Providing for Consideration of H.R. 471, Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, and I certainly thank my good friend from Florida for his work on not only this bill, H.R. 471, but for his strong respect for the District of Columbia and its residents and his support for our right to self-government as American citizens.
I oppose this rule, I oppose this bill, and at the appropriate time, I will have a substitute to redirect the funds in this bill in accordance with the home-rule wishes of the District of Columbia. May I say, I appreciate the words of my good friend from Utah, but I do resent the use of the word ``liberty'' at a time when this bill will deprive the residents of the District of Columbia of the liberty every other district has in deciding local educational decisions for itself. They have it in Utah, and we will never be satisfied as long as we do not have each and every right you have in Utah.
Now, the majority ought to approach this rule with caution. Many in the House ran on the promise to reduce the power of the Federal Government and to reduce the budget. Now, we are 3 months into the new Congress, and if they vote for this rule, they will be breaking their promises.
They will be voting for an unprecedented expansion of the Federal Government's power into the quintessentially local decision of elementary and secondary education. They will be voting for this rule against the will of the jurisdiction, the only jurisdiction to which it applies, the District of Columbia. They will be voting for this rule with no consultation with any elected official in the local jurisdiction involved. They will be voting to authorize the Federal Government to mandate that a local government offer a program for students to attend private schools at public expense, Federal expense, that is. They will be voting to increase the deficit by $300 million with no offset whatsoever for these funds because this is a new program and their own protocols demand an offset for new programs.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. To complete her thought, I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.
Ms. NORTON. So in the first test of their legislative cut-go protocol, they will be voting to violate it. They will be voting to do so with $300 million added to the deficit at a time when they are cutting $11.6 billion with a ``b'' from education throughout the United States of America. We are American citizens.
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Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, you know, in the later days of European colonialism, countries like France allowed some representation from the colonies because the whole notion of voting on the fate of the colonies with nobody there who could also vote seemed even then to be a dilemma they could not live with. And I don't understand how any Member of the House believes she has a right to vote on local education matters or any other local matter affecting any part of the United States, including the District of Columbia.
I note, Madam Speaker, that Mr. Polis of the Rules Committee indicated yesterday that there was a county in Colorado that had created its own voucher program. I respect that because they didn't come to the Federal Government to ask that their local voucher program be funded, nor, Madam Speaker, did we.
I think every Member of this House ought to ask, since we've had 5 years of a voucher bill, why is there no national bill on the floor? I think the gentleman from Florida has said one of the good reasons, and that is that the Bush Department of Education found that, when compared with the students in comparable schools in DC, there was no increase in test scores in math or reading. So there's a merit reason why there's no national bill.
But there's another reason why. The majority doesn't have the nerve to put a national voucher bill on the floor because it knows that in each and every state referendum, including in referendums in Utah, from which my good friend comes, not once has such a referendum succeeded.
I don't know why the majority thinks it can go home now and say I voted for vouchers, when you, yourselves, were against the use of public money for private schools in your district. I would not like to be at that town meeting where you have to explain why you voted for a rule for $300 million for one district that did not want that money for that purpose.
Madam Speaker, I very much resent the use of Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution whenever the majority wants to move in on the District of Columbia with one of its pet ideas, or because it disagrees with some issue in the District of Columbia. That's quintessentially the absence of democracy.
It's one thing to have no democracy. It's another thing to press your version of policy on another jurisdiction. That's why I have an alternative, a substitute that I will be bringing at an appropriate time.
Madam Speaker, in 1973, after 150 years, this Congress finally said we have been wrong for most of the existence of our country in allowing no democracy whatsoever in the District of Columbia, no mayor, no city council. We give up. We delegate self-government to you. We are out of your affairs.
Self-government means nothing if the District of Columbia can still be a dumping ground for every pet project and pet idea of the majority. We have our own pet ideas, and we will insist on respect for our own ideas, and not yours.
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Ms. NORTON. No one ever said that everybody in the District of Columbia or even every public official was against vouchers.
Mr. DREIER. Will the gentlewoman yield?
Ms. NORTON. I yield to the gentleman from California.
Mr. DREIER. I just said that Mr. McGovern in the debate last night in the Rules Committee said that every city council member, and then I was given this list.
I thank my friend for yielding.
Ms. NORTON. On the contrary, a letter is on its way up here from city council members. The present mayor opposes the bill. Yes, the former mayor was for the bill. The largest demonstration of citizens since I have been in the Congress was held when this bill was imposed on the District of Columbia.
If you ask people in the District of Columbia, ``Would you support some Federal money for vouchers?'' a lot of them will say yes. If you ask them the right question, ``Would you want money for private school vouchers or would you want money for public charter schools?'' hands down, they will say, relieve those long waiting lists of all of us trying to get in our public charter schools and give the money to our public charter schools.
Nobody on that side of the aisle knows anything about the residents of the District of Columbia or they never would have put this bill in in the first place.
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