[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 92 (Friday, July 15, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 15, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1995, INCLUDING SUPPLEMENTAL 
          APPROPRIATIONS AND RESCISSIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1994

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                               speech of

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 13, 1994

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 4649) making 
     appropriations for the government of the District of Columbia 
     and other activities chargeable in whole or in part against 
     the revenues of said District for the fiscal year ending 
     September 30, 1995, and for other purposes:

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, the District appropriation is always and 
perhaps always will be the most difficult appropriation to come to the 
floor of the House. I suppose this is in part because it is nobody's 
District but mine and it is nobody's responsibility but the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Dixon]. Of course, it is in everybody's interest 
to remember that it is everybody's Nation's Capital.
  In bringing this appropriation forward, we have been struggling as 
the capital of the United States struggles to stave off insolvency. And 
when the time comes to case a vote, I am going to ask Members to cast 
their votes for the District. And I am going to ask them to vote 
against any cuts beyond what the chairman and the ranking member of the 
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia have been able to agree upon.
  For there could be nothing more true than that the District is 
drained of cash. I will speak to the compromise later. I want only to 
say at this time that I regret that the appropriation has provided the 
opportunity to bring or to begin to bring the District's budget under 
control. I am grateful that far more harmful approaches have been 
eliminated by virtue of a very tough compromise that has been worked 
out.
  I ask my own constituents in the District to understand that while 80 
percent of this budget before this House is their money, there was a 
real question whether we could get their money and the Federal payment 
through this House in an appropriation. And so the appropriation that 
comes out of here today comes out only because of the compromise that 
has been reached.
  I opposed hurling the budget back at the District, because I believed 
it was a pitfully inadequate approach to the point of being 
counterproductive. I did not believe we would get back a piece of paper 
much better looking than the one that has been submitted.
  Cutting the District and the appropriation attracted cuts of all 
kinds for the first time since I have been in the House. And yet 
cutting is precisely what the District has been doing now for several 
years. And so we have to ask, why has this not worked?
  They have cut hundreds of positions, with layoffs and the elimination 
of positions. They have had 12 furlough days. They have had a pay 
freeze for 3 out of the last 5 years. With all that happening, why are 
we in this predicament?
  I believe, Mr. Chairman, that it is because the cuts were 
disconnected from the restructuring of the D.C. government itself. And 
thus I think that perhaps the District could continue to cut until 
doomsday. But if it did not in fact look at the underlying problems, 
then I think it would have indeed been doing that, cutting until 
doomsday. In effect, the District has been making temporary savings 
because the underlying problems have remained intact, making more cuts 
necessary for the next budget period.
  Part of this results because the District government grew like topsy 
before home rule and then was handed to the District, which simply 
added to it or reshaped what was there. This happened throughout the 
1970's, and it happened throughout the 1980's, and it is happening 
throughout the 1990's.
  The D.C. government needs to be finally taken apart and put back 
together again to get at recurring fiscal problems and shortfalls and 
deep structural problems in the way the District government itself is 
structured, full of redundancies and inefficiencies that simply have 
been built on top of one another year after year after year.
  An example of the pre-home rule legacy, with direct and unaddressed 
congressional culpability, is the debt, the largest debt unilaterally 
created by Congress, the $5 billion unfunded pension liability which 
forces the D.C. government to spend currently $300 million annually to 
pay for pensions, as they say, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
  What that increasingly means for the District is pay as you go broke. 
I certainly hope that the pension liability bill that is before the 
Congress will be passed this year as one way to begin to get a hold of 
a huge structural problem bequeathed us by this Congress.
  The GAO report, however, is the result of a congressional initiative 
that has exposed the problem and its causes, and I think it is the GAO 
report that lays the predicate for whatever hope we have to moving 
forward beyond this problem at this time.
  The short-term budget manipulations that would have come to the 
floor, if the compromise had not been reached, would have left the 
District struggling next year as it has this year. With this very heavy 
compromise, however, There would be no place to run and no place to 
hide, because the Congress has now made that impossible.
  The predicate for a systematic reworking of the D.C. government has 
been laid by the Congress. It would have been my preference that this 
initiative come from the D.C. government. It is here now. There was 
absolutely nothing further that anyone in this body would have done to 
prevent it.
  The chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Dixon], put out his best, his very best, and I thank him sincerely.

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