[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19959]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



             REVIEWING THE REOPENING OF PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues have been in Congress for 
no more than 5 years, they have never seen Pennsylvania Avenue as a 
normal city street. It was closed in 1995 in the wake of the tragic 
Oklahoma City bombing. This body has had no mechanism for reviewing 
what was done, whether it was appropriate or whether it should continue 
ad infinitum. The Secret Service has, of course, wanted to close 
Pennsylvania Avenue for decades now; and after the tragic Oklahoma 
bombing, it is understandable that the Service succeeded.
  But what about now? The Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, to 
its credit, under the leadership of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Davis) had three hearings. But there was nothing concrete that the 
committee could come forward with at that time in 1995 to respond to 
the closing.
  For all intents and purposes, there is no way for the Congress of the 
United States to review a closing, and it could happen anywhere in the 
United States on the say so, the unreviewable say so, as it turns out, 
of the Secret Service, unreviewable because it is clear to me after a 
meeting that I had with Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers 
yesterday that the Secret Service has captured and easily continues to 
capture the government bureaucrats.
  The Congress must establish a way to review and decide the 
appropriateness of a closing when it goes on for years. I intend to 
introduce legislation to that effect so that it does not again happen 
here and so it cannot happen in my colleagues' jurisdictions either.
  A public-spirited group of business people, the Federal City Council 
and the D.C. Building and Industry Association, have secured an 
independent effort by world-class experts to see whether there is any 
way to meet the Secret Service's concerns and open the avenue. They 
have a plan that meets each and every concern the Secret Service had 
raised--narrowing the avenue, putting grass over large parts of it so 
that cars would be well beyond the distance that a bomb could do damage 
to the White House complex, bridges on either side of the avenue that 
would allow only cars and not trucks to enter the avenue, and so forth.
  Without this kind of sensitivity to this living, breathing city, of 
course, essentially we close down much of its commerce in the middle of 
the town. We do great damage to the environment, and we make congestion 
far more awful than it is. We are second already in traffic congestion 
in this country.
  There are many other details, including technology, that there is not 
time to offer here today. I soon am to receive a Secret Service 
briefing so that I can learn what it is that concerns them now. But 
there is every indication that they simply intend to move the goal 
post. First it was trucks. I am sure that now it will be cars. Then it 
will be motorcycles.
  We have briefed White House officials. The President seems quite open 
to opening the avenue, but he says he wants to make sure that others 
are not harmed. The fact is that no single person wants to take the 
responsibility. This is the body that should take the responsibility.
  What the Secret Service wants is essentially zero risk. It is time to 
factor into the equation of decisionmaking the more than half a million 
people who live in this city, the more than 4 million who live in the 
region, and the millions of Americans 25 million each year, who come to 
visit and see America's main street closed down.
  Only the independent counsel has had as much nonreviewable authority 
as the Secret Service effectively has. Nobody wants to harm the 
President or the White House complex. But in a free society there must 
be a way to balance the risk of harm versus the risk to our democratic 
institutions. We cannot accept a bar that automatically rises when the 
Secret Service alone, unreviewable for all intents and purposes, simply 
raises that bar. We cannot let the police ever be the last word on our 
democratic institutions.
  In America, the notion of a zero risk standard in order to protect 
any of us is unacceptable when what we lose are our democratic rights 
and our democratic institutions. Zero risk or anything close to it is a 
standard that no American who believes in an open and democratic 
society should ever have to meet. That is the power we have effectively 
given the Secret Service.
  I am going to introduce a bill to make sure that it does not happen 
again.

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