D.C. Criminal Reforms to Immediately Make Everyone Safe Act of 2024

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I start by humbly suggesting that the majority needs someone new working on legislative acronyms for these messaging bills. This is the DC CRIMES Act, which stands for the D.C. Criminal Reforms to Immediately Make Everyone Safe Act of 2024.

``Immediately make everyone safe.'' That doesn't sound like legislation. It sounds like a Penn & Teller magic trick to me.

If the gentleman from Florida can actually immediately make everyone safe, the gentleman should not only be Donald Trump's running mate, as I keep hearing about, but the gentleman should be the Mayor of the District of Columbia.

The D.C. Criminal Reforms to Immediately Make Everyone Safe Act is the fourth bill that the majority has brought to the floor to vilify, heckle, and micromanage the elected Mayor and Council of the District of Columbia on the appalling conceit that the distinguished Members of the Republican Conference from Florida or Kentucky or Arizona care more about public safety and public welfare in Washington, D.C., than do the 700,000 people who live there and their elected officials on the D.C. Council and the Mayor.

This one is even more sweeping and radical than their prior bills. It doesn't simply overturn one specific current D.C. law. It permanently strips D.C. of authority over any of its criminal laws, making this legislation, perhaps inadvertently, I concede, the largest proposed rollback of D.C.'s authority to govern itself in nearly 30 years.

Our colleagues may be shocked to learn during this debate what exactly it is they are being asked to vote for today. At the Rules Committee meeting yesterday, I asked the Republican Members whether they understood what this bill actually does if you take the time to read the language. None of them seemed to know.

Let me explain. The bill amends the D.C. Home Rule Act to say that the D.C. Council may not ``enact any act, resolution, or rule to change any criminal . . . sentence in effect on the date of the enactment of the DC CRIMES Act of 2024.''

In other words, if this bill becomes law, the D.C. Council could never increase criminal penalties again without Congress acting first, nor could it create any new criminal offenses at all.

This is their big tough-on-crime package the majority offers the Congress: No increases in criminal sentences indefinitely in the District of Columbia, and no new offenses can be passed at all.

Say the D.C. Council wanted to create a new criminal offense for directing an organized retail theft ring. Mr. Donalds' bill would prevent them from doing it.

Say D.C. wanted to make it a crime to possess a firearm with a removed or altered or mutilated serial number. Under Mr. Donalds' bill, they would be barred from doing so.

In fact, that is precisely what D.C. just did a few months ago. My Republican colleagues seem blissfully oblivious to the fact that, earlier this year, responding to the spike in crime occurring across America--not just in Washington, D.C., of course--the D.C. Council passed a 63-page law called the Secure DC Omnibus Emergency Amendment Act of 2024, which dramatically increased criminal penalties for nine different crimes and created six new criminal offenses.

The D.C. bill, which was passed unanimously by the council and signed into law by the Mayor, does what Republicans have so eloquently been orating about on the floor. It increased criminal penalties, including for gun crimes, violence in parks, violence committed against vulnerable people, and violence committed against rideshare drivers, Metro drivers, and transit workers.

The Secure DC Omnibus Emergency Amendment Act also created a host of new offenses, including directing a retail theft ring, strangulation, firing bullets in public, possessing a firearm with a removed or altered serial number, and unlawful discarding of firearms or ammunition.

They addressed the actual problems that they are experiencing in their city, something our colleagues seriously know nothing about and don't care about. If Mr. Donalds' bill had actually been law at the time, the D.C. Council would have been barred from enacting all of these tough-on-crime penalties altogether, and they will be barred in the future from responding to the kinds of spikes in crime that they experience.

Amazingly, the gentleman proposes this naked power grab against Washington, denying them the crime-fighting tools they need, despite the fact that they have done a good job and total crime in D.C. is down 16 percent in 2024 compared to the same period last year, which was conceded by the Republicans in the Rules Committee yesterday.

There has been a 26-percent reduction in violent crime in 2024, which they conceded in the Rules Committee yesterday, and a 22-percent reduction in homicides.

In other words, local democracy works. Let the local governments respond to the problems they are having, but our colleagues insist that crime is still spiking in D.C., despite the evidence to the contrary.

What is their big tough-on-crime solution? The bold solution Republicans offer us to combat crime in the Nation's Capital is to prohibit the D.C. Council from ever increasing any criminal penalties and blocking the D.C. Council from ever creating any new crimes.

If that is not what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle intend to do, then I think my colleagues need to go back and try again with some new legislation.

In any event, for my Republican colleagues who love to castigate the people of D.C., who I concede voted more than 90 percent against Donald Trump in the last election, I would respectfully suggest that the majority considers the following fact: D.C. has higher maximum criminal penalties than many Republican States do. Let's compare.

The maximum penalty for armed robbery in D.C. is 30 years. In Kentucky, represented by the chairman of the Oversight Committee, the maximum is 20 years, 50 percent less. In North Dakota, it is 10 years, or 66 percent less.

In D.C., criminals can receive a 40-year sentence for armed carjacking. In Kentucky, represented by the chairman of the Oversight Committee, carjacking is not a separate independent offense. You have to charge somebody with armed robbery, but even then, you can only get half the sentence you can get in D.C. for carjacking.

Despite all of the fine election-year rhetoric we have heard, there is something profoundly antithetical to our system of government in what the gentleman is proposing. If you read the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson set forth a bill of particulars against King George and the Parliament, and one of the central allegations of it was that they were denying the colonists the right to define criminal offenses for themselves. People over in England were dictating to people in our country what the criminal offenses should be, and that is like, with all due respect, the gentleman from Florida dictating to the people in Washington, D.C., how they should order their affairs when it comes to the criminal law.

Jefferson would have understood very well the situation that we are in, and our friends in Washington, 713,000 taxpaying, draftable U.S. citizens, have petitioned for statehood because they no longer want to be kicked around by other people's Representatives. They want to have an equal say in this body and an equal say in the U.S. Senate. They don't want other people's Representatives telling them that they can't pass the criminal offenses or the increased criminal sentences that they want for their crimes.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, the distinguished gentleman from Arizona invites us to believe that the people of Washington, D.C., don't want to respond to spikes in crime in their own city. It is only in response to hearings called by Republican Members of Congress. I think that is an affront to our fellow citizens who obviously care deeply about what is going on in their own city, and I daresay a lot more than those of us who represent other jurisdictions, because we care principally about the places that we represent.

Mr. Speaker, I will say before yielding to my friend from the District of Columbia that you don't have to look like a monarch or a tyrant to act like a monarch or a tyrant.

Norton), the distinguished, nonvoting delegate.

Let's see, no one on the other side has contradicted the plain, commonsense interpretation of this bill, which is that the District of Columbia Council will now be disabled from ever increasing a criminal penalty again, a criminal sentence again, and the District of Columbia Council will never be able to create a new criminal offense like the one they just created for running a retail theft ring, which has become a problem across the country in a lot of places. A lot of States have legislated on that. I know Maryland has legislated on that.

I am just wondering whether anyone on that side would yield for a question whether this is the deliberate intention of this legislation or it is just a mistake or whether they don't accept that plain, commonsense reading of the language of the bill because we are voting on something far more drastic and sweeping than what was represented by the sponsor's original statement.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield his time to me? I would be glad to take that question.

Are we interpreting it properly?

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. In part yes; in part no. That is to say, as the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia just read the section, it prohibits the Council from enacting changes to existing criminal liability sentences.

It does not prevent the D.C. Council from creating new crimes, like an organized retail crime act. It would prevent them from increasing sentences-- Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. As I understand the answer, the District of Columbia would not be able to increase the penalty for rape or the penalty for murder or the penalty for child sex abuse.

We might have a difference as to your second conclusion because, of course, it is increasing a criminal sentence to create a criminal sentence or offense where it didn't exist in the first place.

In any event, you are creating grave constitutional doubt about new criminal offenses that might be created in the District of Columbia with this legislation.

In any event, the first part is bad enough. The point is that, how is it tough on crime to say that the District of Columbia, as the gentleman just conceded, cannot increase criminal penalties if it chooses to in response to local circumstances?

Before the gentleman leaves the Chamber, I thought I might note, I am going to give him some examples, some anecdotes and data since he appears to be legislating by vignette: In Summerville, South Carolina, last week there was a severe armed carjacking by three teenage suspects. In April, a man wanted for murder in Rock Hill was captured following another carjacking at a Huntersville QuikTrip.

I could give you a dozen of those. I don't think that the answer to any of that would be to disenfranchise the people of South Carolina or to have Congress usurp the State legislative authority or the local authority there.

My friend from Florida describes the District of Columbia as a Federal enclave, which of course it is not. A Federal enclave is a Federal property or land, like in Rockville, Maryland, which is my district, where we have the NIH. That is a Federal enclave.

This is the District constituting the seat of government set forth in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution.

Now, both of my friends over there say, well, we are going to take just a small step in the right direction.

How is it the right direction to deprive the people of the District of Columbia the power to have control over their own criminal sentencing, including the power to increase criminal sentences? If they had passed this legislation at the beginning of the year, they would have foreclosed the ability of the District of Columbia to increase criminal penalties across the board on a whole range of offenses and perhaps even to create new criminal offenses in the District.

The gentleman from South Carolina lectured the people of Washington, D.C., about criminal incidents taking place here, and of course there are criminal incidents taking place also in South Carolina in the exact same way.

However, how about something that took place even closer to home? How about the violent mob insurrection where a mob incited by the ex- President violently assaulted Capitol Police officers and Metropolitan Police Department officers who were forced to deploy to the Capitol, and nearly 150 of them ended up brutalized, wounded, and hospitalized after being hit over the head or in the chest or stabbed or speared by steel pipes, Confederate battle flags, Trump flags, and American flags, shamefully?

Yet, we have the ex-President and a number of people who are his sycophants over on that side of the aisle describing people who are in jail for that, a majority of them having pled guilty for those offenses, the others convicted after due process of law, calling those people hostages.

A hostage is someone who has been illegally abducted by a terrorist or criminal entity, like Hamas, and held for a financial or political ransom. Yet, shamefully, there are people on that side of the aisle who call the prisoners who have been convicted after having been given every aspect of American due process and right to counsel, they are calling them hostages or political prisoners, like Alexei Navalny or Nelson Mandela. That is what they have come to.

They want to denounce a criminal event that happened six blocks away. What about the massive criminal event, the most massive criminal event in the history of the Nation's Capital that came right into this Chamber, forcing the Senators and Representatives to flee, and they won't say a word about it. Yet, they get up and they denounce lawlessness, and they won't even denounce lawlessness that comes right into the Congress and the Capitol of the United States.

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Mr. RASKIN. I thank the gentleman for pointing out that I accurately cited the statistics for all of the declines in crime and violent crime and homicides in the District of Columbia in 2024.

Alas, I do have to correct my friend in his history because there might be some students watching this. Thomas Jefferson never signed the Constitution. He was, of course, on a diplomatic mission when the Constitution was being signed in Philadelphia, but he did write the Declaration of Independence.

The other side says, bizarrely, that the District of Columbia Council and the Mayor should be denied the authority to increase criminal sentences forthwith because they have shown no inclination to increase criminal sentences.

Leaving aside the absolute illogic of the argument, it is also false because the District of Columbia in the secure D.C. act, passed just 2 months ago, increased criminal sentences across the board, which I am afraid my friends were completely oblivious to when they started this legislation. They weren't aware of it.

The people who claim to be speaking for the populous of Washington, D.C., didn't know that the Council had just acted to dramatically increase criminal penalties in the city. They denied them the right to further increase criminal penalties in the city because they say they haven't shown any inclination to do so which, of course, makes no sense and is also completely false.

All of this is pure political theater. It is bad political theater. Somebody decided a long time ago that it works for people who would never try to kick around their own State legislatures, their own county councils, or their own city councils to kick around the people of Washington, D.C.

My friends think that they have scored some kind of huge rhetorical coup, pointing out Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution, which indeed says that Congress shall exercise exclusive legislation over the District, constituting the seat of government from land that is ceded by various States.

Nobody on this side of the aisle, including the distinguished gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, has denied that for a second.

What we have said is this is a massive assault on home rule, and it is also an embarrassing one because it cuts completely against all of the rhetoric that we are hearing from our colleagues across the aisle.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have made some progress in this conversation because a plain reading of the distinguished gentleman from Florida's legislation indicates that what he is telling the District of Columbia is you may never increase criminal penalties again. The only time there can be an increase in criminal penalties in the District of Columbia is if Congress does it.

Unfortunately, this Congress has a hard time even keeping a Speaker in place without them trying to vacate the chair and topple the Speaker.

This Congress, as the whole country knows, has been absolute chaos and dysfunction and disorganization from the beginning.

I don't blame the people from Washington, D.C., who sent us these letters; the Mayor, the Council, and the Attorney General of D.C. saying thanks, but no thanks. We will take it from here.

The people in D.C. are perfectly able to decide what criminal offenses they need in the District of Columbia and how the sentences should be set and fixed.

They have courts in the District of Columbia, they have a legislature, the Council for the District of Columbia, which is elected from their eight wards and four at-large members and the chairman of the Council, and they have a Mayor. They have advisory neighborhood commissions.

I wonder if any of my colleagues over there are active in any of the wards or advisory neighborhood commissions where they live. I tend to doubt it.

The people of D.C., I understand from Congresswoman Norton, are actually involved in the governance of their city and the management of their local affairs.

Yet, in this totally ham-handed and almost comically dysfunctional attempt to score points against D.C., they come up with legislation which says D.C. can never increase criminal penalties, again, when they are accusing D.C. of being too soft on crime, despite the fact that we are able to show that D.C. has tougher criminal sentences than many of the States represented by the Members who have been speaking about this over the last several days.

All of it feels a lot, to me, like a silly election-year stunt. I don't think anyone thinks that this is serious legislation, but I am glad at least that the other side has conceded that the bill means what it says.

They want to strip the District of Columbia of any power to increase criminal sentences in their city. I simply think that that is a terrible form of public policy and is a major inroad against home rule over the last several decades when, in fact, what we should be doing is giving the people of D.C. greater political self-government and giving them the rights to equal representation which, of course, was the aforementioned Jefferson's ideal for the country.

If you go back and read the Northwest Ordinance, he thought that every part of the country would eventually attain a level of political equality by admission to Statehood through Article IV of the Constitution.

That is the spirit of the Constitution, not kicking around people, our fellow citizens, because we think we have more power than them, and we can score some political points off them.

Why don't we have a hearing about Statehood for the District of Columbia, and let's keep the engines of democracy, freedom, and political equality in the country moving.

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