Home Rule

Floor Speech

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to celebrate the 41 District of Columbia elected officials and residents led by Mayor Vincent Gray and five members of the D.C. City Council who were arrested in front of the Hart Senate office building yesterday evening, and hundreds of other residents who gathered to protest their second-class treatment as American citizens by the Republican House, the Democratic-led Senate, and the administration.

The 2011 continuing resolution due on the floor this week contains a sinister trade that takes the District of Columbia's self-governing rights to spend its own local funds on abortion services for poor women, as many jurisdictions have long done. The CR also funds the start-up of a new, private school voucher program but only in D.C., about which no local elected official was consulted.

It is the House Republicans who have been on an undemocratic warpath against the District's home rule. But yesterday, residents did not spare Senate Democrats or the President who, in the end, accepted Republican demands. The House will hear from me again as I try to remove these anti-home rule riders; but this body has repeatedly turned a deaf ear to me on violations of the city's most basic rights to local control.

Congress continually and summarily refused my bill and several amendments to allow the District to spend its own local funds to avoid a shutdown of the city government that would have occurred with a Federal shutdown, even though only our local funds were involved.

Yesterday, however, Congress and the country heard from the people themselves. House rules do not allow Members to organize demonstrations, and yesterday's spontaneous outpouring of citizens, where I was not present, showed why the people must always speak for themselves. D.C. Vote organized yesterday's mammoth demonstration in a couple of days; and residents poured onto Constitution Avenue, anxious for an outlet for their accumulated outrage at being traded on a congressional auction block.

Yesterday, the House, the Senate, and the administration heard the voices and saw the faces of our city. The House may disagree with the views of our American citizens on women's constitutional reproductive rights, but no American would sanction congressional mandates on how our local citizens may spend the local taxes they raise. The Speaker may favor private school vouchers, but no American would agree that his preference should override a city's local decision for public charter schools as the alternative to our private schools.

The House may continue to ignore me; but yesterday D.C. elected officials and residents, like millions of others throughout the world, showed that the people will not be ignored forever.

I will offer a separate statement including the names of the residents and officials who were arrested, with gratitude.

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