[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 43 (Thursday, March 18, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H1457-H1462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LOOKING AT DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA WITH FRESH EYES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 1999, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms.
Norton) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, it has been my habit to come to the floor
occasionally in order to report to this body concerning your Nation's
capital. There is a special responsibility that the House and the
Senate have for the Nation's capital and it is not possible to get a
real sense of what is happening in this city, even when in it, to see
it in perspective, without the kind of information that I try to give
periodically to this body, as we go off to Hershey, Pennsylvania, for
our second bipartisan retreat.
Therefore, I want to discuss this evening an issue and a place about
which I am sure there is agreement that bipartisanship should always be
the order of the day. It is, after all, the seat of our government, the
home of more than a half million people, the place where all of us want
to do all we can to make it the proudest seat of government we can.
What I would ask of this body, what I think the district has a right
to ask of this body, what I think the people of the District of
Columbia, the mayor and the city council have a right to ask of this
body, is that it look at the District with fresh eyes for, Mr. Speaker,
there is a new city, if ever there was
[[Page H1458]]
one, before your eyes. It is a city where there is a new mayor. It is a
city where there is a new city council and where there is a new control
board.
I am most appreciative that as the 106th Congress convened, the
Speaker, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), received the new
mayor, Anthony Williams, and me, and we had a very good and encouraging
discussion. The same was true of the chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young); and the
gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook). The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr.
Istook) has gone into the District over the last few weeks to see for
himself the city that now comes under his appropriations subcommittee
jurisdiction. I have gone as well, and the mayor, to visit the chair of
the Senate District appropriations subcommittee, and the mayor has met
with the chairman of the Oversight Committee for the District, Mayor
George Voinovich, himself a former mayor, the mayor of Cleveland.
May I say that I continue to work, and in the bipartisan manner that
he and I have long ago established, with the chairman of the
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, the gentleman from Virginia
(Mr. Davis), and that has been a most fruitful partnership and we think
it is a model for what we should be trying to achieve in the way of
bipartisan cooperation when we meet beginning tomorrow in Hershey.
I should indicate to Members that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr.
Davis) has agreed to sponsor, with me, a reception for Mayor Anthony
Williams here in the House on April 13, in room 2226 Rayburn. We are
doing that simply because we think Members would want to meet the new
mayor of the District of Columbia, about which I am sure we have read a
great deal and heard a great deal.
It is seldom that a city experiences the kind of change your capital
has experienced over the last few months. The city has had a control
board because, like Cleveland and New York and Philadelphia, it had
financial problems, although I must say that the financial problems
that the District had were almost inevitable because it was carrying
State functions and no city in the United States carries State
functions.
May I say how appreciative I am, the elected officials are and the
residents are, that in its wisdom Congress removed at least some of
those State functions, the most costly ones, the ones that no city
could carry, medicaid or at least part of medicaid; courts; removed
pension liability that was built up when the Congress was in charge of
the District, enabling the District to breathe and to get control of
its finances. We are most grateful for the understanding that that was
a necessary obligation of the Federal Government.
What we have got in place essentially is an entirely new team. The
control board is new. Except for one member, the vice chair, Constance
Neumann, who served so well on the last control board, all the other
members are new, appointed by the President.
There is, as I have said, a new mayor and there is a revitalized city
council. Even the new mayor brings something very different from what
mayors usually bring to the office. This mayor served as chief
financial officer and, thus, is himself partly responsible for the rise
of the District once again to economic strength. He, in effect, served
an apprenticeship for becoming mayor doing what it is that mayors most
have to do, and that is balancing a budget and getting control of your
finances.
The city council has some of the same members. They are members who
have proven themselves to want to exercise oversight and they are
joined by others who were elected precisely because the city now
demands oversight and accountability, a check on the executive from its
city council.
So I ask this body to regard this as morning for the District. It is
morning again. It is like it is outdoors today; it is spring; it is a
new season with a whole new set of actors in place. All I ask of this
body is it leave behind any sense of the District as it was and give
these new players a chance to show what they can do.
I believe that they not only will do so, I think if one reads your
morning papers in the District each day one will see that they are
doing so. I invite everyone to flip through the Metropolitan Section
every once in awhile to see that I am, I believe, right on this.
The District is clearly realigning itself, first for its own
residents and then, of course, because it wants the Congress to
understand that it is a new city.
What I am asking of the Congress is that the Congress realign itself
so that it is ready to meet a new city. I want to say a word about what
I mean by a new city because I am not this evening speaking
rhetorically.
The city not only has a new administration, it has a new
administration because it has a new political culture. The reason it
has a new mayor, a new city council, is because there was a voter
driven reaction to the state in which the city found itself. It was not
driven by Congress. It was not driven by any outside force. It was
driven by the circumstances that District residents found for
themselves. Essentially, it was driven by a loud and virtually
unanimous cry of enough from residents. That is why I say there is a
change in the political culture, the kind of change that I think is
permanent precisely because it has been driven from the bottom,
precisely because of its reaction to what voters and residents felt on
a daily basis about their city and they wanted it to be better. They
wanted it to be better not because this body insisted so but because
they had to live with it every day and because these people who were in
charge were people they could either keep in charge or take from their
posts, and they have selected among them, and I believe selected
wisely.
I am very pleased that all of the signals from Congress have been
that this body, Senate and House, does understand that this is a new
city and should be treated accordingly. I am very pleased with the
bipartisan approach to the city's issues that we have seen thus far,
and there is evidence that I will allude to shortly.
I come to report today in a different spirit than I have come to the
floor sometimes on the District. I do not come in complaint. I do not
come to say, let the District be the District, let democracy reign in
the Nation's capital the way it does every place else. I come to say
that I am grateful for the way in which Congress is stepping back and
letting the District do what I believe it is doing very well already.
I certainly hope, and I must say based on our conversations with the
leadership I do believe, that I will not experience an appropriation
this year that is anything like the appropriation I experienced last
year where I stood for 10 hours on this floor. Even though there was
before this body a consensus budget and almost no changes were made in
the budget itself, I stood on this floor for 10 hours while Members
pasted one or another anti-democratic attachment on the D.C.
appropriation, an appropriation that comes here with only money raised
from the taxpayers of the District of Columbia and, by right, should
not be here at all.
{time} 1830
I had to stand here and fight back, for the most part unsuccessfully,
amendments that Members might have wished to put on to their own
district, but certainly had no right to put undemocratically on to
mine. This occurred even though everybody could see that the District
was on the mend. The former mayor had said he was not going to run
again, the budget was in order, and yet the budget became a vehicle for
Members' desires having nothing to do with the wishes of the residents
of the District of Columbia. I am hoping that the new cast of
characters, if nothing else, will get the respect of this body so that
our budget comes through, budget with our own money, without
attachments, and I have no reason to believe that that will not be the
case this year.
I raise it because there is no reason, as I have said to the Speaker,
and as I have said to our appropriators, why the District should not be
the first, rather than the last, budget that comes from this House
where, after all, it is not the money of the Federal Government, it is
the money of District residents.
The City was closed down for a week during the government shutdown.
In the middle of its own financial crisis, one can imagine the
bitterness that was left with District residents when, as far as they
were concerned, it was
[[Page H1459]]
their money and it should not have been up here at all. The delays in
our budget cost us in interest, when we have to borrow, because of the
uncertainty the market believes is there when what our council and our
mayor have done has to go to yet another legislative body and one not
as familiar with the City because it is not their particular budget.
Some of my colleagues were not here, so I raise it so that they know
what has happened in the past, and so that we can make what I hope will
be a clean break with that kind of past.
I believe that there is signal evidence that that kind of break has
already been made. As the session opened, I introduced the first of a
series of bills. The series is called Democracy Now, and the first bill
was called D.C. Democracy 2000. It seeks to sunset the control board,
the board that was necessary when we got into financial trouble early,
because we are no longer in financial trouble, and it sought to return
some powers that were taken from the mayor and the city council to the
mayor and the city council.
While the second part of the bill was not ripe because the new
administration had no track record, the part that would sunset the
control board, that is; I believe that the first part was ripe, and
that there was no reason why the take-charge new mayor of the District
should not have what it takes to rebuild the City. To his credit and
with much appreciation from me, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr.
Davis), the chairman of the subcommittee, took the first part of my
bill and brought it through subcommittee and then the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Burton) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman),
through full committee, and then on to this floor where it easily
passed in the House as well; and I am pleased to report this evening
that my bill, or the first part of my bill, which, in fact, became a
Davis-Norton bill, has become PL106-1. That ``dash 1'' means it is the
first bill of the 106th Congress to be signed by the President of the
United States.
How appropriate that the first bill that a Democratic mayor signed
was a bill that the Republican House and Senate passed to return
democracy to the mayor, to the mayor and the city council. We are most
appreciative. We think it bodes well for the Congress and for the
District, and it is what I mean when I say the District has to realign
itself and the Congress has to realign itself, and I believe that that
shows that both bodies are, in good faith, trying to do exactly that.
Now, I did not and have not yet pushed for the second half of D.C.
Democracy 2000, as I have indicated, because I think it is only fair to
ask even a new mayor who has the confidence of the House to get his own
track record before our sunset or seek to have the control board to
sunset a year early. My, how I would wish, however, that as the year
2000 dawns, the District of Columbia can be free of any oversight,
except this Congress. That would mean that the control board would go a
year early.
Mr. Speaker, let me indicate why I think that should happen. It is
not simply because we have a new mayor in which I believe everybody,
residents of the District of Columbia and Congress alike have
confidence, it is because the evidence is already on the table. The
Congress, through the control board statute, indicated that the
District could be rid of the control board if, at the end of four
years, the City had a balanced budget.
Let me tell my colleagues what the record is. The District has
already had not one balanced budget, and that was three years ahead of
time, but three balanced budgets plus surpluses in each of those three
years. Mr. Speaker, a $185 million surplus in 1997; a $444.8 million
surplus in fiscal year 1998, and the City projects a $158 million
surplus for fiscal year 1999. As if that were not enough in the way of
surpassing the expectations of the Congress, we had put into the
revitalization package that this body passed taking over State
functions in 1997 a provision that would allow the District to borrow
in the fourth year if it had a balanced budget on the one hand, but we
had not quite been able to get rid of, an operating deficit that it has
been carrying now for years. But the District of Columbia is going to
be able to eliminate its $322 million operating deficit from its own
revenues without any borrowing.
This is strong evidence that the District has not only met, but
surpassed, congressional expectations and is no longer in an emergency
or crisis status, and when one is no longer in an emergency status, one
no longer needs a control board. A control board is an emergency
mechanism; it is not a security blanket. No city gets it, or must have
it, unless it is in an emergency.
The District has pulled itself out of a financial crisis in a way no
one would dare to have predicted a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, I
can understand that to pass the second half of Democracy 2000, the
burden is going to be on me, it always is, and therefore, I have not
requested of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) even hearings,
yet, on the second half of that bill that would sunset the control
board. Rather, with a new administration that took office only in
January, it is only fair to let the mayor get his steam up, show what
he can do, and then have hearings and see whether or not this bill can
pass the House and the Senate.
Is the evidence on the table that this new mayor is in charge of the
City and does not need any oversight from anyone except the voters of
the District of Columbia? I think the evidence is very clear already. I
think we need to see it continue for a few more months, but it is very
clear already. Members have come up to me, came up to me after this
first big snow the other day and told me that they noted the very quick
and efficient way in which the streets were cleaned, and that it was in
contrast to some other experiences that they had had.
Let me cite the way in which the new administration gets hold of
problems, because he cannot promise us that there are not huge numbers
of problems left over. The real question is, is he in charge of them?
Does he gain control of them? Do we have an administration that knows
how to get rid of problems? Because the fact of problems are going to
be there for some time.
An example is an article in the Washington Post, a series, exposing
problems in homes for retarded people. The District did a very good
thing in taking retarded people and other disabled people out of a huge
monstrosity of an institution, taking them out of institutionalized
care and spreading these disabled people in homes around the City.
Well, The Washington Post did what they were supposed to do. They went
around and looked at these homes and these homes have been in existence
now for 3 or 4 years and they are private homes all around the City run
by contractors, and it found evidence that some of them are not
treating retarded people very well, and that is itself, I will not say
criminal, but it is pretty close to it when we consider that we are
talking about people that are pretty close to helpless. There was a
time when there would be exposure of problems like that and then we
would wait to hear word that something had happened.
Well, the articles ran a couple of days ago. This morning's paper
said that the mayor has moved in already to debar two of the
contractors in two of the homes, and to move the people out.
That is what I mean by ``take charge.'' That is what the Congress
cannot do, what the control board cannot do; that is what only a fully
empowered mayor can do and what, with his powers fully intact, he is
now doing.
Mr. Speaker, there are many, many examples of management progress in
the City. Let me just take two, the first being perhaps the institution
most exposed to the public and about which the public most cares
because they affect their lives so directly: Schools. This may be the
institution in the District where the Congress has had the greatest
concern, the public schools. To say they have done very poorly is to
speak far too lightly of schools that deserve nothing but contempt for
what they had done to our children.
What has happened in the District now is that a new, bold, energetic,
collegial superintendent named Arlene Ackerman has come to the
superintendency and things began to happen immediately. Her Summer
Stars program will probably be a model for the country where she took
children and said, in order to eliminate social promotion, they were to
go to summer school and that if one wanted
[[Page H1460]]
to get ahead, one could also go to summer school so that the children
were not stigmatized, and that there would be a ratio of 15 children to
every teacher, a very low ratio. Here is the kind of summer school that
no one has ever seen much of. It was over-subscribed, and in the
morning, children were put to very intensive reading and math
instructions, and in the evening, or afternoons, she was able to get
funding from private sources to take these youngsters all around the
region to cultural and fun activities that would otherwise have been
unavailable to them.
Even before she began with the Summer Stars program, she had so
changed the regime in the schools with respect to how teachers were to
confront their job that the scores in every grade had risen
significantly. It can be done if we have the right people in charge.
Arlene Ackerman is so good that I am sure some Members would like to
steal her, and we will not let that happen. Because that kind of
progress from a school system that was in the gutter, it was so bad, to
so quickly see it come up in the hands of somebody who knows what she
is doing is precisely what this City has needed.
{time} 1845
Let me take another agency that of course is of great, great concern;
the police department. The District went out and did a nationwide
search and got itself a first-class police chief. They got him from a
much larger city, Chicago.
They got a police chief whose reputation has been made in community
policing. No approach is more popular in this body than community
policing where we put the police on the ground. They get to know
people. They get to deal with problems at the ground level, and we get
rid of crime.
Chief Ramsey has brought his community policing and his management
style from Chicago to the District, and we are already seeing the kind
of control and innovation that had been absent for too long.
For example, the Chief, instead of having what we used to in most
cities, which is the command sitting in headquarters, has moved the
command into the field so that one can hold cops accountable, because
the command is not somewhere downtown. The command is right there in
the neighborhood.
This man means it when he says community policing. That does not mean
just a cop on the street. It means everybody is involved in community
policing.
Troubled police department. Slow to take down crime. It is finally
going down significantly in the District, and it was before even this
police chief came. But here is a man who knows how to keep that
progress going, with a real live management style that trucks no
excuses.
An example, he found a police department that, according to, again, a
series of articles, had excessive shootings. Again, the Washington
Post, just as it did a series on how retarded people were treated in
group homes, earlier did a series that showed that the police
department, albeit before Chief Ramsey, came to the city a few months
ago, had one of the highest excessive shooting rates in the country.
High crime rate, and our cops were apparently using their guns and
firing them more than they should. This flowed from a whole set of
problems, including too little training.
What the Chief did seems to me is an example for all of us who are
public officials. He believed that, if his internal affairs unit took
this evidence that was in the paper, of shootings that had occurred,
allegedly, excessively over the years; and if he did his own
investigation, that the public would not have the greatest confidence
in a police department investigating itself concerning these
accusations.
So he went to the Justice Department, and he asked the Attorney
General if she would assign some objective investigators to look at the
problem of excessive shootings. One, had they occurred? Had they been
excessive? What should be done about them?
Here, you have the opposite of what people have come to expect in
many cities, no cover-up, but rather a police chief pulling the covers
off and saying investigate us and tell us what should be done. If that
does not inspire confidence in the police department, nothing will.
But, Mr. Speaker, there is wholesale confidence in the various
sectors in this city. There is great and new business confidence. The
First Lady was, just a few days ago, at an event in the District,
attended by the great corporations and small businesses of this region,
that was about efforts that they had made over the past year on their
own to raise money for a real private/public partnership with the
District. It was very encouraging to see how private business in the
city and in the region were responding to the new District of Columbia
of which I speak.
One such response I must bring to your attention, Don Graham, the
publisher of the Washington Post, and business leaders in the region
and in the city came to see the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) and
me about an idea that they were themselves going to match.
They noted that we have only one small public open admissions
university in the District. So if one does not fit that university, one
has no other public university in the District the way they would if
they lived in Virginia or Maryland or New York or California.
They proposed that a youngster in D.C. be able to go to public
universities elsewhere, such as Virginia, with the Federal Government
paying the difference between in State tuition and the out-of-State
cost.
So that would mean, for example, at the University of Virginia where
it costs $16,000 if one lives out of State, but only about $5,000 if
one lives in the State, that a youngster from D.C. could go for the
$5,000. Boy has this been greeted with hallelujah in the District of
Columbia.
There are many sacrifices that people make to live in the District of
Columbia. One is that, when one's kids get to be college age, there is
no public university except an open admission one, and a very important
open admission one, but it certainly does not fit every student.
Students have flocked to this idea.
In order to make clear that this proposal was meant to take nothing
from the need to build our own open admissions city university, I have
achieved an agreement with the chairman that our open admissions city
university would itself get a grant that would be an annual grant so
that it can assist the university in its own rebuilding.
So there is going to be a win-win situation here. For youngsters who
remain in the District, and many of them who graduated from our schools
will have to remain here and will want to remain here, there will be a
University of the District of Columbia which has some added money on an
annual basis.
For youngsters who want to go out of the District of Columbia, the
District of Columbia College Access Act, cosponsored by me, introduced
by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), will provide a subsidy so
that the parents, the families will have to pay only the in-State
tuition cost.
Meanwhile, these business leaders have not just come to us and said
come up with some Federal money. They have already raised $15 million
themselves to supplement youngsters who, indeed, go to college anywhere
in the United States, including in the District of Columbia, whether or
not they take advantage of this in State tuition subsidy.
So that means that if one, for example, wants to go to the University
of Virginia, somehow one's family gets the $5,000, that is, the in-
State tuition rate, one still has a lot to come up with if one is going
to live outside the District. This private fund will be functionally
necessary for many to even take advantage of the Davis-Norton bill that
would subsidize in-State tuition.
The name of our act is the D.C. College Access Act. The name of the
private program is the D.C. College Access Program. So they are a kind
of coherent approach with a subsidy for tuition from the Federal
Government and a subsidy for living expenses and for expenses that
prepare these youngsters for college that makes sure that they remain
there once they get there. So it is just the kind of synergy that the
Congress likes to encourage.
But this time, the notion of the in-State tuition, Federally
subsidized, and the notion of the private subsidy have come from the
business community. That is what I mean when I say there
[[Page H1461]]
is confidence in this city. It is coming from every sector. It came
first from the voters who elected a whole new set of actors or at least
the many of whom were new. It comes from the Congress, which has
already passed a bill to return powers to the mayor and the city
council. We see that it comes also from the business community.
The question of new money for the District is still on the table,
because, while the Federal Government has taken over the most costly
State functions, the District has lost population. Like most big
cities, the difference is, if one loses population from Chicago or
Baltimore, if one loses population from Atlanta or New York, there is a
State to back one up. We have nobody but ourselves. We are orphans.
Therefore, we do not pretend that we are permanently in the best
shape. We know we are now with the good economy. We also know that we
are going to have to find other revenue sources.
But the mayor agrees with me that the first thing that the new mayor
should do is, not come to the Congress and say give me some money; that
if I believe the mayor needs to have a track record in order for the
Control Board to sunset early, I also believe the mayor has to have a
track record and has to devise an approach before he can come here and
say he needs more money.
He was the first to agree with this. He had no intention of coming to
ask for more money. Even though, in order to get the State functions
taken back by the Federal Government, we had to turn in our Federal
payment. So we do not get any Federal payment, which means that the 25
million visitors who come to the District of Columbia every year have
the services paid for essentially out of the pockets of the people I
represent. They are in a city with a declining population.
At some point, we have got to design an approach to make sure that
the District is able to handle this as it is handling it now. The
importance of the revitalization package which took the State functions
cannot be underestimated.
The mayor is not asking for more money at this time. I am sure that
we will have conversations over the next few years with how to increase
revenue in the District.
Meanwhile, look at what the mayor has just done this week. He has
come forward with a very bold budget that is itself a policy document
that is a paradigm for what a budget ought to be. Whether one agrees
with this budget or not, the fact is it is a budget unlike budgets the
District of Columbia has seen for a long time, because it points to new
directions and does not simply indicate where money will be spent. If
that is all a budget document is, it simply plugs in dollar signs for
what is already there, that is not what the District needed.
Some parts of it are already very controversial, like the proposal to
sell the existing campus of the University of the District of Columbia,
Northwest, and move that campus to Southeast, use the money as an
endowment for the University of the District of Columbia and put it
beside a new technology high school and Department of Employment
Service office.
All of that looks like it is an interesting idea. There is great
concern in the university about moving them to a part of the city which
has had some crime and other problems. There is also a problem because
the land is not owned by the District of Columbia. So I am not sure if
this is feasible.
I am sure of this, it is the counterproposal that the District of
Columbia ought to be debating. It is proposals that are bold that it
ought to be debating, even if it decides that is not what they ought to
do.
What we do not need is simply to put forward budgets like we have put
forward in the last 10 years, budgets that one year look like they did
before and the year before. We have got to wake up and smell the coffee
and say, yeah, now that I have seen that, I like it or I do not like
it.
In the democratic exchange between the counsel, the mayor, and the
public, this matter will be settled, and there and only there must it
be settled. This body, I am sure, does not want to have anything to do
with a proposal that is as complicated as that. It is not for us to say
I have no idea where I stand on it.
Do my colleagues know what I am waiting for, I am waiting for the
hearings in the city council so I can find out whether it is feasible,
whether it does make sense, in the same way that I wait for hearings in
this body before I know where I stand on important breakaway issues.
The mayor's budget is full of such breakaway proposals. He wants D.C.
agencies to compete with private sector for city contracts. He knows he
must work with city unions and city workers in order for that to work.
I am sure I do not need to tell him that no one can support it unless
he brings the workers in because he is an expert in management and
bringing management and policy together.
I am sure that the two will come together because this kind of
composition, where it has worked in other cities, and, very often, if
not most often, indeed, the public workers who know the job have in
fact won the contract. So there is nothing to fear but fear itself if
we have a level playing field and if everybody gets around the table
and designs the process together.
The mayor has put a priority on increasing funding for D.C. public
schools and youth programs. I love the part of the mayor's program that
says he wants to increase after-school programs.
{time} 1900
I cannot think of anything the mayor could do that could be more
important. There we get youngsters and we capture them so they do their
homework, we capture them so that they are not latchkey kids, we
capture them so that they are in a safe and productive place between
the hours of 3 and 6, or whatever they turn out to be, and those are
the hours when youngsters get into trouble or commit crimes. So it
takes care of so many things at one time, and he has put a priority
there.
He has a bold proposal to provide health insurance for almost 40,000
poor uninsured residents so that they do not cost the city money by
going to emergency rooms, and so that, in fact, they get health care
early rather than later, at much greater expense to the city.
He wants to restructure the city's debt using the savings to cut
taxes on small businesses. To do that, of course, would begin to
reinvigorate our small business sector.
The mayor has one budget request that, thus far, I believe, is being
received well. I do not have a specific indication from the
appropriators yet, because I am sure they want to study it, but somehow
we got into our appropriation a requirement that the District have two
reserve funds. Now, the District does not mind having one, but having
two is a bit much.
There is a provision that the District have a reserve fund of up to
$250 million. A lot of money, but I think it is right to do so, so that
we carry that reserve fund so that we can use it on a rainy day. Then
there is something else that, probably, Congress did not mean to be in
there. The two never, it seems to me, never came together. And that is
a reserve fund for $150 million put away for each year. So that would
just build up. The District would have $350 million the second year and
so forth.
I do not think the Congress really meant to have the District build
up that kind of reserve. I think it meant to have the District do what
every other city does, and that is to have a healthy reserve fund, the
way the reserve fund of up to $250 million would be. So the mayor is
saying that he would like to be relieved of the second $150 and do the
first $250.
I strongly support that. Because if the mayor is not able to produce
something in investment to the city, if he is not able to say, I am
giving some of this back to a city that has sacrificed so much during
the hard fiscal crisis years, he is not going to be able to do the hard
job of continuing to streamline the city and to make it a more
efficient city.
I do not think anybody meant to have the District simply build up
reserves that grow and grow and grow while no investment or little
investment is made in the city itself. And given the mayor's own proven
track record for fiscal prudence, I hope that this proposal will be
given every consideration.
As it is now, because the mayor does not know and because of his own
careful and honest budgeting, he has one
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budget with the $150 million in it and one budget without the $150
million. We are going to ask the Congress to relieve us of this
complication; take the $150 million out, be satisfied with the $250
million, and let the mayor do his job.
Mr. Speaker, I have today introduced a D.C. Budget Autonomy Act and a
D.C. Legislative Autonomy Act that goes along with the mayor's budget,
and I introduced it precisely because the mayor's budget came forward
this week. It is a take-charge budget that I thought made the case for
the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act.
The legislation simply says that, particularly because there is no
Federal payment any longer, when the District passes its balanced
budget, especially now with the control board in place, that should be
it. It should not have to come here to an appropriation committee and
to the Senate to an appropriation committee, which has no appropriation
for the District of Columbia.
Remember, the District clause would still allow the Congress to
intervene into the budgetary process in any way it saw fit. So it could
still come to the floor and say, I want to change this or that, or I
want to do whatever about it without the budget coming over here.
Meanwhile, the District budget could go into effect when it was passed
and would not hinge upon when we pass our appropriations.
This would save the District money; save it an inestimable amounts of
time, and I have put that in today because I believe the mayor, in good
faith, has come forward with the kind of prudent, exciting budgeting
that the Congress wanted to see, and I believe the Congress ought to
respond in kind by saying, it is his budget, we believe in devolution,
we are going to show it by letting him do his budget his way without
our intervention. Remember, we are talking about a city that has run a
surplus for 3 years, when this body expected to have a balance only
after 4 years.
The second bill is a Legislative Autonomy Bill, because I am sure
most of the Congress is unaware that after a piece of legislation is
passed it has to come here and sit for 30 or 60 days, depending on the
kind of legislation it is. The problem with that is that these 30 or 60
days have to be legislative days, so that the District legislation
cannot become final often for months, because the Congress does not sit
in blocks of 30 legislative days at one time.
It creates havoc in the District government. It has to go through a
Byzantine process just to get its laws to go into effect when passed,
and then they are not truly in effect. Unnecessary all together since,
again, Congress could, whenever it wanted to, simply come to the floor,
introduce a bill to overturn a piece of legislation. Republican and
Democratic Congresses alike, out of over 2,000 bills only 3 have been
overturned in 25 years of Home Rule.
The Congress has the power. It can always use it. Congress does not
need the hold in order to effectively do so. The hold creates havoc in
the District. It means that the District is streamlining its process,
we are not streamlining our relationship to the District. We ought to
respond to what the District is doing by letting the District's bills
stay with the District, letting the District's budget stay with the
District, unless we decide that we want to intervene, in which case the
District clause of the Constitution gives this body every opportunity
to come forward. That is all we ought to need. The congressional power
is still intact.
I want to thank the leadership on both sides for the way in which the
District, the new District, if I may be so bold, has been received. I
know I speak for Mayor Anthony Williams and City Council Chair Linda
Cropp when I say there is a great feeling of hope and very good feeling
toward the Congress in the District. There is the very same, as we have
already seen, here in the Congress, because the Congress has already
passed very important legislation to return powers to the District.
I would hope that Members would come for just a few minutes on April
13 to the reception that I am having for the mayor. The chairman of our
subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), is joining me in
sponsoring that reception. He is as pleased as I am with the way in
which the city is proceeding, I think I can say without fear of
contradiction. The reception will be held in Room 2226 Rayburn, and
Members will be receiving an invitation.
Expect me to come back, sometimes in 5 minutes, occasionally for a
full hour, to give my colleagues some real sense of what the city,
where my colleagues all meet, is doing to meet its own expectations
and, by doing so, to meet my colleagues' expectations.
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