. I wager that very few Members even know that the District would close down if the Federal Government closed down; would be perplexed by it; would have no objection to our spending our own local money all year long.

We raise and manage $8 billion. We have a right to spend our local funds without being dragged into a Federal fight.

You can't run a big city from CR to CR. I ask you to find a way between now and 3 weeks to free D.C. to run its own city for the rest of the fiscal year.

Let my people go.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source