[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 129 (Thursday, September 26, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H5875-H5878]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BUDGET AUTONOMY FOR DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AMIDST THREAT OF GOVERNMENT
SHUTDOWN
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Massie). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from
the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for 30 minutes.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Last week, the Nation's Capital--the District of Columbia--was in
great grief and pain as we lost 12 employees at the Washington Navy
Yard on Monday. I want to thank Members who
[[Page H5876]]
have expressed their condolences when they've seen me here.
Tuesday, I was on this floor for a moment of silence with four
Members of Congress who had served in the Navy even though this is
actually a naval installation which houses, largely, Federal civilian
employees of the Naval Sea Systems Command. Sunday, I was at a memorial
service for the 12 with the President and other Members of Congress and
a large group of friends and families of the 12. Yesterday, I attended
the funeral of Arthur Lee Daniels, a most sobering and sad funeral of a
man who supported his wife and children and who was much beloved by
them. He was the breadwinner, and now he is gone.
All during that week, however Mr. Speaker, there was another cloud
hanging over this city that I could not forget, that, strange as it may
seem, the shutdown threat facing the Federal Government was also facing
the District of Columbia. We are talking about a local budget and a
budget that, by rights, should not be in the Congress at all. September
30 is the end of the fiscal year. That is Monday--4 days away. The
prospect of a government shutdown increases as each day passes. All
that we hear here are permutations on the conditions that have now been
put on the congressional resolution for keeping the government open, so
I cannot assume that there will not be a shutdown, at least, for a
short period of time. Considering the shutdown of 1995, anyone who
reads history or who was here then, I think, would not want that to
happen again.
The cost of a shutdown to the Nation's Capital according to the
figures from 2011--the cost of a shutdown threat, because the
government has not shut down in recent years, but there were three
possible shutdowns in 2011. The cost of a shutdown was $131,000 to the
District of Columbia and 3,000 staff hours. That's money and time that
should be spent on running a big city.
I am sure Members must be saying, Well, what is it that the District
of Columbia did to make the Congress want its budget to come to the
Congress? Because that's anathema to most Members of Congress. I think
most Members of Congress would almost rather repeat the Revolution of
our forefathers rather than see one's local budget here before Members
who know nothing of it and have nothing to do with it and don't have a
dime in it. This is a matter of history and anachronism that nobody
should be proud of.
We are talking about a local budget of $8 billion in local money, and
there is not anything about the D.C. budget that has summoned it to the
Congress. It comes because it has always come. It's on automatic pilot,
despite a budget autonomy referendum that has been overwhelmingly
passed in the city, despite my budget autonomy bill, despite my
statehood bill; but we are only talking about the local budget now,
about local budget autonomy.
So, my friends, I can say there is nothing about the D.C. budget that
causes it to be here. On the contrary, the District of Columbia has a
$1.5 billion reserve. It puts money in its reserves every year--in good
times and bad times. That is one of the largest reserves in the United
States today. Most jurisdictions would be proud to have any reserve at
all these days. So far from there being something about the D.C.
budget, there ought to be a resolution on this floor that commends the
District of Columbia for how it has handled its local budget. Its
budget was submitted here, on time. The budget was in such good shape
that it was easily approved by both appropriations committees. There it
sits in the House and Senate, along with Federal appropriations--
although the District budget alone among them is not a Federal
appropriation. It is a local budget.
So in this matter that ties the city up in the Congress, there is no
budget issue. Indeed, the appropriators have never interfered or tried
to change the local budget. There is no way they could do so. A local
budget is put together with great delicacy after local subcommittee
hearings and other hearings and negotiations between the council and
the Mayor, with trimmings here and additions there. No one would dare
touch it. In my more than 20 years in Congress--and most of my time has
been spent in the minority--no one on either side of the aisle has
attempted to get into the innards of the District budget.
I have every confidence in the District budget because the District
of Columbia has something that no other jurisdiction in the United
States has. It has an independent chief financial officer who serves on
a 5-year term and who cannot be fired by the Mayor or city council
except for cause, and you know what ``cause'' means. He is independent.
You can't spend money unless he passes off on it. The money isn't
available unless he says so. Of course, there is the same kind of
discretion that your own local jurisdictions have to spend money, but
it's not nearly the kind of discretion you're used to. Indeed, no
political figure--no other mayor or council or local legislature--has a
chief financial officer who gets the final say on budgetary matters.
You see, there is nothing that any Member could raise about the
budget. If anything, the District budget is subject to a kind of
scrutiny that no Member's local budget is. There are Members in this
body whose local or state budgets are balanced only by straws and
fluff. Ours is a balanced budget that has had the sanction not only of
a Mayor and a city council, but of a chief financial officer.
So, you say, there must be some good motive here. After all, who
would want to bring a big, complicated city to its knees for nothing.
The answer, my friends, is: no one. There is no one in this body or in
the other body who has called for or made a statement that would lead
you to believe that she is for the present predicament of the District
of Columbia's, allowing the city to close down if the Federal
Government shuts down.
Nor is this one of the usual ideological or philosophical differences
between the two sides where Democrats and Republicans have deep
differences on matters like their budgets or health care or the rest--
not this one. No one complains about the budget and how it is put
together. No ideological or philosophical differences have been raised;
and if there were some, I think there would have been no hesitation in
raising them.
So there is nothing in D.C.'s local budget for any Member of this
House. There is nothing in a threat of a shutdown for any Member of the
House. There is nothing in a shutdown, itself, and here I am referring
to a local government shutdown. Part of the reason it goes on is that
most Members don't pay attention to any local jurisdiction, even one
right in their faces--the Nation's Capital's budget. That's not what
they've been sent here to do. Most don't even know about it. I'm sure
they don't care about it.
So this historic anomaly, doing great damage to the city, continues.
Worse, this matter with our local budget here now, facing the great
Nation's Capital with a shutdown, violates every principle of
federalism. My colleagues on the other side stand on federalism, it
would appear, above all other matters; and I should think they would be
the first to want the local budget out of the hands of the ``big foot''
Federal Government. On my side of the aisle, there are deep feelings
about local control as well.
Put yourself in my position. How would any Member of this House feel
or react if its local money had to pass any eyes in this Chamber who
had nothing to do with raising that local money? I don't have the words
to say what you would say in that circumstance. If this government were
founded on any principle, it was founded on the principle of
federalism, and if there is any meaning to federalism, it begins with
money: no taxation without representation.
You, Members of the House and Senate, elected by your constituents,
don't get to say what my constituents do with their own money. That's a
basic principle of American federalism.
The gentlelady from Texas.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I was in my office, Congresswoman, and I could not
help but both agree and hear you.
I wanted to come just to applaud you for, first of all, restoring and
educating this House on the issues of federalism, local control, and
also of reintroducing them to Washington, D.C., which gained local
control and gained the right to elect its local officials. Also--maybe
most people don't know--it has an operational budget that is balanced
and that, in actuality, could continue to run its services for its
people, as the Congresswoman has indicated, but for
[[Page H5877]]
the pass-through that is required here in the House of Representatives.
{time} 1800
I simply wanted to come and applaud you and say a government shutdown
is for naught. It is not good for anyone, and it is shameful that it is
tied to the defunding of ObamaCare when the millions of Washingtonians,
who are here, who dutifully provide for this House and this Senate and
all of those who come in and out of Washington, D.C., the millions of
tourists, the international guests, that we would dare tell them,
without a vote, without a voice, in terms of the voting voice, to say
not only are we shutting down the government that is going to hurt all
of America, we're going to shut you down and you're in local control
with your own monies, ready to run, ready to help, ready to provide for
the safety and security of the comings and goings of those who work in
the Federal Government in the House of Representatives.
So I could not miss the opportunity to again reinforce my commitment
to the legitimacy of Washington, its right to a voting representative
in both the House and the Senate, and, as well, the fact that you make
a very potent argument, because in many of our jurisdictions, city
government may still be operating. Of course, many people will be
hurt--Social Security, the military, veterans, the soldiers' families
who don't get a paycheck. What the Congresswoman is saying, and I want
to add to that, insult to injury coming from this shutdown is the fact
that a whole city would not be able to operate the Nation's Capital
where people are now heading to by airplane for whatever visits they
may have--tourists, international guests.
I just met with an international leader today. They will all be
coming to a city that will literally be shut down because my Republican
friends want to defund ObamaCare and don't have the respect to give you
the waiver, the position that you have asked for to make sure that
Washington, D.C., runs.
I thank you for alarming us. I hope that as we enter into our
discussions tomorrow that we will raise this issue and that those of
good common sense will come to their senses not only for the people of
the District of Columbia in hearing your plea, but they'll come to
their senses for the American people and keep this government running.
Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentlelady from Texas, who, in her
generosity, has come down to speak from the point of view of another
Member who isn't facing this in her own jurisdiction but understands
what we are facing from the Federal Government and how it must indeed
be. I thank you very much for your generosity and for those very
insightful statements about our predicament.
Indeed, before I recognized the gentlelady, I was speaking about
federalism. Essentially, our forefathers and foremothers distrusted
Federal power. Nothing is more alien to Federal power than a local
budget. I can't imagine that they would have abided that under any
circumstances for the District of Columbia or any other city. This
country is, in many ways, State and local-oriented, not Federal
oriented. We need the Federal Government, we can't do without it; but
as to our principles, we set up a Republic that separated local and
State matters from Federal matters, and of those matters none is more
salient than matters affecting the purse.
The District does not regard itself as a hostage. We are not a
hostage to this fight. If that were the case, we would try to negotiate
our way out of it or give up. But we're not a part of this fight. When
you're a hostage, somebody would say something about you or they would
want something and they're using you to get it, but they're not. No one
has claimed the District of Columbia as some link to the disputes that
are going on here between the administration and Congress.
We face a no-exit, no-way-out proposition because there's nothing we
could, ourselves, do. There's nothing for us to give. There's no
concession for us to make that would free us. We've got to depend upon
the goodwill of the Speaker of the House of the majority, leader of the
House of the majority, majority leader of the Senate and the minority
leader of the Senate, their leadership, this leadership, and, of
course, of our own minority leadership and the Members of the House and
the Senate.
I cannot believe they do not identify with me as I stand here trying
to get recognition for my city to spend its own money. I believe if
they put themselves in my place, there would be enough generosity in
this body to agree that wherever we stand on the dispute before us, the
District of Columbia is not a part of it and should not be dragged into
it.
This is a big, complicated city. It's run well. Its budget and
reserves show that. The Federal Government, unlike the Nation's
Capital, does not deliver direct services. That's what big cities and
small towns do. A Federal shutdown will have its effects throughout the
country because we've got almost 3 million Federal workers, and they
will feel it first and foremost; and some of the services that the
American people regard as essential, but which are not considered
essential by the Office of Personnel Management, some of those services
will not be available. But those are not like the services that many of
you who live in the District of Columbia, Members of Congress, depend
upon from the District of Columbia, like picking up your trash and
garbage, for example. Even that would be stopped.
Who would be affected, therefore? Well, clearly the 600,000 plus--
actually, it's close to 625,000 residents now because the District has
been gaining population at a rate of about 1,000 a month. That speaks
to how well the city is doing. That's how attractive the city is to
people moving to this area. It clearly serves, first and foremost, its
own citizens; but the District of Columbia is the Nation's Capital and
serves private businesses. It serves Federal officials, visitors,
Federal buildings, and foreign embassies. The circle is very broad of
those who will feel any shutdown of the District of Columbia.
Moreover, our finances, which have been doing so well, could be very
negatively affected. The city has financing agreements of various
kinds, such as a master equipment lease, for example. Like every city,
it leases a wide variety of equipment, like some traffic lights and
automobiles and public safety vehicles, and it has certificates of
participation on some of its buildings, like its command center for
public safety. All of those could face a default if a payment is due
while a shutdown occurs. Of course, if that occurs, if they miss a
payment, then, of course, under the terms of these agreements, the
bondholders must be notified, and that would drive up the city's costs.
Is there a Member that even knows this? Surely there are Members who
would care that this unintended effect would lead to such serious
results.
Wall Street already penalizes the District because its budget has to
come here at all. When your budget is not final when it is passed by
your local officials, it has to come to a body like the Congress of the
United States, even at its most stable, the fact of dual sanctions to
approve a budget costs the city on Wall Street, not withstanding its
handsome reserves.
I'm not asking the Congress to do the unprecedented. Eighteen years
ago when the government shut down--and it was shut down for a week--I
went to Speaker Gingrich and asked him not to allow the District to
shut down again. There were partial shutdowns, but each time a CR came.
He included the District in the CR, and I'm asking for that relief, as
well, from the House. It was a House and Senate in Republican hands and
an administration in Democratic hands--it was also a polarized time--
yet the District of Columbia was kept open.
There are remedies. We are included in the pending congressional
resolution because, thanks to the appropriators for the last 10 years,
if there is a congressional resolution or, for that matter, a bill, the
District of Columbia can spend its local funds at next year's levels.
That's not a big favor to the District of Columbia because, remember,
we are not a Federal agency, which can only spend at the present year
levels. But it was an important thing to do because it had calamitous
effects, when the District could not move ahead with its own
appropriations as planned and with contracts and with schools and with
the many different operations that were affected, when you couldn't
[[Page H5878]]
spend at the next year's level which you had approved and had been
approved by your chief financial officer.
So I've had three bills. One was to amend the CR so that if it turns
out to last until December 15 or if it turns out to be a week from now,
whatever it is, the District would not have to lurch from CR to CR in
short-term CRs. We've asked that the District be permitted to spend its
funds for the 2014 fiscal year.
Then I also have an independent bill that would allow the same
remedy--not part of the CR--that the leadership could bring to the
floor simply to allow the District to spend for the 2014 fiscal year,
same terms, nothing changed, exactly what is now in the appropriation
that is pending, except that it could now go forward for the next
fiscal year.
Then I have a permanent no-shutdown bill.
What makes all of this so ironic is that pending, as I speak, is
bicameral, bipartisan support for preventing government shutdowns.
This summer, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the
Senate Appropriations Committee approved larger bills that contained
provisions that would permanently authorize the District government to
remain open and spend its local funds. The President's fiscal year 2013
budget contains the same authorization, and the appropriators in the
House have acknowledged the harm done to the District by these
shutdowns and asked the authorizers to proceed.
{time} 1815
As we move closer to the government shutdown, the need to free the
District's budget from the grasp of a dispute that shows no sign of
ending has become more clear. These continuing resolutions, and the
preparations for shutdown are having a punitive effect on the Nation's
Capital.
The Nation's Capital is an innocent party to this Federal dispute.
Only legislation like the three bills I have just named or my budget or
autonomy legislation would keep the Nation's Capital from being
embroiled in Federal fights. I ask Members to consider what I have said
here this evening and to free the city from disputes I don't think you
mean us to be a part of.
I thank the Speaker and yield back the balance of my time.
____________________