Disapproving the Action of the District of Columbia Council in Approving the Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 26, the second episode in the new miniseries where the House majority asks the United States Congress to act as a super city council of 535 members to make decisions for the people of Washington, D.C., which is a real city with a real city council and Mayor and which some of my colleagues apparently have never visited or had any real interaction with.
The people in Washington, D.C., want to make their decisions about democratic self-government for themselves. They don't want the Representatives of other Americans to come and make decisions for them.
President Biden was here this week for his great State of the Union Address, and, Mr. Speaker, when you could hear him over the heckling, he talked about the great progress we are making as a nation economically with 12 million new jobs.
In terms of support for Americans in their healthcare with the dramatic reduction in healthcare prescription drug costs, we have cut to $35 a month what people have to spend on their insulin shots if they have diabetes.
We just passed a record investment in climate preparedness to deal with the extreme climate emergency and all of the extreme weather events that people in the United States are experiencing across the country.
That is a national agenda. That is a real national agenda.
Now, my friends across the aisle want to spend this week instead superintending and reviewing the bills that are being passed by the D.C. Council for 713,000 American citizens who live in Washington, D.C.
Yesterday, it was about voting rights. Today, it is about criminal justice reform. I am sure down the road, just as in the past, it is going to be their gun safety laws, and it is going to be their laws allowing for Medicaid funded abortions for poor women. Then they will go after their LGBTQ laws and so on. There will be a parade of attacks on local democratic self-government in Washington, D.C.
Now, I believe that the people of Washington should be treated like all other American citizens. Right now what they have asked for is admission to the Union as a State.
Now, most of the Members of this body represent States that were admitted after the original 13. Thirty-seven States came in afterwards with Congress' exercise of its Article IV powers to admit new States. That was very much the design of the Constitution and the Founders' plan. Go back and read some Thomas Jefferson about that.
We were not set up as a country where certain people would make decisions for other people but people, instead, would be able to govern themselves. In fact, the basis of our attack on British rule over America was our rejecting the idea of virtual representation: that some people could make decisions for other people. No. The whole premise of American democracy is that people make decisions for themselves.
So the 713,000 taxpaying, draftable citizens of Washington, D.C.-- whose population has participated in every war America has ever fought from the point of the American Revolution to the Civil War and all the way up through the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--those people are asking for admission to the Union.
This House of Representatives in the 117th and the 116th Congresses voted to give it to them. It didn't quite make it through the Senate, which is always slower on these things, but that is the trajectory that the people of D.C. are on.
Instead of trying to join President Biden and all of the great national economic progress, infrastructure progress, and healthcare progress we are making, the House majority decides instead to usurp the role of the D.C. Council and to begin to micromanage their government and finger paint all over their laws. That is what they are doing today.
Now, we don't have time to compare the laws of D.C. with the laws of each of the other States, but I just want my colleagues to be on notice that I have got the laws of the other States, and I can do those direct head-to-head comparisons.
I don't think we should go down this road. I don't think it is a healthy thing for us to be doing as a Congress because we should be respecting the democratic self-government rights of the people of Washington, D.C.
Nobody is more interested in public safety in Washington than the people of Washington.
Nobody is more interested in the processes of democratic self- government in Washington than the people of Washington.
Nobody is more interested in their healthcare policies and in their housing policies than them.
I invite any of my colleagues who have actually been to a meeting of the D.C. Council or their local advisory neighborhood commission to rise and tell us about the experience.
But if they haven't, then they should leave democratic self- government and local self-government of Washington to the people of Washington, D.C.
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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia says he is in favor of the resolution because he cares about Washington, D.C.
Mr. Speaker, I now yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), someone else who cares about Washington, D.C.
Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have put some stuff on the floor, and I will answer it.
The distinguished gentleman from Georgia invoked a couple of crimes in Washington, D.C., including one in the Metro. He didn't talk about the hundreds of crimes that were committed here at the Capitol, in Congress, in Washington, D.C., because he viewed the events of January 6 as akin to a ``normal tourist visit.''
Now he dares to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about keeping Washington, D.C., safe. He seeks to associate Washington, D.C., with crime. Indeed, he and his colleagues constantly try to link images of crime to what they call Democrat-controlled cities.
I did some research last night just to clarify matters. The seven States with the highest murder rates in 2020 all were States that were majority for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The murder rate in the States that voted for Trump was higher in aggregate than the murder rate in the States that voted for Biden in each year from 2000 to 2020. I invite the gentleman not to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about crime rates because the murder rate is worse in the red States than it is in the blue States.
Five of the ten cities with the highest murder rate through the first half of last year were in States that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. All those cities have higher murder rates than Washington, D.C. Among the top 10 is a city in the State represented by the sponsor of the disapproval resolution, Mr. Clyde.
Now, the Speaker rose to talk about both yesterday's resolution and today's resolution. He also gave the people of Washington, D.C., a lecture about diluting the vote when he rejects their admission to the Union as a State.
In other words, he is trying to squelch and nullify their statehood drive that would give them real political equality in the country, and then he says the people of Washington, D.C., are diluting the vote. Well, he is blockading the vote. He is preventing the vote for people in Washington, D.C.
Then he joins the chorus denouncing crime in Washington, D.C., which is suddenly of concern to them. I had not heard them mention that before. Well, it turns out that Bakersfield, California, has one of the highest crime rates in America, recently described as one of the top 10 deadliest cities in America for its size, and its crime rate is higher than that of Washington, D.C.
However, we are going to take this opportunity to kick around the people of Washington, D.C. Why? Because they are vulnerable, because they don't have voting representation in the House, and they have no voting representation or voice in the U.S. Senate. That is a scandal from the standpoint of democracy.
Instead of trying to solve that problem, my colleagues, instead, want to use the people of Washington, D.C., as a whipping post, as a pinata, something to kick around. I just think that that is outrageous, and it is wrong.
On January 6, when we were attacked at the Capitol and in this Chamber, there were hundreds of residents of Washington, D.C., who work for the Capitol Police, who work for the Metropolitan Police Department, who work for other police forces who came here to defend us. They came to defend the Congress that they are excluded from. You talk about patriotism, that is patriotism.
These people have a real grievance, a valid grievance, not an imaginary, fake, counterfeit grievance like a Presidential election which they still claim Donald Trump won, even though their arguments were rejected in more than 60 Federal and State courts.
Trump lost that election by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college. I am glad they are nodding over on that side of the aisle because these facts are indisputable, yet, still, they indulge the follies and the fantasies and the pathologies of Donald Trump.
That is what they do instead. They try to kick around the people of Washington, D.C., who defended us as patriots on that day.
There are veterans in Washington, D.C., and we will submit these for the Record, who have demanded their voting rights and demanded admission as a State. Yet, they dare to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about what to do with their democratic rights.
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Mr. RASKIN. Norton).
The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia has just made a very powerful point, which is that on a whole range of offenses under the newly revised D.C. act that they want to overthrow, the criminal law is tougher in Washington, D.C., than it is in the distinguished chairman's home State of Kentucky.
On carjacking, on first degree murder, on involuntary manslaughter, the people of D.C. have chosen tougher penalties, but the gentlewoman didn't arrive to denounce Kentucky as soft on crime or weak on crime and say the whole United States Congress has to turn itself into a superlegislature for Kentucky and strike their laws down. That is up to the people of Kentucky. They don't even have a carjacking statute. You have to use armed robbery there, which gets you up to 20 years in prison. In the District of Columbia, they have a specific carjacking statute that could get you 24 years in prison.
That is the beauty of the Federal system, which I thought our colleagues supported, the idea that people decide at the local level whether they want tougher laws, as in the District of Columbia, or weaker laws, as in Kentucky. That is up to the people of the States to go offense by offense.
I am afraid that my friend and colleague, Ms. Norton, is taking them a bit too seriously because they are not really interested in scrutinizing the actual criminal justice policy. They just want to kick the people of Washington, D.C., around. They want to lord it over them.
We have President Biden here this week inviting both parties to work together for a continued acceleration of this great economic rebound we are in with 12 million new jobs, with us finally addressing climate change, with us finally getting prescription drug benefits to the people of America. He invited us to participate in a bipartisan national renewal, and what does the majority come back with? They want 535 Members of the United States Congress to act like a super-city council lording over the people of Washington, D.C.
It is unjust and unfair to the people of Washington, and it is beneath our dignity as a democratic Congress to be acting in this way.
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Mr. RASKIN. If you google carjacking in Kentucky, what will come up is, just a few months ago, two people were carjacked in different incidents at gunpoint in Louisville, which I think is in the State of Kentucky. Since we are talking about State laws, that is what should be relevant. Carjacking is, obviously, a problem across the country.
The conceit of the other side seems to be that they care more about crime and public safety in Washington, D.C., than people who live in Washington, D.C. We just got lectures from two different Members from New York about the terrible conditions in New York. Well, if that is what their concern is, then they should run for the New York State Legislature and change the laws that are involved if they can persuade their fellow citizens that they have it right. If they can't, then maybe they should reconsider what their agenda is.
In any event, if you want to micromanage the laws of Washington, D.C., and rewrite this 275-page act that was passed to revise the criminal code, which they hadn't revised in a century, with the input of Federal and local judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and the D.C. Council, then move to Washington, D.C., and run for D.C. Council.
These resolutions of disapproval come to the House floor without the benefit of a single hearing in the Oversight Committee.
They have not had a hearing where the Members of Congress could be heard on this, where we could have a single witness, where we could have a single fact introduced, much less have the members of the D.C. Council--who sent a letter petitioning for respect for democratic self- government in D.C.--had the right to be heard, much less if the Mayor had the right to be heard.
They keep invoking the name of the Mayor of the District of Columbia who said she does not want Congress to be overturning the laws of the District of Columbia, even if she opposes those laws.
Well, that is a principled position in favor of democratic self- government. I dare say, most of the Members of this body would say even if they disagreed with a law passed by their State legislature in their State and signed by the Governor that Congress should not selectively overturn that law. But that is precisely what they are proposing to do to the people of the District of Columbia.
Norton).
Mr. Speaker, if we were actually to pass this resolution of disapproval against Washington, D.C., at this point, I wonder what my colleagues think we do at that point.
Sitting as the super council for the District of Columbia, would we rewrite the law?
In other words, would we then conduct hearings on each of the offenses that the gentlewoman has just invoked?
Are we going to have hearings about involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder and carjacking and so on in the District of Columbia?
They don't even want to have a hearing on their disapproval resolution, much less do we want to have a hearing on each of these bills and take over the governance of the District of Columbia.
Let's respect the Home Rule Act that was adopted in 1973. Home rule operates here just like it operates in all of our States, which is local matters are decided locally. Let's leave it at that.
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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am ready to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.
I want to correct just a few of the major distortions that we just heard from the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana.
First of all, carjacking, as I understand it from this act, and I am willing to stand corrected, is not legal in the District of Columbia. On the contrary, it could be punished by up to 24 years.
I think the gentleman from Louisiana misunderstood my colloquy with the chairman of the committee because it is in Kentucky where carjacking is not a statutory offense.
If you were to charge the people who were committing carjackings recently in Louisville, you would have to charge them under armed robbery because there is not a carjacking statute.
Washington, D.C., has one, and it has a penalty of up to 24 years, which is more than you could get in Kentucky for armed robbery.
The second point is he said that crime was out of control in Washington, D.C. Well, the crime rate is higher in Bakersfield, California, which is represented by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
A major city, New Orleans, in the gentleman's home State, in this quote from FOX News ``New Orleans closes 2022 with sky-high homicide rate not seen in decades: `Horrific'.'' New Orleans was given the grim distinction of murder capital of the U.S. in September.
But we don't need to have some kind of race to the bottom Olympics in terms of which State or which city has the worst crime rate.
We should get together to deal with the problem of gun violence, which is why I invite our colleagues to join us and more than 90 percent of the American people who support a universal violent criminal background check, but they oppose it.
They are locked in the stranglehold of the NRA, and they won't back this, despite the fact that all the police unions they cited today about D.C. support a universal violent criminal background check.
Why don't they do something about semiautomatic assault weapons on the streets of our cities and towns across America?
They won't do it. No, they would rather use crime simply as a political club to try to take away other people's democratic rights.
Mr. Speaker, it is scandalous, the way the majority purports to stand up for local self-government and home rule when they want to trample all of the democratic rights of the people of Washington, D.C.
Let's not sit as a super city council of 535 Members doing the municipal minutiae of the people of Washington. Let them govern themselves.
We should be on the pathway to statehood for them, but at the very least, respect their right to home rule. Nobody cares more about public safety in D.C. than the people of D.C.
Nobody cares more about the condition of their communities than the people who live in them. That is a basic precept of democratic ideals.
I hope my colleagues will respect that, and I hope everyone will vote to reject this continuing series of disapproval resolutions against the people of Washington.
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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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