Providing for Consideration of S. Energy Policy Modernization Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Clarifying Congressional Intent in Providing for DC Home Rule Act of and Providing for Proceedings During the Period From May Through June 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, first I want to thank my good friend from New York State for the way she has always understood and championed with respect to the District of Columbia, which also happens to be the capital of the United States. But, as she said, it is more than the Capitol and this building. It is where almost 700,000 Americans live.

Mr. Speaker, I must strongly oppose that portion of the bill providing for consideration of H.R. 5233. Understand the spectacle we have ongoing here. A strong Republican House is actively sponsoring a bill that repeals a local law, a local law that in this case authorizes the District of Columbia government to spend its own local funds without congressional approval.

Who do the Republicans think they are, that the people I represent should ask for their approval to spend, and to process funds that they had nothing to do with raising?

Understand, no Federal funds are involved, not one penny, but those pennies, over $7 billion--and I want people who come to the floor to tell me if their State raises $7 billion on its own. Over $7 billion. These are our pennies. Not a cent of Federal money is even implicated.

Let's go back to Republican principles to understand what is happening on this floor today because it is going to happen twice. My Republican friends propose in this rule--these are the same friends who despise the Federal reach, despise it so much that every year they try to give back what have long been Federal matters to the States, like the Department of Education. Need I go through the laundry list? The one thing they stand for in this Congress and have stood for throughout human time is that they prefer that power over the people be exercised at the State and local level. That is what they stand for. There are not many things that you can say a particular party stands for. Local control is certainly their cardinal principle.

But look what they are doing this afternoon. They are doubling down. That is not just a matter of emphasis. That means double bills. They are doubling down to use the awesome power of the Federal Government against a local district. If you will excuse me, I regard that as very un-Republican.

We are talking about two provisions--not just the rule before us-- that use identical language, as if to say, you know, we really mean it, District of Columbia, because we are going to do it twice. We want to be doubly sure that we keep this local district from enforcing its own local budget.

So what is the point of this bill if they are doing it twice?

This bill is a pretense. It is solely designed to lay the predicate for another action that has occurred this very morning in the Committee on Appropriations. How coincidental. I sat through a Committee on Appropriations markup where a rider, using the very same language that is proposed through this rule, and that rider was indeed passed by the House appropriations subcommittee.

Heavens. I wonder if in the history of the House of Representatives we have ever had this Congress or the Congress of the United States to be so threatened by what a local jurisdiction would do that it proposes not one bill, but two, to keep that local jurisdiction from proceeding. We are not seceding from the United States. We are simply trying to spend our own money.

So here we have a bill twice over because the--appropriations bill contains the same language, understand, despite another of their rules that prohibits legislating on an appropriations bill. The Republican leadership included the text of H.R. 5233 in the appropriations bill for what appears to be a very good reason. They recognize that that is the only chance they have of enacting the text of the rule before you, and that is to do so in an appropriations bill. So they are doing it twice for good measure, but the only way it is going to pass is attaching it to some must-pass bill.

The Senate--and I say this on this floor--does not have the votes to pass H.R. 5233 itself. And even if it did, the President of the United States, who has long supported budget autonomy, put it in his own budgets, has said he would veto it. The Executive Statement of Administration Policy that came out yesterday indicated so.

This may be news to some Members of this body, but I am the only Member of Congress who was elected by the almost 700,000 American citizens who live in the District of Columbia, and my constituents are the only American citizens who are affected by this bill.

You might be able to understand the anger of my constituents if you knew these numbers. The people I represent pay more taxes than 22 States pay.

Or you want another one that would make you understand the anger of my constituents?

They are number one per capita in the Federal taxes paid to support their homeland, highest taxes per capita in the United States. And yet this very day, twice--first with respect to this rule, then with respect to the bill--every single Member of Congress will get a vote on this bill solely concerning the District of Columbia except the Member of Congress who represents the District of Columbia and is elected to represent them.

If you have never felt like a despot before, I hope that side of the aisle understands how it feels and what it looks like.

The Republican leadership has claimed that it is committed to letting the House work its will on legislation. However, yesterday, the Rules Committee, on a party-line vote, prevented me from offering my amendment to this bill to the House floor. What are you afraid of, if my amendment comes to the House floor that says, ``Congress, you do it; you grant D.C. budget autonomy''? Are you afraid you can't do it? Sure you can do it. Or, at least let us do it. Give D.C. some respect.

My amendment was the only chance for D.C. residents to have a say on the bill during floor consideration. So even though you could have, obviously, and would have defeated my amendment to say, ``You do it, you grant us budget autonomy,'' what in the world kept you from allowing us the respect of bringing that amendment to counter what you are doing today, particularly knowing that we can't counter what you are doing today?

My amendment, of course, would have called the question on whether Members support or oppose local control of local jurisdictions over their own budget. Do Members oppose budget autonomy because the District initiated it? Or do they actually want to toss their own local control principles out of the Capitol window through a vote requiring Federal approval of local funds?

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Ms. NORTON. My amendment would have made the text of D.C.'s Local Budget Autonomy Act Federal law. It would have simply said, look, if you don't like what the District did, you do it. We would have lost. But you would at least have given to us the respect that we are entitled to as American citizens--afraid even to do that.

The Local Budget Autonomy Act is already law. The District government has begun to implement it, and I applaud them for doing so. When you are up against a despotic House of Representatives, the only way to proceed in a democracy is to move on your own, or else they will say: See, we waited them out and there is nothing they can do. There is only one of them against all of us.

Only one court opinion has, in fact, upheld the Budget Autonomy Act, though the good Member on the other side implied that this was a lawless act. Well, let me tell you what the court said, without going through all of it:

Forthwith, enforce all provisions of the Local Budget Autonomy Act of 2012.

That is the law. Who is being lawless, who is being unprincipled is any majority that would want to be involved with the local funds of any American jurisdiction.

When Members cast their vote today on the bill, they will be voting on a bill to require Congress to approve a local budget. How un- Republican. And worse, undemocratic.

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Ms. NORTON. My good friend Mr. Meadows speaks as if he didn't speak up for the Congress of the United States with its awesome power, then Congress would be stripped of its power by the District of Columbia-- please.

If there is any concern here about this bill, the one thing my good friend should not do is to base it on what lawyers say. The latest and most definitive, on what lawyers say is a court of law.

I want to indicate what happened, because the matter was first in the Federal district court, then appealed to the Federal court of appeals. The Federal court of appeals heard oral argument and received briefs. It looked at this--and we don't know why--but they sent it to a local D.C. court.

That court heard at every single argument Mr. Meadows has raised and found for the District of Columbia. And that is the definitive word on the law, unless what he is saying is: Je suis the law, or, I am the law. Well, maybe you are, but you are the kind of law that led the Framers to rebel against England. No respect for local law.

You speak of the Diggs Compromise. What you didn't say is that some compromise had to be reached because the Senate, in its home rule bill, gave the district control over its local budget.

So what we say, what our lawyers say, is that compromise did leave some room in the charter--which does not specifically say that budget autonomy is denied to the District; and they could have said it, but they didn't--and the compromise was to leave some room at such point as it became relevant to step up and claim the right to process and enforce their own local budget.

My good friend managing the bill on that side dares reach back to the 1990s. Yes, the District got into trouble. My congratulations to the District of Columbia as the only city which, for 200 years, carried State functions. And yes, in the 1990s, it became too much; and yes, the city had a serious financial crisis.

So if you want to go back two decades, also come forward, because at this time, the District has perhaps the strongest economy in the United States of America. How many of you have surpluses? How many of you have anything to brag about in terms of the economy of your district?

Have you looked at what is happening in the District of Columbia? You can see the building going on. You can see the increase in our population. So yes, we have had hard times, and I am sure you have, but I am sure that there was a whole lot less reason for your hard times than for ours.

I am asking you to think about your own principles of local control and try to justify taking local control from the District, but particularly to justify taking local control over our own money. That is what the Framers went to war about. Somebody somewhere was trying to tell them about taxes having to do with their own local funds.

I don't know if that spirit still lives on that side of the aisle, but it still lives in the District of Columbia. This is our money. We are going to keep going at it until you have nothing to say about funds raised in a jurisdiction not your own. My constituents cannot hold you accountable because they cannot vote for you.

Well, sir, they have voted for me; and what I say today represents what they believe and what they will never give up, and that is the right to control their own local laws and, and above all, their own local funds raised from their own local taxpayers.

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