Frager's Fire/Appropriations

Floor Speech

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to speak a few minutes this afternoon on two subjects. The first involves both a wonderful evening for any Member of Congress and a tragedy in our Capitol Hill neighborhood nearby. The second involves the upcoming appropriations period.

Mr. Speaker, last night was a terrific evening if you happened to be there. Members of Congress--it looked like equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans; we are part of the so-called No Labels Caucus; these are Members of Congress who are trying to get beyond the needless polarization in this House--decided to go to the baseball game together, the Nationals Stadium, our new, terrific stadium here in the District of Columbia. It was a Nats-Mets game. I'm sorry to report the Nats lost badly. They also played the night before and won, if I may also report that.

I was coming back from this really wonderful bipartisan experience--we ate hot dogs together, we ate & drank together--me, wine, a lot of my colleagues beer--and we talked about anything but the House. We talked about what people have said Members need to do more. We talked about the game and what was happening in our lives.

I sat next to a Member I had never met before even though he's on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with me. His name is Rodney Davis. It was so funny to hear him talk about how I didn't know him, he said he was the lowest man on the totem pole. He apparently was, at least in seniority on our committee the last member and I'm near the top in seniority. We laughed about that. He laughed about how narrow was his margin in getting to the House. I mean, all of this was fun. And, yes, the game--the game, of course, was the baseball game.

He told me about his 12-year-old twin boys. That was really so touching--how he missed a suspension vote because he was coaching the baseball team where his boys played. So that was the setting of the evening. You can't help but feel good when you come home from an evening like that.

Because I have for many years lived on Capitol Hill--I represent the District, I am a native Washingtonian and I now live on Capitol Hill--I didn't have to go far from Nationals Stadium to come home. But I returned to find a pungent smell in the air because the storied neighborhood hardware store, Frager's, was in the process of being burned to the ground. I could get only so far along Pennsylvania Avenue, then everyone had to take a detour. Even this morning, parts of Pennsylvania Avenue, Southeast were closed off because of, even then, hot spots from the fire. It was like losing a friend--a human friend, that is.

My first thought went to the employees; there are about 65 of them. I'm grateful to have learned that it appears no one was injured or hurt. This pungent odor--remember, this is a hardware store, so there's all kinds of things to go up in flames and all kinds of smells. And even though I'm a number of blocks--about six to ten blocks--I could smell the odor very deeply from the fire. In fact, the city announced that everyone should go in and turn on their air conditioning and not come out for a while.

The employees were still in the building--some of them--but got out of the way of the fire, and no one was injured or killed. I understand that there may have been a couple of firefighters who were injured. We certainly wish them the very best and thank them for fighting what was a horrendous, hot, and unusual fire in the middle of a wonderful residential neighborhood.

When a store that's been in the same location for 100 years goes up in flames, you begin to realize that it was more than a neighborhood hardware store, afterall, and that after almost 100 years in the same location it had embedded itself into our Capitol Hill community as an institution all its own. It stirred in me something like the emotion that I felt when the Eastern Market--our historic, old market that was even older than Frager's--went up in flames a few years ago. Those are parts of your neighborhood we cannot imagine being without.

We have since rebuilt Eastern Market so that it looks very much like it always did--because it's a historic building and great pains were taken to see to it. Now, I'm not yet sure they will be able to do that at Frager's. After all, the Eastern Market is a publically owned market. That's not the case with this private business, which has thrived in our neighborhood through the era of mega-hardware stores. Frager's had survived when the era of the corner grocery and the corner store of every variety seem to have gone by the way.

It says everything about Frager's that it could survive in that kind of competition, where these multipurpose mega-hardware stores are accessible if you want to get in your car. I guess that may be the key to why the best of these corner institutions have survived for so long.

Frager's was not a state-of-the-art building. That's part of the reason it could burn down. You go in and they have squeezed goods into Frager's that you will not find at our wonderful mega-hardware stores. There are things that may have gone out of style, but they're just what you need and they're just what goes best with your own home.

Capitol Hill is a historic district. I live in a historic house. You can't do anything to the outside of the house; you can change it on the inside. So you can imagine, we're always trying to match up the historic eccentricity of our homes with what's available in the stores. Well, Frager's is always there to help you. So the loss is, for us, monumental.

I think Frager's has survived all these years not only because it happens to often have what we can't find anywhere else, but particularly because of the service ethic that is a part of this neighborhood institution. You go to Frager's, they know you if you've been in there once before. They go out of their way to help you even as you try to find

your way through the cramped aisles. They have the amenities you need. You may still go to the big mega-store, but very often you'll try Frager's first--or have to go to Frager's when you didn't find it where you might have thought it should have been.

Above all, such stores in our neighborhoods are tailored to our needs. They've learned what people ask for, and they try to stock it when no one else would.

It made me recall Frager's 90th anniversary--about 3 years ago. I was so impressed that the neighborhood had a store that is where it was 90 years ago--and now we are at 93 or so--that could still celebrate that it's there and has been there all that time. So I came to the floor on that occasion and have since put those congratulatory remarks in the Congressional Record.

So I was really very much looking for another opportunity today to salute Frager's and to say to Frager's that yes, we know you are different from the Eastern Market. Yes, you have insurance, and you don't have taxpayer dollars to help you build. But I think you will find a very grateful neighborhood doing all it can to help Frager's survive, even as the Eastern Market historic market has survived, because there are certain institutions that are endemic to the neighborhood; and if they go, it simply will not be the same neighborhood.

The morning after you still couldn't get close to Frager's. I'm going to go by this evening and I'm going to try to find John Weintraub, who is the owner. This store is located at 11th and Pennsylvania Avenues, Southeast. The cause of the fire is still not known, or at least was not as of this morning.

John Weintraub bought this store, bought Frager's, from the Frager family in 1975. So that tells you that a very good part of its existence one family owned Fragers. John Weintraub has moved it seamlessly from the original family to Mr. Weintraub. He's hoping that his insurance takes care not only of the building, but somehow helps him with the salaries of his 65 employees. I'm very pleased that by the time I awakened this morning, the Matchbox, another store in our neighborhood, had announced that it would offer temporary work to Frager's employees until they are able to find employment.

I was also very pleased to read that the nursery, which was my favorite spot at Frager's, was somehow intact. Beside the hardware store, which is a remnant of its former self now, was a large nursery, an outdoor nursery, with just the kind of flowers you need to start up your window box in the spring with all the plants. You could go and shop for all plants in the outdoors section of Frager's there. Somehow, that section had survived most of the fire. And I hope that we're going to be able to go very soon, notwithstanding the destruction of the building, to the nursery, to remind everybody that Frager's is alive, well, and thriving despite the fire.

I want also to salute those who stood with Mayor Vincent Gray and me just about 10 days ago to announce that as the District of Columbia appropriation comes to the floor, we will be looking at the appropriators to make sure that they respect the District of Columbia's 600,000-plus American citizens and the District of Columbia as the independent jurisdiction it is and will refrain from directing our city on how to spend our own local funds.

Standing with us at a press conference were representatives from a number of organizations: DC Vote, the extraordinary organization that leads the fight for district voting rights for our ability to spend our own money, and for our right to be treated as other Americans are treated. Also there were the groups who are targeted the way that we have been targeted. There were the gun safety groups. There were the pro-choice groups. There were the health groups.

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The groups include Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, AIDS United, DC Vote, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Abortion Federation, the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, the Black Women's Health Imperative, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and the Center for American Progress.

[End Insert]

They said they would alert their members should the District's appropriation be targeted for what we call riders, which are undemocratic attachments to the D.C. appropriation to keep it from spending its own local funds in a democratic manner, as directed by its citizens. This, of course, would never be the case for any other jurisdiction. But because the Congress has retained some jurisdiction over the District, there are Members of this body who would take advantage of its jurisdiction to intrude into the local affairs of a local jurisdiction.

Yet, in 1972, the Congress itself recognized that this was wrong. On the heels of the civil rights movement, interestingly, it delegated the authority for governance to the District of Columbia itself. It was about time. It had been done so once before in the 19th century when the Republicans, after the Civil War, allowed the District to have representation in Congress and a home rule government.

However, the Democrats came back to power and abolished local government and the right to be represented in the Congress. We still do not have the vote on the House floor; although we pay taxes at very high rates like every other Member's constituents. But at least there was some representation.

Finally, in the mid '70s, the Congress saw how wrong it was to claim itself to be the leader of freedom around the world and yet have its own capital city with no local governance and no representation in the Congress of the United States. However, when it delegated its authority to the District for local governance, it did leave four or five exceptions.

The exceptions were, for example, that the Districts can't tax the Federal property located in the District of Columbia. And the other exceptions were of that kind. Congress didn't add: and Members may at any time they have a preference keep the District from spending its own local funds the way their own constituents can spend their own local funds.

We will never give up our full rights as American citizens to spend our own funds. We raise $6 billion more than some States every year. When our folks tell us how to spend that money, we're going to always fight to spend it, just as every Member would fight to spend it as democratically directed by constituents.

We had thought when the Republicans--particularly the Tea Party Republicans as they call themselves--came they would be the first to side with us on this matter because they are supposed to, according to their recited principles, resent the intrusion of Federal power, sometimes even where Federal power always has been. So we thought they would be the first to understand that you don't use the big foot of the Federal Government against any local jurisdiction and then somehow claim the Constitution because the District does not have statehood yet. Not a matter of principle.

I appreciate how the appropriators have handled our appropriation for the last several years. When the Democrats were in charge of this body, we were able to get all of the riders off of our appropriation, and only one has come back, an abortion rider, and we intend to get that one off again. But the others have not come back. And I want to express my appreciation to this House for at least keeping those attachments off.

One of them was an attachment that cost lives and has left us with people who are ill. That attachment kept us from spending our own local money on needle exchange programs, which are widely used around the world and throughout the United States. States can't spend Federal funds for needle exchange programs, but they can spend local funds. Every large city; and many counties spend their own local funds this way because it is one of the few proven ways to keep HIV/AIDS from spreading.

The District was kept from spending its own local funds on needle exchange programs for 10 years. The result was that the District had the highest AIDS rate in the United States for that reason. Right down the road, Baltimore, a much poorer city than the District of Columbia--and the District of Columbia is not a poor city. It is a city of--yes, it is a modicum of poor people, but it is a very prosperous city.

Down the road in Baltimore, you have had for years a better AIDS rate than you have had in the District of Columbia because nobody could keep Baltimore from using needle exchange programs. These are programs that, for example, when an addict is on the street, allow the one city to wean him from addiction or at least keep him from passing a dirty needle on that will spread the virus, but it is often to wean him from drugs because he expects and wants the clean needles to come every day. It is a highly effective way. Whatever it is, we have the right to save the lives of our own people the way we define if that way is legal and constitutional.

You can imagine the anguish we felt when we could not even save the lives of our own people. To its credit and the credit of this House, that rider has not come back on our appropriation. I had a meeting with Chairman Ander Crenshaw just yesterday. I don't have any idea what will happen, but he seems a fair and open man. I was pleased also to bring the Mayor to have a meeting with him so that he could meet the chief executive of the city. There also are other riders that were on the appropriation that are not now on it.

We've learned to take the offensive, though, because we are left here by ourselves--a delegation of one--so it's real easy to gang up on us because I'm all the District has. It has no Senators, and therefore we try to stop such intrusions before they occur. Yes, partly, perhaps, because of that--because of the action of our allies in writing the appropriators, having their constituents contact appropriators--this may have had an effect; but I think what has also had an effect is there are Members who, I think, listened to the effect of these riders, and who have seen them as inconsistent with the principle of local control and have acted accordingly.

So I say to those Members: you have our thanks and our appreciation.

I say to my own Capitol Hill neighborhood as I close: that we have lived through the tragedy of the loss of a major public institution, the Eastern Market. We saw it come back. As Capitol Hill residents, it seems to me all of us have an obligation to help Frager's come back, too. Frager's has been there when we needed Frager's. Frager's cannot depend upon public money. Frager's needs support--and we'll have to learn what kind of support it is--from all of us if we value such unique neighborhood institutions.

At a time when our country is growing larger, when it is becoming so easy to become anonymous--when the personal and the ability to touch and feel that you are heard often seem so distant, when even those of us who Tweet and Facebook recognize that, at the same time, we are keeping our distance--at a time like this when Frager's brought us close, when Frager's made us walk to the store instead of getting into our cars, and when we found there, what we could not find elsewhere, let us celebrate this institution, with which, I think, every Member of the House from whatever community, large or small, could identify.

I celebrate Frager's. I look forward to its return in a fashion that will remind us of a near century's service to those who have lived in the Capitol Hill community, one of the oldest communities in the Nation's Capital.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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