District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007

Floor Speech

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOUSE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 2007

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Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me his time.

Madam Speaker, this bill is covered with the full handprints of scores of Members, beginning on the other side of the aisle with Congressman Tom Davis, who planted and tirelessly cultivated the seed; and Utah Members Cannon and Bishop, joined by Mr. Matheson, the State's only Democratic Member.

However, it was leadership that got us to this historic day, especially Speaker Pelosi's personal insistence, Majority Leader Hoyer's outspoken energy, Chairman Conyers' decades of persistence and Chairman Waxman's indispensable guidance.

I am inspired daily by the citizens of this city, personified by Emory Kosh, a staff assistant in my office here in the House whose second child was born while he was serving in Iraq. Emory's military service follows in the tradition of D.C. residents, who first fought in the Revolutionary War to establish ``the Republic for which we stand,'' have fought and died for their country in every war since, and, like other Americans, have always been obliged to pay Federal income taxes, today ranking second among the 50 States and the District of Columbia in taxes paid to support the Government of the United States. Today, I come forward in their name.

Our forefathers in this city were the three Virginians who signed the Constitution and the three signers from Maryland. Yet some seriously argue that the Virginians, the Marylanders and the other Framers fresh from the Revolutionary War, waged specifically to obtain representation, contributed land where thousands of their own residents resided, some of them veterans of the Revolutionary War, and then signed away their rights in the new Constitution.

However you vote on the District's voting rights, do not slander the Framers. For two centuries, the fault has been right here in the Congress, not the flawed vision of the Framers.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I want to end this debate by finally letting genuine constitutional scholars speak to this bill.

To guarantee the Framers' promise to the citizens of Maryland and Virginia, who contributed their land to form this Capital City, the very first Congress enforced the District clause of the Constitution by law, guaranteeing the status quo during the 10-year transition period, and they said, by law thereafter, as memorialized in the Constitution itself.

The Framers had left Congress fully armed with ``exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatsoever,'' which former Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth Starr, who testified in favor of the bill, said, left Congress with power ``majestic in scope.''

Professor Viet Dinh, President Bush's former Attorney General for Legal Policy, his point man on the Constitution in the Ashcroft Justice Department, testified in two separate committees that the bill is constitutional. He said that since the birth of the Republic, the courts and the Congress itself have treated the District as a State in treaties and in statutes and in applying the Constitution to the city. Members who reject the views even of conservative scholars and of the Supreme Court and the Federal courts supporting their views should be confident to send this bill to a conservative Supreme Court.

Members are elected officials who can neither run nor hide behind their personal and inexpert views on the Constitution. Another branch will be held fully accountable for that weighty decision. Our decision, in just a few minutes, is just as weighty, today when the world sees us at war, we say, to spread democracy and wants to know whether we practice democracy or merely preach it. Our decision comes down to whether this House wants to be remembered for granting the vote or denying it, and whether this place will be the people's House or the House for some of the people.

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Ms. NORTON. I ask my colleagues not to be fooled. The House will give you plenty of times to vote on guns in the District of Columbia. This is not a motion to recommit, it is a motion to shoot the bill dead.

Most of the time you can vote for the motion to recommit and still save the bill. Not true here. If you vote for the motion to recommit, you will kill this bill. Please do not do it.

This matter is in the courts. No matter what we do here, it is a nullity because it is now in the Federal courts, and it is in the Federal courts, on a constitutional question, and that will rule the day.

These people are trying to kill voting rights for the District of Columbia. They have prevailed on guns here before, they will do it again. Those of you who are for guns and for voting rights for the District of Columbia, vote against the motion to recommit or else you are voting against voting rights for the residents of the District of Columbia.

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