[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 95 (Friday, June 8, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5009-H5012]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SHOULD BECOME THE 51ST STATE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms.
Norton) is recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of
the minority leader.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this time on the floor to speak
about making the District of Columbia the 51st State.
I am not going to simply glow about how important that would be for
my district, because we have found that most Americans believe we
already have the same rights they do.
I want to describe one of the oldest cities in the United States, a
city that is bigger than two States, that is to say, has more residents
than two States, more residents than Vermont, more residents than
Wyoming, and about as many residents as seven States of the Union.
The people I represent, 700,000 of them, are number one in taxes paid
to support the Government of the United States, yet they have no
representation whatsoever in that body down the hall, the Senate of the
United States.
In fact, I am grateful that the House understands that I should vote
in committee, where most of the work is done, but when a bill comes to
the House floor, even if that bill singularly affects the residents of
the District of Columbia, every Member of this body, except the Member
who represents the District of Columbia, can vote on that bill.
That is not justice, that is un-American, and it offers strong
evidence, I think, of the underlying reasons why the District of
Columbia should become the 51st State of the Union.
We are making progress. We have got almost all the Democrats on our
statehood bill. And if there is Democratic control of the next
Congress, I will seek a vote on D.C. statehood on the House floor.
I got a vote on D.C. statehood when I first came to the Congress. It
is time to have another vote on D.C. statehood.
We have more than half of the Democrats in the Senate, and I will get
all the Democrats in the House and all the Democrats in the Senate
before the end of the 115th Congress.
Most Members of the House come to this place knowing little about the
Capital City. I don't blame them. I don't see why they should know much
about it, except that it is the tourist mecca of our country; that 30
million
[[Page H5010]]
people from around the world, including from their States, come to see
the extraordinary monuments in our city.
So Members shouldn't know any more about my district than I know
about their districts, and yet Members come to this floor to not only
vote on matters affecting my district, but on laws that would take away
or overturn laws passed by the legitimate government of the District of
Columbia.
When Members come, I greet them, offer them help in finding housing
and the rest, and that is about the end of it.
So if they come to the House to vote, they don't know anything more
about the city, except if they happen to stay here, and we welcome
them, than they did when they walked in the door.
But every Member needs to know that 700,000 Americans host them, and
they need to know, when they are called upon to interfere with the
local laws of the District of Columbia, they should treat our local
laws the way they would have their local laws treated.
I particularly speak of my Republican colleagues, who are the chief
proponents of local control. They don't want the Federal Government
into not only their business, but sometimes they try to get the Federal
Government out of Federal business, and yet it is my Republican
colleagues who are the chief abusers of what we call District Home
Rule, what Americans call the right to self-government.
I need to give you examples of what I mean when I say Members try to
overturn our laws, and I need to say that I often am able to keep them
from doing so, even without a vote on this House floor, because of the
way I think through what my role is.
I have got to think of a way to keep people who overwhelmingly
outnumber me, obviously, and are the majority in this House, from
overturning my own local laws. We have barely succeeded in doing so,
but I will give you an idea of what I mean.
I should begin by saying that because this is a city, a big city,
that its laws would be more progressive than in many other parts of the
United States.
For example, the District of Columbia government has passed a Death
With Dignity Act. This is a controversial bill. Six States have passed
it, including States represented by the Republican leadership of this
House. It is a bill that allows a person to take his own life with
minimal help from a physician. It is very controversial. Six States
have passed it; so has the District of Columbia. It is nobody's
business but theirs.
I have kept this law from being overturned, but I have had to fight
to do so for at least three years.
Let me give you another example: the Local Budget Autonomy Act. Why
would there be a Local Budget Autonomy Act? Everybody knows that if you
levy your own local taxes, no one should have anything to do with that,
but the District of Columbia does not have the right to have the final
say on its own budget, because any Member of the Congress can try to
overturn the District's budget.
Are they interested in the budget? Do they try to overturn the budget
itself? No. But when the budget comes here, Republicans use it as a
vehicle to overturn laws that they don't agree with, and that is why
our budget is here, this budget that was raised by the residents of the
District of Columbia, this local budget.
{time} 1315
In order to keep our budget from coming here at all--what is it doing
here--a referendum overwhelmingly passed by residents called the Local
Budget Autonomy Amendment Act essentially said, that is it. It
shouldn't come here.
The House has tried to repeal that at least three times. I have saved
it from being repealed largely from marching over to the Senate.
Perhaps the most persistent attempt on the part of the Congress are
efforts to wipe out the District's gun safety laws. It is a big city
and, yes, big cities are where you have most of the gun violence, so
the District has tough gun safety laws. And yet, every single year I
have to protect our gun safety laws from Members of Congress who are
not answerable, are in no ways responsive, to the people of the
District of Columbia.
Our residents can't vote them out of office. They can vote only me
out of office. They can't touch them. If that doesn't fly in the face
of American democracy, I can't tell you what does.
Senator Marco Rubio has introduced a bill to wipe out all of our gun
safety laws since 2015. I have saved D.C. gun laws from being
eliminated. But Senator Marco Rubio from the State of Florida, where
the Parkland youngsters are, who have taken nationwide their own
campaign to get this Congress to pass sensible gun laws.
Yet Senator Rubio, aided by Representative Tom Garrett of this body,
would eliminate all of the District's gun safety laws, including the
District's ban on guns in schools; including making the District of
Columbia a unique exception to a Federal law called Gun-Free School
Zones Act, which means you cannot have a gun within a school zone.
Everybody could have that except the District of Columbia.
Senator Rubio and Representative Garrett would repeal the District's
ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. Assault weapons in
the Nation's capital? Imagine who would be endangered if there were
assault weapons here? And I do not refer to the residents of the
District of Columbia alone.
Anyone who visits our city will often find traffic stopped while
caravans of high-level officials go by. Sometimes they will be Members
of Congress. More often they will be world figures. Imagine if just
anybody could have an assault weapon in the Nation's capital,
particularly today.
Yes, I have been able to stop it. But why should I have been put to
that effort when I represent 700,000 tax-paying citizens of the United
States who had already done it?
I do have to show you how low or laughable these efforts can become.
I have stopped a bill that prohibited my city from using its own funds
to keep certain kinds of flushable products from being sold in the
District of Columbia. They stop up toilets.
The Member who proposed this, Representative Andy Harris of Maryland,
perhaps because it is so laughable, ultimately withdrew it. We came on
the House floor to expose it.
But I cite the flushable wipes amendment to show these anti home rule
efforts know no bounds. You might ask, well, why would Representative
Andy Harris want to do this? I don't know for sure, except that there
is a manufacturer of those wipes that has surfaced and, as you may
know, many Members get campaign funds from people who ask them to place
matters in bills. They don't ask them to put them in our
appropriations, but that is what happened, and I had to get that one
out. I do want to publicly thank Representative Harris for withdrawing
his amendment.
To give you some sense, though, of how the District of Columbia has
to pay attention, not only to its own local laws and preserving them,
but has to ask its Member to do what every other Member does a lot on
national matters. So while I am working on national bills, during the
first year of the Trump Presidency, I had to defeat 15 bills to
overturn the District's gun laws.
I had to block bills that would gut the public school system laws by
making D.C. use its own local funds for private schools. Yet Congress
has defeated an education bill that defeated amendments to an education
bill that would have allowed school districts to spend its own money on
private schools.
They took private school vouchers out of the national bill, but a
Member tried to put vouchers on the District. Defeated that one. And
there are others, but I won't go down the list of them all.
Understand that that work is important to my District, but it is work
that no other Member has to pursue because you cannot interfere with
the local laws of any other Member.
At the same time, however, for example, I had and did get full
funding to rehabilitate the Memorial Bridge. That happens to be
important because millions of Americans use that bridge. They come to
Arlington Memorial Cemetery and use that bridge to get there. They come
to the Nation's Capitol to see our iconic sights, and they use that
bridge. Now that was a national bill. That is the kind of bill, Federal
bill, that most Members work on that they are proud of.
[[Page H5011]]
I bring it up because that work, which as a Member of Congress I must
do for the Nation, as well as my city, is quite apart from protecting
the local laws of my city.
Let's take the affordable healthcare act. Virginia has just signed
on, belatedly, to the affordable healthcare act. I am in the national
fight with most Members, certainly on my side of the aisle, to maintain
that law. And we have maintained that law. In spite of President
Trump's attempt to overturn it. In spite of more than 40 attempts by my
Republican colleagues to overturn it.
D.C. needed it, because with the ACA, 96 percent of D.C. residents
are now covered by healthcare. That means virtually everybody. But in
that effort I am in league with other Members on a national law. That
is what I should be paying attention to, first and foremost.
Another example of a national law which is important to the Nation
and to me is passage of the Dream Act, to protect these children who
were brought to the United States as infants or small children by their
parents, who know no other country, and now face deportation because
technically they, of course, are not citizens; even though they don't
know El Salvador or Mexico or any other of the countries from which
they would have come.
Of the 800,000 Dreamers, 800 of them are in the District of Columbia,
so I am like many Members who come to the floor on that issue. But that
is a national bill. That is what I am supposed to do in the Congress.
In our city, if somehow we could not save the Dreamers, that would be
$50 million annually gone from our economy; that is how productive they
are. I have had a town meeting with them. These are the most impressive
young people I have ever seen speak to our residents.
Mr. Speaker, could I ask how much time I have remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bacon). The gentlewoman from the
District of Columbia has 27 minutes remaining.
Ms. NORTON. After you have heard all of these abuses of American
democracy, you may have some understanding why I believe that the
District of Columbia should become a State, and why statehood is the
only remedy for the abuses that I have described.
But, do not think that there are no Republicans who understand some
of the issues I have described. I regret that my good friend, a
conservative Republican, Representative Darrell Issa--and I say I
regret, because I don't think that every Republican should be put in
the same category.
I cite Rep. Darrell Issa, because he was chair of a committee on
which I serve, and decided to have a hearing on our local jurisdiction.
He asked the Mayor to come, the chair of the City Council, and those
who handle the budget. He listened and he indicated his surprise to
know that the District's financial condition and reserves and its
growth as a local economy, were among the best in the Nation.
After that hearing, learning, for example, that our budget was the
envy of the States, Representative Issa himself endorsed budget
autonomy and worked tirelessly with me and with local officials, as
well as Republican interest groups, to try to secure at least the
autonomy over our budget; at least over our budget. These are what we
call the components of statehood.
So even if my Republican friends are not for statehood, there is no
reason not to be or to stand against the elements of statehood. And we
certainly may well get those before we get statehood itself.
For example, clemency. The President has the authority of clemency
over the District of Columbia. Well, he doesn't know a thing about the
District and, as a result, when clemency comes out, normally the
District inmates are not even included. That is a classic matter for
local governments.
Yes, budget autonomy is one of them. Even the District's local laws
have to come here and sit for 60 days, 30 days, or for criminal laws,
60 days, to see if anybody wants to overturn these laws. This is a
remnant of more than 200 years ago, when the District had no home rule,
as we called it, or self-government.
Of course the Congress doesn't choose to use that section, so they
could get rid of this legislative autonomy because they reserve their
energy for the budget. With a budget here, they use that as the vehicle
to overturn the District's laws.
{time} 1330
What I think most Members of Congress do not know is that the
District's local economy is one of the strongest in the Nation, and let
me prove that.
It has got a $12.5 billion budget. That is larger than the budget of
12 States. My district has a $1.75 billion surplus. That kind of
surplus, that large surplus, almost $2 billion, is the envy of the
States.
My district has a per capita income higher than that of any State,
higher than that of California, of Massachusetts, of New York. That is
one of the reasons why the people I represent pay the highest taxes per
capita in the United States.
The total income of the residents of the District of Columbia is
higher than the income of seven States. Its consumption, given its
income expenditures, is higher than those of any State. And, of course,
what we are seeing is a city that is flourishing. Its population growth
rate is the highest since the 2010 Census. In fact, the District now
has a larger population, as I indicated, than two other States that
have representation to vote on this House floor.
DC would only qualify for one vote, and Vermont and Wyoming, have two
Senators as well--even with fewer residents than the number who live in
the Nation's Capital.
One way to understand why the residents of the District of Columbia
resent being treated as second-class citizens is to understand its
highest tax rate, Federal tax rate--the highest in the Nation--amounts
to $12,000 per resident, more per capita than any residents of any
States. Yet no matter what the bill, no matter how impacted the
District is, I will not vote on that bill.
What hurts more than the failure to allow the District to vote on
most bills is the failure to allow the District to vote on bills to go
to war. The residents of this city have fought and died in every war,
including the war that created the United States of America.
Please remember the slogan that the Framers and the residents threw
up to win their freedom. It wasn't, ``Freedom in the large.'' It was,
``No taxation without representation.''
We ask for statehood based on the original understanding of the
Founders of our Nation who were willing and, indeed, did go to war for
the principle of no taxation without representation. Well, the people I
represent have gone to war without a vote to go to war and without a
vote upon returning from war.
The sacrifices should be clear to see. World War I--and here we are
talking about casualties--more than three States. World War II, more
casualties from the District of Columbia than four States. And then it
only goes up. The Korean war had more casualties than eight States.
And, of course, the Vietnam war had more casualties than 10 States.
That ought to be reason enough for the District of Columbia to be
made the 51st State. More important than paying the highest Federal
taxes per capita, more important than being excluded from a vote on the
floor of the Senate, it is the sacrifices our residents have made for
their country that speak loudest, most prophetically, about the right
of residents to be treated equally.
May I inquire of the time remaining, please.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman has 15\1/2\ minutes
remaining.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, it is not as if the Congress of the United
States has never understood the injustices before you. The reason I
come to the House floor today is because there is turnover in the House
all the time and many Members have never heard this until now.
And why not? Because you don't listen to what happens to somebody
else's district. You are too busy dealing with your own district.
That is how we like it, and that is how we would like to make it for
every Member of the House.
Yes, almost 45 years ago, the House understood the injustice of what
was then the case. The District had no self-
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government. It intermittently had some self-government in the 19th
century--and may I add, that the height of that self-government was
about the same as the District has now: a Delegate Member of the House
and the right to local government.
And who gave them that? It was the post-Civil War Congress, which was
a Republican Congress.
The Republicans lost their way, and they are chiefly responsible now
for the District's not having what their own party understood should
happen after the Civil War. They had fought a Civil War for democracy
for everyone, and they, indeed, began the home rule process that was
lost after Reconstruction and renewed again almost 45 years ago with
the 1974 Home Rule Act.
Here again in the 20th it wasn't the Democrats who were solely
responsible. Yes, it was a Democratic Congress, but it was a Republican
President, President Richard Nixon. He said, in signing the Home Rule
Act: ``As a longtime supporter of self-government for the District of
Columbia, I am pleased to sign into law a measure which is of historic
significance for the citizens of our Nation's Capital.''
Remember, this is President Nixon talking, saying: ``I first voted
for home rule as a Member of the House of Representatives in 1948, and
I have endorsed the enactment of home rule legislation during both my
terms as President.''
Then he went on to say: ``. . . it is particularly appropriate to
assure those persons who live in our Capital City rights and privileges
which have long been enjoyed by most of their countrymen.''
That was a Republican President and a Democratic House acting in a
bipartisan way to give the District self-government, a self-government
which it has handled better than most of the State and city governments
since.
And that is not the only example of Republicans working with us to do
what almost surely will take some bipartisanship. Representative Tom
Davis of Virginia worked with me on a bill that, in fact, got a vote in
both houses and, indeed, we would now have in the District, a House
vote if that bill had passed.
I was in the minority. Representative Tom Davis was in the majority
as a Republican. I regret that he has resigned from Congress to go on
to higher and better things, as he saw it. He worked with me and had
hearings. What he discovered was that the State of Utah, a very
Republican State, had missed getting a vote it thought due that State,
and Representative Davis discussed with me the possibility of pairing
the District of Columbia with Utah--one Democratic vote and one
Republican vote--and nobody would gain if the District got a House
vote.
Now, Representative Tom Davis was not for statehood, but he did not
believe that we would call it the people's House without giving the
residents of the District of Columbia a vote in that House.
The Governor of Utah came to testify for it. The Republican Members
from the House and the Senate voted for it. It was a one-to-one, and it
was perhaps the best chance for voting rights, certainly, that we have
had since the creation of the Republic.
Well, if we got that kind of bipartisan support for at least the
House vote, why doesn't the District of Columbia have a vote on the
House floor as I speak? The answer is that the National Rifle
Association succeeded in getting a Member to attach to the bill, in the
House, an amendment that, in exchange for the House vote, the District
would have had to give up all of its gun safety laws.
I have just indicated to you the kinds of sacrifice that would have
meant. The assault weapons ban would be gone, just to name, perhaps,
the worst of them. That is an offer we had to refuse, and it is the
closest we have come to equal rights as a Federal district.
But it is not the closest we will ever come. We will give priority
during the next Congress to budget autonomy, autonomy over our own
budget; legislative autonomy, to keep our legislation from having to
come to this floor.
A local prosecutor--the DA who everyone associates with your local
jurisdiction is not who enforces criminal law in the District of
Columbia. It is the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who does
both local law, local criminal law, and, of course, Federal law.
Mayoral control over the National Guard; your Governor can call out
your National Guard because only he knows the ins and outs of safety
when there are issues affecting the National Guard. The National Guard
is usually used for things that are local in nature, such as hurricanes
and flooding.
{time} 1345
The President knows almost nothing about that or about the authority
to grant clemency, as I mentioned earlier in these remarks. Also, of
course, control over the appointment of local judges and the operations
of the local courts. Yes, D.C. courts are title I courts. What that
means is that these judges who handle only local matters--local
criminal and civil matters--are appointed by the President of the
United States and have to stand in line to get approved by the Senate
of the United States.
I have simply summarized some of the hardships of not being treated
as an equal jurisdiction under the Constitution of the United States
and some of the benefits of citizenship that the District would obtain
if such equality were indeed granted.
It is true that the District has never achieved this equality, but I
do not fret that it is out of hand. When the next Congress resumes, I
have indicated any number of things I will pursue. In addition, if my
party controls this Chamber, I will ask for a vote on the House floor.
I will ask for that vote, even though I am not certain by any means
that that vote would result in statehood. I will ask for that vote,
because I want to put it to this body exactly what it means not to have
the same rights they have.
When my party controlled this House, I did not get statehood, but I
was able to get what is called the vote in the Committee of the Whole.
That is a vote on some business on the House floor.
My Republican friends actually sued the House for allowing the
District of Columbia, whose residents are number one per capita in
Federal taxes, this vote on the House floor. They went to the Federal
District Court, then to the Court of Appeals, but they did not have the
gumption to go to the Supreme Court.
So I voted for my District at least on some matters in the Committee
of the Whole. And I will seek that vote, even short of statehood.
I represent one of the Nation's oldest cities. I represent 700,000
residents who have overpaid their dues--have overpaid them in war, have
overpaid them in taxes. We are overdue as we pursue democracy for other
people around the world in assuring that there is democracy for
everyone in our own country. We should begin with the residents of our
own proud Nation's capital.
I ask the House to think deeply about what lies in your hands, and
that is not only the ability, but the obligation to make the 700,000
residents of the District of Columbia whole by making the District of
Columbia the 51st State of the United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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