[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 118 (Friday, July 25, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H6853-H6857]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HOME RULE FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Daines). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2013, 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 is virtually mandatory that I come to the
floor this afternoon because the two most serious, antidemocratic, and
anti-home rule amendments are pending in this House. I am very hopeful
that they will not be sustained when the full Congress gets a look at
them, but they certainly have passed this House: an amendment from
Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky that attempts to wipe out,
eliminate, all the gun laws of the Nation's Capital--the Nation's
Capital, a prime terrorist target; the Nation's Capital, where Cabinet
members lunch in our public places, go to our theaters, and walk in our
streets; the Nation's Capital, where there are 650,000 residents; the
Nation's Capital, one of the big cities of America, and it is those big
cities where gun violence is most likely to occur. That is the
amendment from Representative Massie.
Then there is another amendment from Representative Andy Harris, an
amendment that flies in the face of what is occurring across the
country, of course, as 18 States long before the District of Columbia
decriminalized their marijuana laws. So, too, has the District of
Columbia. But this Member is seeking to meddle in the affairs of the
District of Columbia--the local affairs, local matters--and to somehow
keep the local legislature from passing a local law just like the laws
of those 18 States.
Now, I hasten to add that the Senate, the comparable subcommittee in
the Senate, has considered this matter, and the Senate has passed what
we call a clean bill, a clean appropriations bill for the District of
Columbia.
Of course, there is a kind of anomaly here. Why am I talking about
the District of Columbia at all? Well, that is an anomaly that allows
the District's budget--every cent of it raised in the District of
Columbia--to somehow come here to be approved by Members that are
unaccountable for having raised a cent of that budget.
{time} 1430
So, yes, the Senate had to consider the District's budget. By the
way, our D.C. budget is balanced. The D.C. budget has a large amount of
revenue in excess of its annual taxes, a rainy day fund that would be
the envy of most Members of this House, and yet it has to come to a
House that has hardly been able to pass bills much less balance its
budget.
So the Senate says we recognize you can handle your own affairs, like
any other American jurisdiction, and they have quickly passed or
approved the District's local budget. In addition, the Senate has also
given the District both autonomy over its own budget so it wouldn't
have to come the Congress in the first place, and what we call
legislative autonomy.
In addition to having to bring its local budget here, the residents
of the District of Columbia, when they pass their local laws, those
local laws have to rest here for a certain period of time to see if
there is any Member who wants to jump up and ask to overturn them.
However, usually the process of overturning a local law of the District
of Columbia does not come through regular order, through the House and
Senate, although there is such a process that is allowed. It usually
comes in the way in which Representative Massie and Representative
Harris have interfered with the District. They simply try to use an
amendment to an appropriation bill in order to overturn a District law,
a kind of shortcut method.
Of course, if one looks at why the District budget is over here, the
American people would be, I think, pleased to know that no one, not one
Member looks at the budget. They recognize that they are incompetent to
do so, not because they are inherently incompetent, but because nobody
would want to look at somebody else's budget if
[[Page H6854]]
they have not had the opportunity to go through what they have gone
through, and that is all of the hearings and the rest of it. So
Congress doesn't care about the budget. They have the budget here in
order to use it as a vehicle to overturn local laws, and that is what
has happened with the gun amendment and with the marijuana
decriminalization amendment.
Now, I want to speak about both responses from residents and about
what these Members have done. The gun amendment is the most serious
because what Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky has tried to do
affects the lives and the public safety of the residents of this city.
This is something you don't fool with. The reason that the Framers left
such local matters, public safety, to local people, is because of what
is at stake. Nobody in Washington, that is to say official Washington,
can tell anyone in someone's hometown anything that they should want to
hear about their own local public safety.
As it turns out, the District of Columbia is very proud of its low
crime rate, its low gun violence rate, because like other big cities,
earlier on, within the last 15 or 20 years, it was like other big
cities. It had high gun violence rates, but those have been brought
down.
And you can imagine that in a big city, keeping the city safe from
gun violence is a very big deal, particularly when that city turns out
not to be just any city, when it turns out to be the Capital of the
United States. And yet what Representative Massie has done would make
the District of Columbia the most permissive gun jurisdiction in the
United States. What is almost laughable, if it weren't so tragic, is
that, were his amendment to become law, the District of Columbia would
have a more permissive set of gun laws than Representative Massie's own
district in Kentucky. This gentleman lives in a county of 17,000
people. He is a cattle farmer. That is a different culture that I
respect in his county, and yes, in his State.
All the people of the District of Columbia are demanding is the same
kind of respect, reciprocal respect, and that is what you don't get
when a Member decides not to attend to the business of his own State,
but knowing nothing about your State, saying not one mumbling word to
you, who represent the District, the only Member who represents this
district, or to any local official, when you then decide in the most
tyrannical way to use authority that essentially even this Congress
never intended you to have because 40 years ago the Congress passed the
Home Rule Act.
It recognized when the country was, frankly, being criticized for not
using the same standard with its own Capital that it demands of the
rest of the world. Its own Capital didn't even have a local government,
a home rule government. It was ruled by three commissioners. The people
of the District couldn't elect their government. It had no Member of
Congress. What kind of democracy is that in your Nation's Capital?
Well, Congress said that is not democracy.
So Members can cite all they want about the Constitution, which
indeed said that because it is the Nation's Capital, there is
jurisdiction in the Congress. But nothing in the Constitution said that
Congress had to keep that jurisdiction and could never give the
District democracy, and so it did. The Home Rule Act of 1973, with that
act, from this Congress, this Congress said we shall no longer be the
tyrannical lawmakers for people unaccountable to us, making laws for
people who can't vote for us or against us. We give that up because it
is inconsistent with our values of democracy, and we say it to the
world: we give it up now. And so they did.
So any Member who tries to say we have the authority, it is like any
tyrant in the world who says because I can do it, I am going to do it.
Yes, you can do it if you want to betray your own principles.
Now, I note for the Record that these Members profess to be Tea Party
Republicans. Their major standard in this Congress is that power, even
power that the Federal Government legitimately has, shall be devolved,
sent back to local jurisdictions and to States.
How can you call yourself a small government, local government,
states' rights Republican and then be instrumental in putting the big
foot of the Federal Government on a local jurisdiction--as it turns
out, your own Nation's Capital--and just to make this more absurdly
antidemocratic, in a Congress where that Member cannot even vote up or
down on the Harris amendment or on the Massie amendment.
If, my friends, that is not tyranny, then the word has no meaning.
Unaccountable, and you stand in the way of making the only Member who
represents the District, where you are interfering, making her
unaccountable too with no vote on this floor--is this America? No, it
is the Tea Party Republican Congress.
The gun amendment that has been introduced by Representative Massie
as a bald attempt to score political points, and he says so--I will
quote from his own statement shortly--to make political points at the
expense of states' rights, the rights of my own constituents, and most
seriously, at the expense of their public safety.
What is Representative Thomas Massie trying to do here in Washington,
instead of finding things to do for the people of Kentucky? Well, this
is what he is trying to do in the Nation's Capital: to allow carrying
on the streets a gun, open or concealed, of any kind; assault weapon,
any kind, no holds; allowing assault weapons, including .50-caliber
sniper weapons, to be possessed; allowing magazines holding an
unlimited number of bullets to be possessed.
Do you know how many motorcades of cars go through the streets of the
Nation's Capital every single day carrying dignitaries at every level
of government from across the world? They stop the traffic because the
safety of these officials is so important to the Nation and to the
world. So we are not only talking about our own Cabinet officials, we
are talking about 20 million people who visit this city, prime
ministers, heads of states.
Let me go on about what kind of gun atmosphere Mr. Massie wants here
in the Nation's Capital.
Private sale of guns without any background checks. Any Tom, Dick, or
Harry, rogue or criminal, could get a gun and bring it into the
Nation's Capital.
The purchase of guns with no waiting period.
The purchase of an unlimited number of guns in one day.
That is what he wants here in one of the big cities, the Nation's
Capital.
Well, all he has done is bring unintended confusion. He certainly has
gotten a response from the city. The mayor of the city, the police
chief was out of town but her assistant chief came to this House and
held a press conference about the outrage of interfering with the chief
and most important duty of the mayor and the police chief: keeping the
streets of the District safe.
But this amendment isn't quite doing what Mr. Massie intended. In
fact, both of these amendments, the Harris marijuana decriminalization
amendment and the Massie amendment, show why amendments to
appropriations bills really aren't the way to proceed. It is true that
you can try to introduce a bill to accomplish the same thing, but
amendments to appropriations contain a few words and they end up doing
things you never expected. This was a 69-word appropriation rider that
tries to overturn four complicated laws; you just can't do it with an
amendment and get done what you are trying to do.
{time} 1445
This is what we found. We are still looking at the implications of
the Massie amendment. It appears that Thomas Massie has made some of
our laws less restrictive and some more restrictive.
Then there is another interpretation that says that the city may be
left with only laws that have been declared unconstitutional, and of
course, those are unenforceable.
Then looking at the language, another reading says that the amendment
has not only blocked the four complicated gun laws intended, but has
also blocked enforcement of laws that these laws amended, and these
laws amended laws that have been found unconstitutional. That is just
how complicated this is.
[[Page H6855]]
Now, what I think I have shown is that it is technically impossible
to do what Thomas Massie tried to do in 69 words. Never mind, though,
if all you are bent on is undemocratically poking, inserting yourself
into a district not your own, you are bound to make mistakes.
In order to do what Thomas Massie wanted to do, he would have had to
write a law as complicated as the District of Columbia's own carefully-
wrought laws--gun laws are. Remember, their laws had to be redeveloped
because of the Supreme Court decision that said that D.C.'s original
laws were not constitutional, so they went back and revised their laws,
and they came up with, yes, strict gun laws.
There have been challenges to those gun laws. The Federal courts have
upheld the District's gun registration requirement, the Federal courts
have upheld the District's assault weapons ban, and the Federal courts
have upheld the District's ban on large-capacity ammunition feeding
devices.
Why in the world would anyone have gone to court against those in the
first place, I am not sure, but anybody who reads the Supreme Court
decision as saying you can carry any gun, anywhere you want to, ought
to read it again.
All the Supreme Court said was that you are allowed to have and own a
gun in your own home, period. That is all the Supreme Court has said--
not to carry those guns into the streets of big cities where gun
tragedies occur on a frequent basis.
I make no challenge to where my colleagues stand on guns. I believe
in a country full of diversity of all kinds. If you look at the great
United States from East to West, with its extraordinary diverse
geography, you can understand why there would be vast differences among
residents on issues like guns.
Why in the world would we not want to respect those differences? This
is the United States of America. It means, in the States & D.C., we
have the freedom to entertain differences and to carry them out there.
That is all the residents of the District of Columbia are asking--
indeed, demanding.
Wherever you stand on guns is no business of mine, and I will never
try to convince you in your own State how to behave with those guns.
All that the people I represent are asking is that we be accorded the
same respect.
Representative Massie came on this floor initially with a version of
his gun amendment. The Speaker sitting there before him found his
amendment to be out of order. It was unartfully written.
Normally, if your own party--the Speaker in the chair is from his
party, the majority controls the floor--if your own Speaker says that
your amendment is out of order, that is the end of it.
To understand the kind of Member we are dealing with--his own Speaker
had ruled his amendment out of order--the sensible thing to do is what
he was finally forced to do, go back, go to the staff who knows how to
write these amendments, and say: write me an amendment that won't be
out of order.
Instead, he stood his ground and said he wanted a vote to overrule
his own Speaker, that his amendment was out of order. That so
embarrassed his colleagues on the other side that people gathered
around him trying to convince him he really didn't want to do that,
there was another way, go back and rewrite your amendment.
What began as stubbornness was becoming a matter of embarrassment for
the Republican majority because a vote to overrule the Speaker demands
an immediate vote of the House. It was now 7 or 8 at night.
Members had been told there would be no more votes, so they were
scattered throughout the region, in Maryland, in Virginia, and the far
reaches of the District of Columbia. Had, indeed, they been called
back, the most angry Member would not have been me, it would have been
his own colleagues.
Finally, unable to convince him to accept the ruling of the Chair--
and the people of Kentucky ought to know what kind of Member they sent
here and perhaps do something about it--instead of accepting the
technical problem and going back forthrightly and dealing with it, he
demanded a vote anyway.
The vote could only be called a humiliation of the Member because the
votes were by voice and both sides voted against the Member's
amendment, including his own side over there, and the only one to vote
for his amendment was him.
So what he did finally is what he had to do. He went back, and he
rewrote his amendment, and, of course, he has come back, and it passed,
but with the unintended and confused consequences I just indicated.
This is a Member, I say to the people of Kentucky, who has introduced
all of six bills--just by way of comparison only, because you can't be
judged by the number of bills you introduce--but he has introduced six,
I have introduced 64. The difference is I have spent my time asking:
What do my constituents need?
I bet the people of Mr. Massie's district in Kentucky need more than
an amendment likely not to prevail at the end of the Congress that
overturns all the gun laws in the Nation's Capital. Indeed, I want to
know what that does for one single resident of Thomas Massie's
district.
He was asked by the press: Why would you do this? He said: Because I
want to try to restore gun rights anywhere I can.
He thinks he can here, despite the Home Rule Act, where Congress gave
up the authority to pass laws for the District of Columbia.
Well, he had an opportunity twice since the D.C. amendment passed to
try to restore gun rights any way he could. A congressional staff
member was arrested here in the House just a few days ago for bringing
a gun into the Capitol complex. This person has been arrested. I can't
believe, since he is a staffer, he intended to bring it here, but the
law is the law, whether you are a staffer or a visitor.
Why hasn't Thomas Massie introduced a bill here where nobody could
say he lacks jurisdiction, a bill to allow guns to be brought into the
House of Representatives? I challenge him, if he means what he says,
that he wants to at least try to restore gun rights ``anywhere I can,''
then he must begin where he lives, right here on the House floor, so
that no staff member will be embarrassed again. Here, at least, those
who would be affected are accountable to him, as the residents I
represent are not.
It looks like--if you were to judge by these incidents all within a
week's time--there are people who believe that Representative Massie
meant what he said because just a couple of days ago, a man--yet again,
from South Carolina--brought a loaded Ruger LC9 semiautomatic pistol
with a round in the chamber, into the Capitol complex, and he too was
arrested, because it is a Federal law, 40 U.S.C. 5104, which makes it
an offense to carry a gun in the Capitol complex with a penalty up to 5
years of imprisonment.
Do you want to do something for the people of Kentucky who may visit
here or the people of America? Here is a law that Thomas Massie has
full jurisdiction to overturn, so I challenge him--if Thomas Massie is
looking for a way to restore gun rights ``anywhere I can,'' I challenge
you to at least introduce such a bill here, if for no other reason, for
consistency's sake.
Don't think that what Mr. Massie has done has not been noted in
Kentucky. I am quoting from a Kentucky TV station--and maybe this is
partly inexperience because we don't see more experienced Members who
may agree with Mr. Massie coming forward so recklessly--but this
Kentucky staffer says:
First-term Republican Representative Thomas Massie said it
is his business to try to overturn Washington, D.C.'s gun
control laws.
Then it says--and this is a straight-out news report:
Massie's congressional district stretches from eastern
Jefferson County, Oldham, Shelby, and Spencer Counties, all
the way to the West Virginia border.
If the libertarian Republican has his way, his influence
will stretch to the District of Columbia's gun laws.
{time} 1500
That is how it was reported in Kentucky. There is an irony here that
is not lost in his home State. Take the Courier-Journal in Kentucky,
which ran an editorial that was headlined, ``Big foot government.''
It says, ``A couple of Members of Kentucky's congressional delegation
who claim to want government out of
[[Page H6856]]
our lives want to force more of it on the District of Columbia. Tea
Party favorites''--they also name Rand Paul because he has introduced a
bill (not an appropriation amendment) that has been set back in the
Senate, but his is an entire bill to overturn the gun laws of the
Nation's Capital.
Rand Paul wants to be President of the United States, and he is
putting in bills, by the way, that are far softer than the gun bill--
bills that you might expect from the Democratic side--in order to try
to make Independents and Democrats think that he is more acceptable
than his words have indicated he is in the past.
Continuing, The Courier-Journal, the biggest newspaper in Kentucky,
says that the two of them, ``libertarian-leaning Republicans, are
pushing measures in Congress to roll back Washington, D.C.'s strict gun
laws adopted by its officials to try to reduce gun violence in the
nation's capital.''
It goes on, but let me quote from another part of that editorial.
``Too bad their concern doesn't extend to the right of residents of
Washington to have a vote in Congress. The delegate from Washington has
no floor vote, which means Ms. Norton could only complain about the gun
measure, but not vote against it. That sounds like taxation without
representation, something anyone who purports to love liberty ought to
oppose.''
Mr. Speaker, not only taxation without representation, but the people
I represent pay the highest taxes per capita to the Federal Government,
$12,000 per resident, which is the highest in the United States.
One ought to understand our outrage when people from Kentucky or
Maryland or anywhere else in the country who pay less taxes try to tell
us how to conduct our local affairs.
The gun amendment certainly riled D.C. residents, but that amendment
is one of only two such amendments. The other, of course, is the
marijuana decriminalization law that I mentioned when I began.
It is interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that when the marijuana
decriminalization law passed, along with the gun law, The Associated
Press had an apt headline: ``Guns Okay, Pot Dangerous.'' That tells you
something about the Republican House of Representatives.
The residents of this region--where we have lived as one region--have
built the same Metro and use the same Metro with taxes coming from the
entire region, and even though we have differing views on many issues,
we try to live as one region and not meddle into the affairs of our
neighbors, so this marijuana amendment was a particular outrage because
it came from a Maryland Representative.
The first thing that the largest D.C. rights organization in D.C. did
was to call for a boycott of the Eastern Shore, which Mr. Harris
represents. The Eastern Shore lives off of Maryland, Virginia, and
D.C., in the summertime. They have got to make it then, or the Eastern
Shore isn't going to make it for the rest of the year.
When D.C. Vote called for a boycott, it suggested that residents
choose Rehoboth Beach, Delaware; or Chincoteague Island, Virginia; but
not the Eastern Shore because it said: They don't support us; why
should we support them?
Of course, there will be allies across the region who will hear that
call and who will not go to the Eastern Shore this summer.
Residents continue to try in other ways to say to Representative
Harris: stay out of our affairs, attend to your own.
Two dozen residents came here this week to file complaints with
Representative Harris. They say he is acting like he is a member of the
city council, so we are going to treat him like he is a member of the
city council.
So they brought their complaints one by one, and Representative
Harris' chief of staff had to stand there to receive these complaints
from the residents of the District of Columbia.
Nathan Harrington, who is a teacher in the District of Columbia,
said, now that he sees who has the power, he is coming to Rep. Harris
because there are some vacant houses in his neighborhood and he demands
that Representative Andy Harris take care of those vacant houses, right
away. Andy Harris has got the power. He has shown us he has got the
power.
Mr. Harrington said: either he represents us or doesn't. If he
doesn't, then stay out of our business. If he does, take care of those
vacant houses.
Representative Harris did not come forward to receive these
complaints, but his chief of staff did stand there, with civility, and
receive these office-hours complaints from D.C. Vote residents.
There were a number of other complaints that came to Mr. Harris'
office. A resident said they wanted more visible street signs. One
resident said they want more bike lanes. If you have got somebody who
can put the big foot of the Federal Government on your back, then
surely he can do little things like get you some bike lanes.
This may be tongue-in-cheek, but it does show you the residents of
the District of Columbia are going to come at you in more ways than
one, and yes, there is a sense of humor here, and then there is
something very serious, like that boycott.
To its credit, when the boycott of the Eastern Shore was initiated by
D.C. Vote, it sent word to its local chamber of commerce and to its
local commercial section that it had absolutely nothing against them,
that many of us had enjoyed the Eastern Shore, but essentially, we were
powerless here.
I could note vote against the Harris amendment. I don't expect the
residents of the District of Columbia to sit around and take it. You
want to mess with us, we are going to mess with you. We are going to
mess with you in your district, we are going to mess with you here.
We are first-class American citizens. We are not going to take it. We
are going to do everything we can to blanket your State about how you
are meddling in our affairs, instead of taking care of your state's
business.
I didn't organize any of this. I am expressing the outrage of the
people I represent, and let me tell you, while they made light with
this constituent services day in Representative Harris' office, this is
dead serious for us because our marijuana amendment wasn't passed
because of some college students--and this is a big college town--
lobbied the council about pot.
It was passed in the wake of two studies by very reputable
organizations, The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and
the American Civil Liberties Union. They found that in this progressive
town, 90 percent of those arrested for smoking marijuana were Black.
I can't tell you exactly why, but it probably has a lot to do with
where the police presence is most likely to be, but these figures fly
in the face of figures that show that Blacks and Whites use marijuana
at the same rate.
I don't know whether Members appreciate what a ``drug'' offense--and
that is what a marijuana offense is--means to a Black kid. It is the
end of his working life. He is likely to carry around a stereotype
based on his color and often his gender, if he is a Black boy or Black
man. He won't be able to explain away this drug offense--marijuana
offense.
That is what got the city council to pass this law. So anyone who
interferes with us on this issue is meddling with a serious racial
issue in the District of Columbia, and we are demanding that you stay
out of this very serious affair.
The amendment was passed to combat racial injustice. Twenty-three
States have legalized medical marijuana, 18 have decriminalized
marijuana, and two States have legalized marijuana. We will not be
treated differently from any other State in the Union. The one thing we
demand is equal treatment.
I must note that there is a growing sense among my Republican
colleagues in this Congress that marijuana should no longer be
criminally treated. We don't treat alcohol, which does far more harm,
in a criminal fashion. While I am the last one to say smoke weed or
cigarettes, I don't think people should get a criminal record for
having done so.
We do not see any consistency among my Republican colleagues. When
the Harris amendment came in committee, Republicans voted for it, and I
want to say something about those Republicans.
Ken Calvert of California, Jeff Fortenberry, Jaime Herrera Beutler,
David Joyce, David
[[Page H6857]]
Valadao, Andy Harris--of course--and Mark Amodei, these members, along
with Mr. Harris, violated their own limited, small government, local
control, states' rights principles by voting in committee for the
Harris amendment.
I want to say a special word about Mark Amodei of Nevada because he
exceeded other Members in hypocrisy. He joined a majority last month on
the floor in favor of an amendment blocking the Federal Government from
interfering with medical marijuana in those States which allow it--
because Nevada allows it.
{time} 1515
He didn't want the Federal Government interfering with what had been
sanctioned by his own state, but he was quick to interfere with the
local affairs on a related substance right afterwards.
I call on my Republican colleagues to at least abide by their own
principles and to show some consistency of principle.
Also passed recently was an amendment that prevents the Federal
Government from penalizing financial institutions that provide services
to legal marijuana businesses. If you have got a marijuana business in
your State and the State says it is okay, then the Federal Government
cannot keep financial institutions from dealing in bank transactions
with these local marijuana businesses.
Forty-five Republicans voted for that amendment that passed. That is
a large number of Republicans to cross the aisle in this House. The
House has also voted to block the Drug Enforcement Administration from
using funds to target medical marijuana operations in States where
those operations are legal. Forty-nine Republicans voted for that.
Be consistent. If you are going to vote to keep the Federal
Government out of matters involving marijuana where your State has
sanctioned its use, then apply that same principle to the District of
Columbia. That is why the Associated Press said: ``House GOP to D.C.:
Guns OK, pot dangerous.''
Like the Massie gun amendment, the Harris amendment had unintended
consequences, too. The District of Columbia marijuana decriminalization
is legal because the law has passed its layover period of 60
legislative days. At the end of that 60 days, the law became legal.
Now, the Harris amendment--seeks to overturn it. What happens when you
use a pre-loaded Federal political bomb against a local jurisdiction is
clear from what has happened with Representative Harris' amendment.
That amendment now would not only block the District from enforcing its
laws, it would block the District from issuing the fines that, with a
sense of responsibility, were put in the law for those who, for
example, smoke marijuana on the streets. There are unintended
consequences because you don't know what you are doing when you meddle
in the business, the local business, of another jurisdiction.
It is remarkable that Mr. Harris is a Club for Growth, Tea Party
acolyte, who was known before he came here and is known now for his
support of states' rights more than he is known for anything else; and
it is remarkable to note that his own State, Maryland, has
decriminalized marijuana. He is a Member who has the power in Maryland.
Yet, he could not keep his own State from decriminalizing marijuana. So
he tries to do in the District what he could not do in the State where
he is accountable to the voters.
A recent article on Mr. Harris and the District of Columbia when
these residents Constituent Services Day in Representative Harris'
office:
I thought this media stunt was going to be a colossally
goofball effort that had little to no effect on Harris or his
views, and we still don't know if it will, but on that day,
his employees were clearly rattled, so mission accomplished.
Moreover, Harris--who also has said that, to District
residents, Congress is their local legislature--missed an
opportunity to come across as something beyond another guy
stuffed in a suit, overreaching his boundaries. By leaving
the completely manageable demonstration to his marginally
prepared aides, his stance on what the city's drug policies
should be came across as even more aloof and more nonsensical
than ever.
Look at how you are viewed. Think before you decide to insert
yourself against your own professed--and often announced--principles
into the affairs of a local jurisdiction not your own.
I am here this afternoon to serve notice on these two Members--and we
are not through with them yet--or on any other Members who come forward
that, yes, you can vote when I can't, but you cannot keep the residents
of the District of Columbia from doing what they can to show you and to
show America that we will not be treated as second-class citizens in
our own country, not by Thomas Massie, not by Andy Harris, not by any
Member of the House or Senate. Don't expect us to just lie down and
take it. No red-blooded American would take what these Members have
tried to do to this city with the gun amendment and with the marijuana
decriminalization amendment.
In the name of your own principles--principles on which I agree that
matters in the States and localities are for them, and my friends,
maybe even some of the things we do here can better be done in the
States--there is a democratic way to accomplish that mission, but it is
not by an act of profound congressional bullying where you exert power
to which even the local Member cannot respond except on this floor,
with her voice--not even with a vote.
When Thomas Massie decided that he wanted to overrule his chair, they
didn't pull him off the floor. They let him have a vote. I will not
have a vote on any matter affecting the District of Columbia. In the
name of decency, if you are not going to give me a vote, stay out of
the affairs of the District of Columbia.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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