[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 31 (Thursday, March 19, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1327-H1332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REPORT ON THE CAPITAL CITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gillmor). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentlewoman from the District of 
Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring to the House a report on the 
capital of the United States and its progress in relieving itself of 
financial and management distress.
  Mr. Speaker, this House has had, and justifiably so, a special 
interest in its capital city. Almost 3 years ago the capital of the 
United States met the same fate as several large cities before it, as 
Cleveland, as New York, and as Philadelphia. The capital found that its 
bonds were no longer at investment grade and it could no longer borrow 
money without the assistance of a control board. To its credit, this 
House, working in a bipartisan fashion, passed a bill, very much like 
bills that had been passed to assist other cities who had met such 
problems. That bill preserved self-government in the District of 
Columbia, but as a result of quarrels between city officials and the 
control board and as a result of a pace that perhaps was too slow in 
fixing the city's problems, the Congress, largely through the 
appropriation committees, infringed upon self-government in the 
District of Columbia. And so we have a strange situation to be sure.
  The capital of the United States has less democracy than any other 
piece of American soil. I know that this body joins me in wanting to 
assure that this state of affairs does not last much longer. I have 
indicated to my own constituents in the District of Columbia that, 
though they have every reason to be outraged that there would be any 
less democracy here than elsewhere, there is only one way to assure 
that democracy will be restored and that we will go further and have 
the same level of democracy as the States and the territories, and that 
is for the city to quickly bring itself to the point where particularly 
its services and operations are services that the residents of the 
District of Columbia, first and foremost, can be proud of, that every 
American would be proud of, and that of course this Congress would be 
proud of.
  It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that it is my obligation to keep this 
body informed of whether or not progress is indeed being made, 
especially since this body and the other body were concerned that 
progress had been too slow. Very substantial changes are beginning to 
occur and very substantial progress is beginning to be made, Mr. 
Speaker. Therefore, it is my intention to come to the floor sometimes 
in 5-minute debate period, sometimes in one-minute debate period, and 
sometimes for a special order debate period, as today, and report to 
this body on progress that is being made.
  Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago I came to report that the District 
was actually experiencing a surplus 2 years ahead of when the District 
budget was supposed to be balanced on an annual basis under 
congressional mandate. I reported that in a 1-minute speech before the 
House and I noted that Members on both sides of the aisle applauded, 
and I remember saying, only half jokingly, Mr. Speaker, let the record 
show that this body applauded for the District of Columbia. I know that 
this body will indeed applaud when the capital city of the United 
States is brought back to its full majesty.
  Mr. Speaker, let me begin with a report not of the surplus and what 
it contains, not of the large picture, but, rather, of a small part of 
the picture that I think would especially please this body. Of all of 
the services in the District of Columbia, none has the attention or 
perhaps deserves the attention that this body has given to education. 
This body knows where to focus on when it looks to see whether the city 
is improving, and so it has looked at the schools and it has looked at 
education.

  Mr. Speaker, on the front page of the Washington Times, just 
yesterday, I

[[Page H1328]]

was surprised to see a report, something that I did not know of, and I 
doubt that anyone in this body knew of. The headline reads, Mr. 
Speaker, ``Computer Castoffs Inspire Teens.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is a report of how at one D.C. school, Wilson High 
School, students are taking outdated systems and computers, repairing 
them and rebuilding computers, this in a city which has had to beg, 
borrow, I will not say steal because that has not occurred, computers. 
This school needs 400, it has 150. But what is amazing about this piece 
is that there is a teacher at Wilson High School who decided to make a 
course of getting old computers, taking them apart and repairing them. 
The students keep a journal of the steps they go through to repair the 
computers.
  They obviously learn much about the complicated nature of these 
machines. There are some of us trying to become computer literate. 
These youngsters are beyond literacy and into making the things, making 
them work. They have a computer lab. This is the largest public school 
in the district. It has got almost 1600 students. What it has done, one 
teacher, many like him, the problem is they do not make the front page 
of the Washington Times or any other newspaper, one teacher is doing 
what I would imagine is probably not being done anywhere else in the 
United States; if so, by very few. And that is not only teaching 
youngsters how to become computer literate but getting deeply 
analytically into computers.
  Can you think of any better way, Mr. Speaker, to teach youngsters 
problem solving or how to exercise their analytical faculties? Can you 
imagine the confidence a youngster gets who has not thought himself 
very good at much to learn that he can actually work on computers and 
make them work again and work for every one?
  Apparently these renovated computers can also be borrowed and taken 
home by a student so long as that student remains in school. So the 
computers do double duty. They help youngsters to understand that there 
is a reason not to drop out of school in a town that has had a high 
dropout rate.
  Mr. Speaker, the progress in the schools has been difficult to make. 
I point out this progress because it is at that level that the progress 
is being made and it is at that level that this body is likely to hear 
too little just by the nature of things. I want to say something 
further about the schools, again, because of the special interest of 
this body in schools and because so much that is good is happening in 
schools. I have to tell you, it is not good enough for the residents of 
the District of Columbia. There is still a lot of contention around the 
schools, but compared to where we were, I think this body would be 
pleased to see forward movement. There is concern that the schools open 
three weeks late because the roofs were not fixed in time. Well, for 
some of us, we remember when the roofs were not fixed at all. Of 
course, what happened was that a whole bunch of roofs got fixed and are 
still being fixed and when roofs on schools are fixed, then all kinds 
of damage and other problems that come from leaky roofs also disappear.
  May I take this opportunity once again, Mr. Speaker, to thank the 254 
Members of the House and Senate who during that three-week period when 
school was closed answered my call to take youngsters from D.C. high 
schools as interns.

                              {time}  1415

  I want to thank those Members. And there were many who buttonholed 
me, staff and Members alike, to tell me how these youngsters were 
doing, helping them as volunteer interns in their offices.
  Some of my colleagues may know that we have started a small program, 
to become larger in the summer and to be full-blown next year, for 
permanent volunteer interns from the D.C. high schools to come into the 
House and the Senate. My colleagues can imagine what this will mean to 
youngsters in the District. Here they are in the Nation's Capitol, and 
the Capitol to them is an awesome, almost fearsome place, especially 
when we consider the power this body has over the District that it does 
not have over others, almost unapproachable. And here they are invited 
in by Members of this body and of the other body to actually work in 
their offices.
  The experience was a salutary one for the youngsters and for the 
Members, and I thank the Members for the way in which Members, I must 
say, of every persuasion and tendency and across both sides of the 
aisle answered this call.
  I have a special program, indeed, called D.C. Students in the Capitol 
because of the unapproachable nature of the Capitol to the folks who 
live here. And it says teachers should bring their students. There is a 
time when they come, I meet with them for a few minutes, they tour the 
Capitol, they get to sit in on a hearing, and they get to feel at peace 
and at home with this place.
  Now, I recognize that even though the facilities are being improved, 
even though, frankly, top to bottom, changes that have not yet fully 
manifested themselves are going on, that there continues to be great 
concern about the schools. I want to speak about one program that 
thrills me.
  The District, like almost every other city in many States, has social 
promotion. They have social promotion because they do not know what to 
do with the youngster. They do not want to keep the youngster back 
because they think that will hurt the youngster's self-confidence. They 
do not want the youngster to be larger, bigger than the other kids. 
They just move them forward. And the harm that that does ought to be 
clear by now, but, frankly, one of the reasons it continues to be done 
is people do not do the grunt work it takes to figure out a better way 
to do it.
  Arlene Ackerman, the new chief educational officer of the schools, 
has done just that. She has started a program called Summer Stars 
Program. Twenty thousand students this summer are going to have made 
probably so little progress, because Ms. Ackerman just got here and the 
reforms are just beginning, but instead of being socially promoted, 
these youngsters are going to go to what would have been called summer 
school, but is no longer called that because it is no longer that.
  It is the beginning, here in the Nation's capital, of a year-round 
school, the kind of school we think every jurisdiction in the United 
States should have today. Do my colleagues want to know why Japanese 
kids do better? Not because they are smarter. They do better than 
American kids, blacks, whites and Hispanics, because they go to school 
longer, and they study harder. That is the key to it.
  Well, for youngsters who are behind, they will be in the first class 
of the year-round school. Now, the year-round school is going to have 
classes in the evenings during the regular school year so that many 
kids next year will not have to go to school in the summer because they 
will be part of the year-round school program.
  But students who score below basic on the so-called Stanford 9 test 
in both reading and math must go rather than be promoted. These 
students must go even though they have not been retained in their 
grade. And ninth-graders and seniors who need one credit to graduate or 
for promotion must go to this Summer Stars Program.
  They are also telling students who should go who they are. And there 
are a whole set of students who should go, who do not need to go, who 
we expect to go, because if they do not go, they are going to need to 
go. This, we think, is the way to approach education today; not by 
screaming and yelling and engaging in the kinds of fads that education 
tries out year by year and still leaves us with the same problems, but 
by doing the grunt work to figure out what we need to do to get hold of 
it.
  These youngsters are going to receive highly structured remedial work 
with 2 hours of reading and 2 hours of math. They will receive phonics 
instruction. They are going to receive oral language activities. They 
are going to receive writing activities. They are going to receive 
individual instruction. They are going to receive group instruction. 
They are going to receive computer instruction.
  They are going to go to school, grades 1 through 11. First-graders 
are going to go, and people about to go into their senior year are 
going to go, and all the grades in between. And they are going to go 
for 4 full hours a day; 8:30 to 12:30. And then some will go from 8:30 
to 1:30, and some will go from 3:30 to 8:30 for enrichment programs.

[[Page H1329]]

  There will be 10 middle schools, 10 high schools and 60 elementary 
schools; 15 students to one teacher. These youngsters are going to 
learn when that is the student-teacher ratio.
  Who will be the teachers? There is going to be not only an internal 
search, those teachers already there, but there will be an internal and 
external search. Only applicants with outstanding qualifications will 
be selected for the year-round Summer Stars Program. The initial 
screening of these teachers is going to include a writing sample, for 
example.
  One of the reasons my colleagues have seen me on the floor in 
opposition to the vouchers program that some still continue to propose 
for the District is not only that I do not think that is the best 
thing, the best way to approach education for the majority of the 
youngsters, but I have a very special reason this year, Mr. Speaker, 
and that is this program.
  This Summer Stars Program is simply too good to be turned away for 
yet another experiment, whether it is vouchers or, frankly, my favorite 
experiment. If there is $7 million for youngsters for private vouchers, 
who would say that that money should not be used for this first year-
round program to end social promotion in the Nation's capital? Who 
would say that that is not, at this juncture, given where the District 
of Columbia public schools are and where the city itself is, that the 
best use of that money would not be that?
  It takes $10 million to run this program. If $7 million are to be 
found in a vouchers program, and the Congress is serious about the 
attention it has paid to schools, it will help us start this first 
year-round school. It will help us to become a model for Baltimore, for 
Philadelphia, for New York, for L.A., for Chicago, for the small towns 
and the large cities that need to do precisely this kind of thing.
  I have started with the schools, Mr. Speaker, because the schools 
have been, and rightly so, of special interest and special concern to 
this body. I do want to make a correction, because people, 
for understandable reasons, when they talk about the District, talk 
about the District 4 years or even 10 years ago. And one of the things 
I hear from time to time is that the District has the highest cost per 
pupil in the United States.

  Well, that may have been so once, Mr. Speaker, but it has not now 
been for a very long time. The District has downsized tens of thousands 
of employees and perhaps too much in the schools, if anything. Now, an 
independent analyst tells us that the District is spending about $7,000 
per student, and even that amount includes our payments to the teacher 
retirement fund, which often is not included in per-pupil reports.
  Indeed, Mr. Speaker, it is important to have a sense of what that 
$7,000 figure means. The best way would be to compare the District to 
its immediate region. We are at $7,000; Prince George's County, $7,120; 
Fairfax County, $7,650; Montgomery County, $9,000; Arlington County, 
$9,300. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues should see straight away that that 
means the District of Columbia has the lowest per-pupil cost in this 
region, even though it has by far the largest number of children who 
need special care and special programs.
  We cannot talk cost anymore. We have to say to the District that they 
have to do the best they can with what they have. But if the Congress, 
in its wisdom, has additional money, it has to put that money where the 
biggest payoff is for the average child in this system.
  And as my colleagues know, Mr. Speaker, the average child in this 
system can do a whole lot better. Arlene Ackerman said, for example, in 
a hearing we had just this week, that District of Columbia students 
will be reading the equivalent of 25 books this next school year. In 
one fashion or another, each child is going to read the functional 
equivalent of 25 books. That is what I call raising standards and 
raising standards big time.
  Mr. Speaker, the Congress should come forward now and help us raise 
those standards. I ask my colleagues not to dash the hopes and the 
efforts of the District by going back to one of my colleagues' favorite 
notions. If my colleagues are for vouchers, bring a voucher bill before 
the floor and vote it up or down. My colleagues control the House and 
the Senate. Better yet, find some districts that, in fact, would like 
vouchers and make sure that they, in fact, get vouchers. But when we 
have a district that has voted 89 percent against vouchers, who in 
America would say that in the face of that, a body of people, where no 
one represents the District with a full vote, should overturn what 89 
percent of the people of the District of Columbia have said?
  But I do not come to the floor to have another philosophical or 
ideological fight on this floor about vouchers. This is too serious, 
Mr. Speaker. We are now to the point of where we are seeing real 
progress in the District; a surplus, movement on school facilities, a 
new chief educational officer who has her head on straight and knows 
that we have to raise the bar and youngsters will jump to meet it. Help 
us help them.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, perhaps the best news for the city overall has been 
the emergence of a general fund surplus. This is a city that had the 
exact opposite only 2\1/2\ years ago. Its audit was in such bad shape 
that it could not even get a so-called clean opinion, because in order 
to get a clean opinion from the auditor, all the papers have to be in 
shape so the auditor can, in fact, know whether the entity is in shape. 
The District got a clean opinion this year and reported a general fund 
surplus of $185.9 million.
  The District clearly continues to attract my colleagues' constituents 
to this city. Whatever the District's reputation, people are coming in 
larger numbers than ever. We have the largest turnout of tourists ever.

                              {time}  1430

  The economy of the city is beginning to come back, Mr. Speaker. One 
indication of that is the sale of homes in the District. All across the 
region there is beginning to be some greater sale of homes. But when we 
look at the District and compare it to the rest of the region, we know 
that something very different and very important is happening in this 
city and that it is moving forward.
  The District over the past year had a 31-percent increase in the 
number of homes sold. The next highest in the region was only 17 
percent. The District is coming up with almost twice as much of an 
increase in homes sold as the rest of the region. If that is not some 
indication that there is a return in confidence in the city, I do not 
know what is. When people decide to move here and live here and buy a 
home here and risk their capital here, they are saying that something 
has turned around in the City.
  Mr. Speaker, may I thank this body for contributing to those figures? 
Because, although those figures were going up, I believe that a bill 
passed by this body at my request last year has helped to make home 
sales go up; and that is a bill that was included in the tax benefit 
package, that is a $5,000 home buyer tax credit. Essentially, it says 
that if they have an income and they are joint filers up to $130,000 or 
single filers up to $90,000 and they buy a home in the District of 
Columbia, they can get a tax credit up to $5,000.
  I do not need to tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that that is enough 
to make some people go out and buy a house or a condominium, and it 
certainly is enough to make some people who are renting in a house or 
condominium to say, I think I might stop paying the rent man and pay 
myself and buy this house and get a tax credit.
  I have strongly supported the kinds of tax credits that have this 
effect, and I want to thank this body here and now for helping to make 
what was already a housing sale increase sail forward even faster.
  Mr. Speaker, when I look at the budget surplus, and remember those 
home buyers are going to be paying taxes to the District of Columbia in 
sales taxes and other kinds of taxes and that is going to ease the 
burden of the District, but when I look at the surplus the City is 
already showing, I want my colleagues to know that it is not simply 
because we have a good economy. This administration deserves credit for 
its role in the good economy, and it has gotten credit from both sides 
of the aisle.
  I certainly take nothing away from the President and the 
administration when I say that some of the credit belongs simply to 
good management in

[[Page H1330]]

the District of Columbia, at least when we are talking about the 
surplus that the District is now experiencing. The District is now 
collecting taxes from people it did not collect taxes from before 
because its system for collecting taxes was in such disarray.
  The District's deficit had, in part, to do with the fact that the 
District would wait weeks upon weeks to cash checks. Now it cashes a 
check within 1 day.
  When the Chief Financial Officer was hired, he found records 
scattered in boxes on floors. Mr. Speaker, I cannot say enough about 
what it took to clean that kind of mess up. They could not go to a 
computer and push some buttons and say voila. Somebody had to get down 
on their knees, go through these files and straighten them up and 
computerize them.
  Surplus is due as well to other internal controls. Reducing, for 
example, the improper extension of emergency contracts. If somebody 
gets a contract and then he keeps on getting it on an emergency basis, 
the City may never know whether somebody else would do that same job 
for less. Those kinds of controls are showing up now as part of a 
surplus. Extensive training of agencies and of accounting staffs have 
been part and parcel of this improved management.
  Mr. Speaker, there have been real sacrifices made to achieve these 
improvements. Employees in the District of Columbia have not gotten a 
raise since 1994. Imagine what that would be like. Imagine what our 
Federal workers would think if we were to deny raises in that way.
  I had to press the school system when they came before us just before 
Christmas because there were workers in the school cafeterias, the 
lowest paid workers there, who had not received a wage in 7 years, even 
though there were arbitrator awards twice awarding them wages and they 
had begun to be paid. So we cannot get work out of people if we 
continue to deny them annual raises.
  What is good about what is happening, Mr. Speaker, however, is that 
accountability is being demanded for increases in pay; and it is that 
accountability that is different about the way the District is 
approaching its business. The District still has to reduce its 
government more, and it has a long way to go to get the kind of 
government that District residents deserve.
  But Mr. Speaker, let me put before you another figure that will 
surely convince you that the District has turned the corner. There has 
been a 20-percent decrease in crime and a 40-percent decrease in 
homicides over the last year. We were hitting in the top when it came 
to crime. Everybody else's crime was going down. Ours continued to go 
up.
  The District is now at the end game of recruiting a new police chief. 
It has got a half dozen top-notch people competing for the job. By 
moving analytically, step by step, on reorganizing the police 
department, putting more and more cops into the streets, and there is 
still more to go there, reorganizing the department into community 
policing, we have gotten an almost immediate payoff in the reduction of 
crime. There is nothing more important that could have been done, even 
more important, if I might say so, than schools, than to reduce crime.
  People are not going to live in a city where they fear for their 
lives, and the reduction in crime is a salient indicator that this body 
would surely want to use in deciding whether progress is being made in 
the District of Columbia.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, a good friend and Member wrote a dear colleague 
when I asked that money for vouchers be spent on the year-round 
program, the Summer Stars Program, this summer, in order to finally, 
finally, eliminate social promotion. A good friend responded that, no, 
we could continue to use that money on vouchers, as he apparently 
desires, because the District can simply use its surplus to fund the 
year-round program.
  Wait 1 minute, Mr. Speaker. In last year's appropriation, the 
District was admonished to use every cent of its surplus to pay down 
its deficit. The District is still carrying an accumulated deficit of 
over $300 million. When I say that your capital is a balanced budget, I 
mean on an annualized basis, the way this country has a balanced budget 
on an annualized basis but is carrying a huge deficit.
  So the District is carrying an operating deficit from the time when 
it went down and went bankrupt. Now, the District was told, and I 
thought prudently, do not spend that surplus. Do not use it on 
anything, not even your schools, not even crime. Use it to pay down 
your debt. Do not borrow to pay down your debt.

  So, Mr. Speaker, I do not want to hear anybody say now that the 
District should use the surplus for the Summer Stars program, 
especially when Members of this body are coming forward and saying that 
there is $7 million to be used on school vouchers. That money should be 
used for the Summer Stars program; and the District should, in fact, 
use its surplus to pay down the deficit.
  The only other function that it has identified for use for some of 
this surplus is for the management reform that this body has mandated 
on the District. The District must have not only its finances 
straightened out but its management straightened out in 4 years if, in 
fact, the control board is to sunset. And I know that the howls from 
this body about the disarray of the operations of the District of 
Columbia are such that they would want the District to spend that money 
first on deficit reduction, then of course on straightening out its 
management. And there we are into something that will not even be done 
by the end of 4 years when the control board is to go, because part of 
the District's problem is an almost absence of technology in its 
agencies.
  Would you believe, Mr. Speaker, the District still has rotary phones 
in most of its agencies? We cannot even do computers as long as we do 
not have push button phones.
  So certain kinds of priorities are there. If there is money for 
schools, it certainly should go for Dr. Ackerman's Summer Stars 
program. The District should do what the Congress told the District it 
should do.
  The Congress said, the District should use all the money to pay down 
the deficit. It also said, the money should be used for tax cuts for 
D.C. residents. I am trying to get a tax cut on the Federal side for 
D.C. residents with a bill that has strong support from the Speaker and 
the majority leader that would be a progressive flat tax.
  I would certainly like to see some reduction in D.C. taxes, but I 
think that the Chief Financial Officer is correct when he says that the 
reduction in city taxes, given the outstanding deficit, should take 
place on a planned course as the city is downsized and improved so that 
all of that occurs in tandem and so that we do not throw out of sync 
the very good building of a surplus that has begun to occur.
  Mr. Speaker, the improvements in the District abound, and I am going 
to be coming forward with others. I must speak at some length about one 
that I think almost no one expected. The District was on not the dirty 
dozen list, because there is a whole lot more than a dozen cities on 
the list of troubled public housing authorities, and the District was 
big-time on that list.
  Two and a half years ago a man came from Seattle, Washington, to try 
to take hold of this chaos and put it back together again. The 
District, over 20 years it had more directors of its public housing 
than anybody could count. The District, frankly, was no different from 
other troubled public housing; but nobody expected anything to happen.
  When we talk about things we can at least do something over the short 
run, perhaps we think of schools and public housing. Well, in 2\1/2\ 
years David Gilmore, to his great credit, has taken the District off 
the list of troubled housing authorities.

                              {time}  1445

  The District had a score of 22 out of 100 when he came here. Now it 
has got a score of 65.5, which puts it well up in the list of housing 
authorities around the country. It is how David Gilmore has done this 
that I think we all should take note of. I have said to District 
officials, everybody ought to sit at the knee of David Gilmore, because 
here is a man who obviously knows how to manage people, manage ideas, 
and manage hardware. Somehow he has put them all together. He has moved 
the crack addicts and the nonpayers out of public housing. I do not 
even hear anybody screaming about it. He knows

[[Page H1331]]

how to manage people so that that occurs. He moves into a public 
housing complex where he sees that the whole thing has to be taken 
apart and you have to start all over again.
  What does the man do, Mr. Speaker? The first thing he does is to put 
in the sod. Can you imagine the effect it has on public housing tenants 
who have lived with crime and chaos for years to see somebody coming 
in, he says he is going to fix it and they hold down, they hunker down 
and prepare to have dust and nails and debris flying all around them. 
But they wake up and the first thing they see that morning is that the 
sod is being planted.
  This is a man who knows how to manage people, Mr. Speaker. He knows 
how to bring hope to the hopeless. What he has done is to organize 
tenant societies within those public housing authorities. You can 
imagine what happens when you have moved out the troublemakers, moved 
in the sod, fixed the public housing, got it in shape again.
  There is a new chief of police for public housing. Mr. Speaker, I 
have met with that man. He tells me that his job mostly consists of 
getting stray dogs and cats and taking them back to their owners, 
because the people are taking care of their own renovated public 
housing, because we have got in place a man who knows what he is doing.
  I have to tell you that I do think that is the key to everything in 
this world. I think that perhaps David Gilmore with all the good work 
that is being done in the District is the very best and is something to 
teach everybody, from the Control Board to the Mayor, to the City 
Council, to the Member who represents the District and the Congress, 
because he has put it all together. When you go to him and tell him 
about a problem, he fixes it, he finds a way to fix the system to have 
you get to him more quickly. He knows how to hire good people, and he 
knows how to take the staff who is there and to get work out of them 
and to get rid of those you cannot get work out of.
  There are all the stories in the Washington Post or the Washington 
Times about how the whole world is being shook up down at the public 
housing authority. I think this man needs to write himself a manual and 
pass it out. And first pass it around the District and then pass it 
around the country, because he is showing us something about how to fix 
a broken city. Yes, it was broken, Mr. Speaker. You are listening to a 
fourth generation Washingtonian. When my hometown became broken, there 
was a very special level of sadness for this Washingtonian, because my 
own great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, walked away from a plantation in 
Virginia. No runaway slave, Richard Holmes, he just walked off a 
plantation in Virginia in the early 1860s and came across the river to 
the District and planted the Holmes family here. Somehow or the other, 
through our 4 generations in this city, with problems that you might 
expect would have occurred in the early part of this century when my 
grandfather entered the D.C. fire department, later on when my father 
was in high school during the Great Depression, in 1954 when I was 
sitting in Dunbar High School, segregated, and heard the bell chime and 
the principal tell us that the schools would now be integrated under 
Brown v. Board of Education, to the time of my own children. Through 
all of that, Mr. Speaker, throughout this century, there was no time in 
which this city saw the bitter, bitter experience of bankruptcy.
  So for me, it was a time of special trial, especially since it was 
during that time that I represented the District and it was I who came 
forward and said that it had to have a Control Board. That was painful, 
but it was necessary, because it is necessary to do what has to be done 
for a city when it has to be done. I have shared the disappointment of 
this body that what had to be done has not been done as quickly as it 
should have been done and, if I may say so, Mr. Speaker, could have 
been done. And so you have not found me to be an apologist for the 
District. You have found me to be its defender, to ask people to step 
back and treat the city with respect, but no apologist for a city that 
does not stand up and do what has to be done to save itself. And so 
that is what the city is doing now.
  Mr. Speaker, the city has a great challenge. It was able to keep its 
population, because it is such a livable city, much longer than most 
large American cities which experienced a total drain of residents. The 
District did not begin to experience that until the late eighties and 
now we have come to that moment, so that the great burden on the city 
now is to recoup and retain its middle class. The District has had a 
frightening loss of residents. It is experiencing that just as it is 
beginning to turn the corner and get its full majesty back. But once 
that drain continues to occur, it is very difficult to turn it back.
  That is why the $5,000 homebuyer tax credit passed by this body has 
been so important. The fact is that between 1989 and 1997, Mr. Speaker, 
the District has shown itself to be losing 3 times as many residents as 
it lost in the whole of the 1980s. In other words, we are having 
devastating population loss. People do not look to see if the budget is 
balanced, if there is a surplus or even if the public housing is being 
fixed to decide whether to cross the District line, going the reverse 
of where my great-grandfather came when he came to Washington. Instead, 
they simply go where the grass seems greener.
  Mr. Speaker, they do not even look at what business sees. While we 
have been losing population, business has been coming back to 
Washington, again, Mr. Speaker, an indication that something important 
is happening in this town. Look at the new MCI Center. That was located 
in Prince George's County. That has done a reverse migration from the 
suburbs to the city. Mr. Speaker, the MCI Center has been built by Mr. 
Abe Pollin. He has built it 100 percent with his own money. There is 
virtually no other example of an arena in the United States that was 
built with private money. Arenas are being built almost exclusively 
with taxpayer money. Why would Mr. Pollin build an arena in the capital 
of the United States with his own money? Mr. Speaker, he knows 
something that I hope this Congress finds out soon and that business 
clearly knows first. There is money to be made here.
  There are 20 million visitors who come each year. I see some of them 
in the galleries. This is a city with unused economic potential. There 
is a wonderful infrastructure here. There is a metro that brings a 
whole region into the center of the city and so Mr. Pollin, who took 
his arena out of the District 20 years ago, has brought it back in a 
marvelous new center where the Caps and the Wizards, if you please, now 
play, as does Georgetown University and other teams from the region. 
But the very fact that somebody would build an arena with private money 
and take it from the suburbs and move it back to this city tells you 
that the capital of the United States is coming back and coming back 
fast.

  If you need another example, let me give you one just as spectacular. 
In the United States today, convention centers are built everywhere, in 
small towns, big cities, little hamlets, everybody wants a convention 
center. You build it with taxpayer funds because that is the only way 
you can get it built. But not in the District of Columbia. The hotel 
and restaurant industry came to the District 3 years ago and said, 
``Tell you what, District. Tell you what we're going to do. We're going 
to tax ourselves and build the convention center ourselves.''
  Why would the hotel and restaurant industry which complains that it 
is overtaxed, tax itself to build a convention center in the Nation's 
capital? They know where the money is, Mr. Speaker. The District cannot 
attract the big conventions, like the AMA Convention and the ABA 
Convention because our convention center is too small. Who loses? The 
District of Columbia loses, which is to say the taxpayers who then have 
to make up for what visitors to conventions would pay, but the hotel 
and restaurant industry loses, because those visitors do not come to 
use their facilities, either. And so instead of waiting the District 
out, they have stepped up and they will be breaking ground, with their 
own money, money that is already being built in a lockbox, with their 
own money, to build the convention center.
  Mr. Speaker, you do not build a convention center with private money 
if you think the city has no future. Mr. Speaker, you do not build an 
arena in

[[Page H1332]]

a city with private money if you think the city has no future. The city 
has a future. The city is coming back. The first people to understand 
it are those who have the most to lose, private businesspeople who have 
put their money where their mouth is, which is what I am asking this 
Congress to do when it comes to our schools, to put their money on the 
summer program and not on vouchers, where it will have no measurable 
effect on the average kid in the District of Columbia.
  Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, you have never seen me give the rosy, 
merry picture of the District. That is why I have spoken about the 
frightening decline in the D.C. tax base. I have introduced a bill, as 
recently as last week, called the D.C. Economic Recovery Act that would 
give a tax break to District residents from their Federal income taxes. 
I come forward to do this for the District, recognizing it would not be 
done for others because the District is a special case and you have 
made it so, and it is so under the Constitution of the United States.
  We have no State, Mr. Speaker. So that when residents leave the 
District, a very different phenomenon occurs than when they leave 
Baltimore or Richmond because when they take their money with them, 
there is no State to recycle their money back to the District of 
Columbia, as the State recycles money back to Baltimore and as the 
State recycles money back to Richmond. If there is no State to recycle 
the money back, then you say, ``Well, why don't you tax the people who 
come in every day to work here and use the same services that residents 
use here during the day?'' The reason we do not do so, Mr. Speaker, is 
because this body, and the other body, the Congress of the United 
States, has indeed barred a commuter tax.
  So the District is left high and dry. People leave, no way to make up 
for them because no State to help make up for their flight, and no way 
to make people who come in and use our services pay for the use of 
those services because the Congress has barred a commuter tax. I am 
asking this body to help make up for putting your capital between a 
rock and a hard place, and I am pleased and may I give credit to the 
leadership of this body and of the other body for supporting the D.C. 
Economic Recovery Act.
  Mr. Speaker, the figures speak for themselves. We want to hear them 
now so that we will not be the last to turn out the lights.

                              {time}  1500

  The figures speak for themselves. If we look at who the movers are, 
we see that 25 percent of them earn between $35,000 and $50,000, and 38 
percent of them earn between $50,000 and $100,000. Mr. Speaker, those 
are middle-income taxpayers right there. That is 63 percent of the 
people moving in that core, prime middle-income group between $35,000 
and $100,000. Those are the people who pay taxes to the District 
government.
  If the District does not have people to pay taxes to the government, 
no amount of surplus can make up for the flight of its core tax base. 
That is why I have introduced the District of Columbia Economic 
Recovery Act, not as special treatment to the District, but to make up 
for the special detriment that this body has placed on the District 
because we believe that that is necessary because it is the capital of 
the United States.
  Who is not leaving the District, Mr. Speaker? Those who make under 
$15,000; or put it another way, it is the poor. That is to say, under 
$15,000, only 3 percent left. The years I am talking about for these 
numbers, Mr. Speaker, are 1990 to 1996.
  The very rich are not leaving in large numbers either. Only 10 
percent of those who make $100,000 or more are leaving, and we are 
overly dependent upon these very rich people, and I love every last one 
of them, and I hope they do not go anywhere.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Ms. NORTON. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I could not help but watch with 
interest the gentlewoman's discussion on the floor here today as the 
gentlewoman has been talking about her wonderful District, which is our 
Nation's capital, and I wanted to share with those who are focusing 
upon the presentation my experience in dealing with the gentlewoman 
regarding the city.
  I first was drawn by way of attention when the gentlewoman mentioned 
David Gillmor, who is the housing director here and a fellow who we 
have both worked with, a fabulous public servant who is among those who 
is trying to make a difference in the Nation's capital and is making a 
very special contribution.
  I also wanted to share with the gentlewoman and others the fact that 
just a short time ago I returned from a, not exactly a ribbon-cutting, 
but essentially that, at a Habitat for Humanity, location very close to 
the Capitol here, where in this case Freddie Mac was presenting a check 
for $1 million for a program that the gentlewoman knows as the House 
That Congress Built.
  But as we were doing that, we were also expressing our appreciation 
for those who come together, in this case to help Ms. Christy Ingram 
and her family prepare to move in, probably sometime this summer to 
their new home here in the Nation's capital as a result of partnering 
that is going on in the city, that is designed to try to make a little 
difference here.
  As the gentlewoman knows, I come from California, but when I am in 
the Nation's capital doing this job, I am a constituent of yours, for I 
live in the city. I am very proud that I do. It is a marvelous 
community that needs all the help that all of us together should and 
want to give it. But especially I just wanted to express my 
appreciation to you and to those of you like David Gillmor who are 
truly making a difference for all of us who live here.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from 
California (Mr. Lewis) for taking the time to come to the floor. I do 
have to say to this body that the gentleman from California, who 
represents his own district with great energy and great distinction, 
nevertheless decides he always has to do good where he is and has 
initiated a program here that he is now spreading through the rest of 
the country. He came to me, imagine how I felt, when a distinguished 
and senior, not in age, but in longevity in the House came to me and 
said, we want to build a house by the Congress of the United States 
here in the capital of the United States, and I want to thank the 
gentleman for his work for the District.

                          ____________________