Stop Intruding in D.C. Local Affairs

Floor Speech

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor because in a very real sense I feel surrounded. Mr. Speaker, I was sent to Congress, like every other Member, to attend to the business of the Nation. But in fact, I have been surrounded. I have been surrounded by the new House majority that has decided to spend huge amounts of time, in the most autocratic fashion, trying to deprive the District of Columbia of its self-governing rights.

Mr. Speaker, Congress delegated home rule to the District of Columbia in 1973. Before that time, the District of Columbia had no mayor, city council, was ruled by the federal government without any democracy. That was mostly the work of Southern Democrats, whose reasons were, among others, but most definitely, racial. What is happening today is not the work of Southern Democrats. It is the work of the new Republican majority.

I am pulled off the Nation's business day after day after day because of yet another zinger from Republicans to intrude into the local affairs and local spending of the District of Columbia. I had to call the administration and Majority Leader Reid today, cautioning them that the District must not be used as a bargaining chip in the present battle over Federal spending underway here.

The latest intrusion is hard to bear. The District has decided to spend its local funds, among other things, on abortions for poor women. Dozens upon dozens of jurisdictions do that. No Federal funds. Funds raised by the taxpayers of the District of Columbia. What does that have to do with the Federal budget? What does that have to do with overspending or a deficit here? That has to do with somebody's, some majority's, ideological obsession with placing their autocratic desires on a jurisdiction that did not elect them, cannot put them out. It's the very definition of an autocracy.

So they pick on the jurisdiction that has no Senators and throw us into the pot because the far right social conservatives here want something in this CR. So give them the District of Columbia. You can't have us. Who do you think you are? The residents of the District of Columbia are free and equal citizens. We will not be traded off like we were slaves or a colony that can be thrown in by those who don't care. We care.

So whether it is the other body, or this body, or for that matter the President of the United States, get your hands off the local funds of the District of Columbia. You didn't raise a penny of it. We will spend it the way we please. And especially in this battle, which has to do with your deficit spending.

D.C. has a budget that is balanced. Why should that budget be over here in the first place? Our budget was approved last year. It came here and was approved by the House and the Senate before the lame duck. Yet last year's D.C. budget is still here, and we are now sitting on the possibility that when the Federal Government, which now looks like it's stupid enough to close down because the Republicans won't take the best deal anybody has had in the history of this body for what they wanted, that may shut down. And the American people will be shocked to know that would mean that the local government of the District of Columbia, which is not in this fight, will be shut down too.

This has gone much too far. It's one thing to start the session with your first act being to strip the District of Columbia of its vote in the Committee of the Whole, although two courts have said that that vote is constitutional.

Then to move on to intrusion after intrusion, reinsert riders that we just got out, riders that have nothing to do with any Member of this body except me, who represents the citizens of the District of Columbia, a rider that would increase HIV/AIDS in D.C., the District of Columbia, by keeping the city from using its own funds to fund needle exchange.

Again, dozens upon dozens of jurisdictions have driven down their AIDS rate this way. We have the highest AIDS rate in the United States only because the Congress of the United States has killed--I use these words advisedly--killed men, women and children in the District of Columbia by keeping the District for 10 years from using needle exchange, so that AIDS spread throughout the city.

So we have a higher AIDS rate than Baltimore--poorer city--than New York, than Detroit, than Los Angeles because of the wishes of the Congress of the United States which is responsive to nobody in the District of Columbia.

They move to abortion. And if it wasn't enough to keep us from using our own local funds in this budget, as they still hope to do, they have put us in H.R. 3. H.R. 3 is a bill, and instead of a rider which lasts 1 year, they would permanently keep the District from spending its own funds on abortions for women. This is the majority that does not even want the Federal Government in Federal matters. What in the world are they doing in the matters of the local jurisdiction?

What kind of tea party Republicans are these who have just added to the deficit by voting $300 million for private schools in the District of Columbia, adding to the deficit and not paying for it? How do you explain that back home? We didn't ask for these vouchers. Nobody even consulted with public officials in the District of Columbia before they put that voucher bill on the floor last week. That's the kind of contempt this majority has for the residents of the District of Columbia.

We are going to fight back each and every time, and we are going to say to this administration and to the Senate: Don't give in. Don't give us away because they want a chit and they have decided that chit is the District of Columbia.

I went to the Rules Committee from the very beginning when a shutdown looked like it was going to occur. I said, look, this is our money. We are not in this fight. We all agree on that. This is about Federal spending, the Federal deficit, not a deficit from the District of Columbia. Let us have a provision here that says the District can spend its own local money for the rest of the year. I don't think that there is a single American citizen that would have said that we shouldn't be able to spend our own local money for the rest of this year. The Rules Committee turned a deaf ear.

And so we have had a threat of shutdown after shutdown. And the only reason the District of Columbia is open is because the Federal Government hasn't shut down. Now it looks like these people are going to shut it down anyway because the tea party Republicans have tied the hands of the Speaker behind his very back and taken him prisoner.

Well, look, don't take us prisoner with him. We don't have anything to do with that fight. Imagine what it would mean to shut down a big city in America, and especially since that big city is the Nation's capital. Imagine what we look like to the world that we even shut down the Nation's capital when the Federal Government was shut down. Don't do it. Don't shut the Federal Government down. Speaker Boehner, himself, said that it would cost the government more to shut it down than to keep it open.

But if you do shut it down, for goodness sake, keep the District of Columbia open. That's what Speaker Gingrich did when the Federal Government shut down. He kept the District of Columbia open after the first time--because it shut down several times--because he recognized you can't do that to a big city, a very complex mechanism. You simply can't shut it down and expect that it can keep on moving.

It's a terrible thing to have H.R. 3 on the floor in the first place. That would strip women of a vital portion of their reproductive rights, but it would also go after the insurers to make it almost impossible for a woman to get comprehensive insurance, because the insurer would almost surely have to exclude abortion.

What kind of a place is this? I thought that the new majority came to town on a bandwagon that said let's create jobs. Where is the jobs bill? Why the obsession with a local jurisdiction that has nothing to do with jobs or even with the cutting of spending that you have been so successful in getting?

It's your battle, not ours. To pull us into your battle is tantamount to what bullies do in the schoolyard. Somebody is watching the fight or is passing by, they just get pulled into the fight. We are not evenonlookers. We simply are not in it.

It's as if Republicans had a meeting: How many things that we haven't done can we do to the District of Columbia, and how many things that we have done can we do? Well, they have introduced a gun bill. The courts have already found the new gun law the District passed constitutional.

They have introduced a new one that, among other things, would say that you could carry guns in the streets of the Nation's capital and conceal them as well. How would you like 20 million visitors to see people walking around with guns that you can see, and what do you think that means for the many official delegations who frequent the streets of the District of Columbia?

You know, there have been so many things that the Republicans have thought of to do, I need to sit down and consider: Is there anything they haven't thought of to do?

One thing that occurs to me to show you how deep is their contempt for democracy in the District of Columbia, when they put the District of Columbia in their bill that goes after women and insurers nationwide, they tucked us in there, too, to make sure we could never spend local money for abortions for poor women. I mentioned that earlier.

So, of course, as you might imagine, since mine was the only district named in the bill that I would ask to testify--denied. Excuse given? Well, the Democrats already had their witness. I wasn't a witness for the Democrats against the bill.

I asked for common courtesy, the right to be heard on a section of the bill that involved my District. Somebody else needed to speak for the Democrats as the minority witness on the bill itself.

If they look for every attempt, every occasion to deny us democracy, they also look for every occasion to deny the Member who represents this city the rights that I am due simply as a courtesy as a colleague.

Nothing is more precious to Americans than the right to be able to spend their local funds the way they want to. I thought that the new tea party House Republicans would be the first to understand that. Remember what we are talking about. We are talking about local funds of a local jurisdiction.

Time and again, the Republicans use the fact that our budget comes here in order to attach, in the most undemocratic fashion, matters that are their pet projects. Vouchers is an example of a pet project of the Speaker, so that gets priority in coming to the floor. The District is the only jurisdiction that has ever had federally funded private vouchers. There was wholesale resentment and demonstrations against that when it was first put on our city.

Ultimately, we made some compromises. We let the law go 2 years past its expiration date. The Obama administration said anybody who is still in private school can remain until they graduate. You can never compromise enough with the House Republicans.

Now they want it all over again. They want to restart it. I particularly resent the voucher bill because the District of Columbia is one of the only jurisdictions that has allowed public charter schools, separate from our public schools, to flourish. Almost half of our children are educated in these independent, publicly accountable charter schools. You go to the jurisdiction of virtually every Member of this House, you will find that their local school board or their State school authorities have kept charters out and kept them growing. We let them in as a home rule matter, and they flourished.

I have appointed students from the charter schools for service academies. We've got terrific charter schools. We've got a Latin charter school. We've got eight KIPP charter schools. Those are the top of the mark of public schools. I don't know what we can do. We're the last to claim that our public schools are what they should be. In fact, our public schools have improved because of competition from the charter schools. That's the kind of competition you want because the charter schools and the public schools are competing for the same dollar. The private schools are funded out of a separate pot.

Now, a budget resolution comes out today, and it would trade off perhaps the most valuable education program the city has ever had for this voucher program which is unpaid for and should never pass the House. So they want it in next year's bill, and this is how they do it.

They take D.C. TAG, which Congress in the most bipartisan fashion passed because the District of Columbia does not have a State university system where you can go to any one of usually dozens of colleges. So it funds youngsters to go to other States. It has doubled college attendance in the District of Columbia. In order to get a decent job in the District of Columbia, because we are the upscale Nation's Capital, you need some college.

And yet what the budget resolution does is trade off the few for the many. He would make the program means tested. That defeats the whole point. By sending our students to the public colleges of other States, we are trying to replicate what is available as a right in the States regardless of income. So if you are rich or poor, if you live in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio or California, you go to the State university. If it were means tested, of course, it would mean that many, many of the students could not go. After all, they've got to go out of the District of Columbia simply to take advantage of the program in the first place, and it pays only for tuition. They have to pay for their room and board and for their food. If they had to, if it is means tested, then, of course, what you are doing is killing the program.

Somebody had to sit down and think that one up. And they thought it up as a way to pay for vouchers we never asked for, neither I nor any other public official in the District of Columbia was consulted about. We are tired of it.

We are depending on the Senate to be a bulwark against madness because that's what we have here. We see it in the move to shut down the government. No, they don't want to shut down the government, but they don't have control of their own people. There's no discipline on the other side of the aisle. There's no democracy there. They let a few Members who are the most extreme slice of America decide what their whole caucus will do.

We simply will not be hostages to the new House majority. If you can't get what you want on the floor when you control it, don't put it on the District of Columbia. You should be able, because of your majority, to do what you want to do. We are not the repository for every pet idea that you otherwise dare not put on the House floor. And that is what we have become.

We had hoped that the new majority would focus on the Nation's business, what it said it wanted to do. It has focused on the deficit as the Nation's business, although it's taking food out of the mouths of children in the process. But at least that's a focus on national business.

The average American would ask those who voted to increase the deficit by $300 million last week for private schools in the District of Columbia, why in the world did you do that? Why did you want to give them this? I will tell you why. It was the pet idea of the Speaker, and they don't dare put a national voucher bill on the floor.

The way to do it, you wouldn't have to coerce anybody. You would say, we have vouchers available nationally. Let's have competitive grants. Anyone who wants vouchers can have them. You compete for them. That's how we do things in the Federal Government.

Why didn't they do that? They didn't do that because there's been referendum after referendum in the states, and not one private school voucher referendum has been won by private school voucher proponents. You go home and you tell any American that you are spending Federal money for private schools now, you will get your head handed to you. That's how it was when these referenda ran their course.

Imagine now when the Republicans are cutting billions of dollars from every public school district in the United States, imagine how it looks when they are spending money for private school vouchers on a district that never asked for it and doesn't want it because it's somebody's pet project. Take your pet projects and you know what you can do with them. Do that with them; don't do it here in the District of Columbia.

We ask the majority to stop your obsession with one jurisdiction, the District of Columbia. We ask you if you shut down the Federal Government, for goodness' sake, don't shut down one of America's big cities and a city on which you depend greatly. Many of you live here. Many of the services for the Federal Government are taken care of by the District of Columbia.

This is not something you want to do to the Nation's Capital. It makes us look idiotic to the world at large. For myself, I want to go back to doing the Nation's business. I don't want to be taken off of that business every other day because some Republican or the Republican majority has decided to do something undemocratic to the district I represent.

I put forward an amendment that would get rid of the issue of who gets shut down when the Federal Government gets shut down once and for all. It simply says, look, when the Federal Government shuts down, if the District of Columbia budget is over here and it has gone through the process, the District of Columbia can spend its own local funds. Remember, the budget that comes over here was raised in the District of Columbia and should not be over here in the first place.

I had a budget autonomy bill last session that until the very last moment was going to get through this House and the Senate. It is the very essence of no democracy that somebody's own taxes that they raise in their own local jurisdiction would be subject to somebody else who didn't have anything to do with raising a cent of those taxes. That is what happens to the District of Columbia.

When the District of Columbia's budget comes here, they don't dare change anything in the complicated local budget of the District of Columbia. That is very complicated. You could throw everything out of kilter. So essentially they don't bother with the budget. They spend all of their time seeing what they can attach to the budget, substantive legislation that has no place in an appropriation in the first place and has no place in somebody else's budget above all.

Mr. Speaker, part of the problem may be that some Members either do not know because they are new or have forgotten, either because for 4 years of Democratic control these issues didn't come up, or because they want to forget. I come to the floor this afternoon to assure you I shall not let you forget, we will make sure that in your home districts, they know that you are attending not to the business of that district but to the business of the District of Columbia and that you are doing so in the most undemocratic and autocratic fashion. You who quote the Constitution ought to sit down and think for a moment what the Framers would have done had they seen the Federal Government, which they were afraid of, intervene into the local affairs of any district.

I ask you: hands off, lay off the District of Columbia.

Source