[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 125 (Wednesday, October 6, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H8177-H8179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    WAIVING POINTS OF ORDER AGAINST CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 4850, 
             DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 822 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 822

       Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be 
     in order to consider the conference report to accompany the 
     bill (H.R. 4850) 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, 2005, and for other 
     purposes. All points of order against the conference report 
     and against its consideration are waived. The conference 
     report shall be considered as read.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). The gentleman from Georgia 
(Mr. Linder) is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), 
pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During 
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose 
of debate only.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a standard rule for consideration of an 
appropriations conference report, and H. Res. 822 provides for the 
consideration of the conference reports for H.R. 4850, the District of 
Columbia Appropriations Act of 2005. The rule waives all points of 
order against the conference report and against its consideration. It 
also provides that the conference report shall be considered as read.
  Mr. Speaker, the House Committee on Appropriation continues to work 
hard to complete the work on the remaining appropriations bills in 
order to fund the responsibilities of the Federal Government. It has 
passed 12 of 13 regular appropriations bills and continues to work with 
the House and Senate leadership and the Senate Appropriations Committee 
to complete the appropriations process.
  While the 108th Congress has passed a continuing resolution funding 
the government through November 20, I am pleased that the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen) and the District of Columbia 
Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations today presents the 
House with another individual appropriations conference report to send 
to the President.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that the details of a bill should principally 
be discussed during a general debate on this legislation. However, I 
did want to note that the fiscal year 2005 D.C. Appropriations bill 
will provide funding for the new Bioterrorism and Forensics Lab and 
will provide full funding for the school improvement program, including 
$13 million for public school improvements, $13 million for charter 
schools, and $14 million for opportunity scholarships to promote 
academic achievement and school choice.
  I support these efforts to assist the District of Columbia students 
whose opportunities for success and growth are undermined simply 
because they reside in one of the least effective school districts in 
America.

[[Page H8178]]

  Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules has reported a good rule for 
consideration of this conference report, and I urge my colleagues to 
support it so that we may proceed with the general debate and 
consideration of this bipartisan legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume, and I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) for 
yielding me the customary time.
  Mr. Speaker, this rule is typical of that for most conference 
reports, and I will not oppose it.
  Mr. Speaker, there is no perfect legislation and certainly not when 
it comes to funding matters. The underlying conference report providing 
appropriations for the District of Columbia in fiscal year 2005 
includes a variety of provisions that are controversial and detrimental 
to the District's residents and, frankly, the country as a whole.
  I do not have to tell my colleagues about the uniqueness of the 
District of Columbia as a Federal city. It is the only place in the 
Nation where constitutionally Congress can exercise micromanagement at 
the highest and lowest of levels.
  Taking into consideration the fact that the District of Columbia has 
no voting representation in Congress, we should be mindful of this 
privileged duty and careful not to put our parochial agendas on the 
table when considering this conference report.
  As the gentleman from Georgia mentioned, the report approves the 
expenditure of a total of $8.3 billion in local funds for the District 
and directly appropriates $560 million for various District programs 
and projects. It includes $25.6 million for a tuition assistance 
program for college-bound students, $3 million for improvements to the 
Anacostia waterfront area, $6 million for a new public school library 
initiative, and $5 million to improve foster care in the District.
  While there are many quality programs funded by the conference 
report, such as the ones I just mentioned, the report also includes 
legislative riders that are a smorgasbord of controversy. The report 
prohibits the use of funds for abortions, registering same-sex couples, 
and for the distribution of clean needles and syringes. None of these 
prohibitions were sought by the District, and they represent nothing 
more than the ideological impositions of the majority.
  Furthermore, deep down inside the conference report is what the 
majority has dubbed a three-pronged school choice program. This program 
is heralded by school voucher advocates as a way to improve academic 
performance while promoting school choice. The reality is, however, the 
approach is a direct cut in Congress' funding commitment to the 
District's public schools.

                              {time}  1100

  That, Mr. Speaker, is an embarrassment to this institution.
  Our education system will never improve if we continue to divert our 
attention away from improving public schools, the schools that are free 
of cost and guaranteed to every child in America. Our public schools 
will never improve if we continue to underfund the No Child Left Behind 
Act. If the majority wants to point fingers at who is to fault for 
failures in our education system, then it ought to stop pointing 
fingers at the District of Columbia and start pointing them at all of 
our districts that have failing schools.
  In less than 3 years after its passage, the No Child Left Behind Act 
has been underfunded by President Bush and Congressional Republicans by 
more than $27 billion. Let me repeat that. In less than 3 years after 
its passage, the No Child Left Behind Act has been underfunded by 
President Bush and Congressional Republicans by more than $27 billion.
  If we want to have a real discussion about education, then let's have 
one. But let us be honest with the American people about what we are 
doing to the entire Nation's education system. Let us start telling the 
American people the truth and stop using the District as a petri dish 
of ideological shortcomings when considering the needs and lives of the 
residents of the Nation's Capital.
  It is high time that we as lawmakers in this great body stop playing 
political chess games with our responsibility to this process. We 
should allow the people of Washington, D.C., to govern themselves, and 
they should have a voting privilege in the House of Representatives.
  Funding for the education of the Nation's children and overall 
healthy well-being of its citizens should be our primary focus and 
goal. The D.C. appropriations bill is not the stage to act out our 
experimental projects that will not necessarily prove beneficial in the 
end.
  We must be mindful of the District's citizens that we have been given 
charge over. They are silenced in this process by the Constitution, and 
we must be responsible in our actions on their behalf.
  I urge my colleagues to consider this responsibility when voting on 
the underlying conference report.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to yield 7 
minutes to my good friend, the gentlewoman from the District of 
Columbia (Ms. Norton), the non-voting Delegate that should be voting 
like all of us, especially on this subject, who on behalf of this 
community has pursued outstanding legislation.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. 
I thank the gentleman for his graciousness in respecting the 
independence of the people of the District of Columbia, citizens of the 
United States entitled to the same rights that all other Americans 
have.
  I appreciate that the Committee on Rules, its chairman, its ranking 
member, Members who come forward today with this bill, have brought 
forward a conference report and a rule that enables the District of 
Columbia to get its own money out, and the money that is due it from 
the Federal Government, on time.
  I think that we should be apologizing to the American people that, at 
a time when all but two of our appropriations are not out, as we get 
ready to go home, we are having to spend time on the budget of a local 
jurisdiction. It must be hard to make people back home understand what 
we are doing, working on the taxpayer-raised budget of the District of 
Columbia and its Federal funds, rather than on the large Federal 
appropriations that await conference reports and the President's 
signature.
  At the same time, I am grateful for the timeliness of this conference 
report. Of the 13 appropriations bills, only two, Defense and D.C., 
will be signed by the President when we leave to go home at the end of 
this week. In a real sense, this turns on its head the practice in 
recent years and, certainly, since the Republican majority has been in 
control.
  D.C., irrelevant, literally irrelevant, to Members of the House and 
Senate, because almost all of the money is raised by our own local 
residents and taxpayers, D.C., the smallest, has traditionally been the 
most troublesome of the appropriations; the last out, the appropriation 
that caused more Members to come to the floor with amendments. 
Amendments that had to do with the District of Columbia? Absolutely 
not. Amendments that were of special interest to that Member but of no 
relevance to the District of Columbia.
  The opposite has been the case this year, and it is because of the 
leadership of the appropriators and of the authorizers. There are no 
new riders. Three were threatened, but the appropriators and the 
authorizers worked together so that those riders did not come forward 
to be voted on on this floor. It is not that these Members are 
omnipotent, it is that, when leaders exercise leadership and discourage 
extraneous material, particularly on the appropriation of a local 
jurisdiction, an independent jurisdiction, their leadership can and 
this year has proved to be critical.
  At the same time, I must take strong exception to the riders that 
remain; not new riders, but riders that remain. They are particularly 
inexcusable.
  First, the needle-exchange rider, which makes D.C. alone in the 
United States of America. Hundreds of jurisdictions use their own money 
to pay for the exchange of dirty needles for clean needles, in 
accordance with all of the scientific evidence, and, I may say, all of 
the great scientific organizations, official and private, that say you 
save lives when you do not allow dirty needles to be passed around so 
that you spread HIV-AIDS.

[[Page H8179]]

  So I should thank the Congress of the United States in the name of 
the people of the District of Columbia that, because of the needle-
exchange admonition and bar in our appropriation, we have the highest 
HIV-AIDS rate in the country.
  The interference with needle exchange, of course, is very different 
from other interference, because it costs lives. It is why we have so 
many men, women and children who otherwise would not be anywhere close 
to the AIDS epidemic with AIDS today. That calamity is laid at the feet 
of this Congress and essentially at the feet of this House, because the 
Senate asked that the District be able to spend its own local money for 
needle exchange. It was the House that refused to let the conference 
report come forward if, in fact, that was included.
  There are, of course, other old riders in this bill. The old rider 
that says all the rest of you in the United States of America can spend 
your money for abortions for poor women, but not the residents of the 
District of Columbia. They are American citizens, but we are not about 
to treat them as first-class citizens. Remember, they are second-class 
citizens. So they can't spend their own money for abortions for their 
own poor women.
  Perhaps as a matter of ordinary democracy, the most shameful rider 
says that the District can't spend its own money to lobby for its own 
rights. This House, not the Senate, the Senate has said, we are not on 
that boat, let them spend their own money if they want to spend their 
own money to get full and equal rights in the House and in the Senate, 
and we think that is their right and prerogative as Americans, but the 
House said, ``Oh, no, that is not for the District. In my district, we 
better be able to spend our own money to lobby for anything we want to. 
Not in the Nation's Capital.''
  This is a time of war, this is a time of great and urgent matters in 
our country. This is not the time when we ought to be considering this 
appropriation at all. At the same time, I am grateful that, if it had 
to be here, that before we went home this appropriation was out of 
Congress; that I am not here in November, that I am not here in 
December, trying to get my own money out of this Congress.
  In past years, the House has been critical of the management of the 
District of Columbia without conceding that not allowing the District 
to spend its own money on time has wrapped the District in knots as it 
tries to balance on last year's budget while waiting for the Congress 
to release its own money.
  The appropriators, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), our authorizer, the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), have gone very far in helping 
us to meet this burden. I appreciate that the Committee on Rules has 
taken taking us to the next step and making us one of two 
appropriations to clear the Congress before we clear out of here.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for 
time, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, I yield 
back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the 
resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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