The Introduction of the District of Columbia Paperwork Reduction Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I introduce the District of Columbia
Paperwork Reduction Act, to eliminate the wasteful congressional review
process for legislation passed by the District of Columbia Council and
to align longtime congressional practice and the law. The congressional
review process for D.C. bills is ignored by Congress providing it no
benefit, but imposes substantial costs (in time and money) on the
District. Congress has almost always used the appropriations process
rather than the disapproval process and entirely abandoned the
congressional review process as its mechanism for overturning D.C.
legislation twenty-three years ago, and only used it three times before
that, preferring riders on D.C. appropriation bills instead. Yet
Congress still requires the D.C. Council to use Kafkaesque make-work
procedures to comply with the abandoned congressional review process
established by the Home Rule Act of 1973.

Our bill would eliminate the congressional review process for
legislation passed by the D.C. Council. However, Congress would lose no
authority it currently exercises because, even upon enactment of this
bill, Congress would retain its authority under clause 17 of section 8
of article I of the U.S. Constitution to amend or overturn any D.C.
legislation at any time.

The congressional review process (30 days for civil bills and 60 days
for criminal bills) includes those days when either house of Congress
is in session, delaying D.C. bills from becoming law, often for many
months. The delay forces the D.C. Council to pass most bills several
times, using a cumbersome and complicated process to ensure that the
operations of this large and rapidly changing city continue
uninterrupted, avoiding a lapse of the bill before it becomes final.
The review period, based on legislative, not calendar, days means, for
example, that a 30-day period usually lasts three calendar months and
often much longer because of congressional recesses. The congressional
review period for a bill that changed the word ``handicap'' to
``disability'' lasted nine months. The Council estimates that 50-65
percent of the bills the Council passes could be eliminated if the
review period did not exist. To ensure that a bill becomes law, the
Council often must pass the same legislation in three forms--emergency
(in effect for 90 days), temporary (in effect for 225 days) and
permanent. Moreover, the Council has to carefully track the days the
House and Senate are in session for each D.C. bill it passes to avoid
gaps and to determine when the bills have taken effect. The Council
estimates that it could save 5,000 employee-hours and 160,000 sheets of
paper per two-year legislative Council period if the review period were
eliminated. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy addressed the issue of
saving such resources by eliminating the amount of paperwork sent to
Congress when he proposed a cut in the number of reports that federal
agencies are required to submit to Congress. Our bill is a perfect
candidate because it eliminates a paperwork process that repeats itself
without interruption.

My bill would do no more than align the Home Rule Act with
congressional practice over the last twenty-three years. Of the more
than 5,000 legislative acts transmitted to Congress since the Home Rule
Act, only three resolutions disapproving D.C. legislation have been
enacted--in 1979, 1981, and 1991--and two of those mistakenly involved
federal interests in the Height Act and the location of chanceries.
Placing a congressional hold on 5,000 D.C. bills has not only proven
unnecessary, but has imposed fruitless costs on the D.C. government,
residents and businesses. District residents and businesses are also
placed on hold because they have no certainty when D.C. bills, from
taxes to regulations, will take effect, making it difficult to plan.
Instead of using the congressional review process to overturn D.C.
legislation, Congress has preferred to use appropriation riders.
Therefore, it is particularly unfair to require the D.C. Council to
engage in a labor-intensive and costly process that Congress has itself
long abandoned. My bill would only eliminate the automatic hold placed
on D.C. legislation and the need for the D.C. Council to use a process
initially passed for the convenience of Congress, but that Congress has
since eliminated in all but law. This bill would promote efficiency and
cost savings for Congress, the District, its residents, and businesses
without reducing congressional oversight, and would carry out a policy
stressed by Congress of eliminating needless paperwork and make-work
redundancy.

I urge my colleagues to support this good-government measure.

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