[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3210-3211]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   THE FAIR FEDERAL COMPENSATION ACT

  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. Madam Speaker, on Monday I introduced the Fair Federal 
Compensation Act. The mayor of the city and the City Council chair 
stood with me as I put this act forward.
  Madam Speaker, the act is aimed at dealing with an impending crisis 
that I think the Congress would want to take hold of before it happens, 
particularly since the District has just come out of a financial 
crisis, the worst in 100 years, and this one is not of the District's 
own making. This is a crisis the District cannot tax its way out of, 
cannot grow its way out of, because of restrictions placed on the city 
by the Federal Government.
  I speak of a structural financial imbalance that comes from the 
requirement of the Federal Government that the taxpayers of the 
District of Columbia pay for services rendered to the Federal 
Government and to Federal employees without any reimbursement for those 
services. Because almost 1 million people come in every day, and only 
600,000 people live here, it has become impossible to do that, and over 
time, a new crisis will break out unless we get hold of it now.
  I think I have a win-win way to deal with that crisis through an 
infrastructure fund that would benefit the entire region, not only the 
residents of the District of Columbia. It would reduce this dangerous 
financial burden imposed on the city without imposing taxes on the 
American people or on commuters. It would simply involve a transfer of 
2 percent of the taxes that commuters, almost all of them Federal 
employees, already pay to the Federal Government.
  As a way to calculate the cost of the services, there has to be a 
limit on how much money the Federal Government is going to transfer, we 
say this money is for the cost of the services provided Federal 
employees, so you take 2 percent of the taxes they already pay.
  There is no cost to the commuters. I have never introduced a commuter 
tax. There is no cost to the American people, because there is no 
increase in taxes.
  The amount is infinitesimal. It is $400 million a year, about that 
amount, going up only gradually as commuters' salaries go up. That does 
not even register in the Federal budget because it is so small.

                              {time}  1300

  And it is about a third of the money that we think the taxpayers of 
the District of Columbia put out in order to deal with Federal 
employees, Federal services, and the Federal presence.
  No city in the United States has to carry this built-in, mandatory 
financial imbalance. If we were in another city, there is some State 
aid that helps the city to handle it; or sometimes there is a commuter 
tax or a wage tax of some kind to help the city. The District does not 
have any of that and cannot have any of that. Sometimes people build 
high because if you keep building up, you can make up for the taxes 
that are lost. The District cannot do that. There is a height limit on 
how high we can build. The Federal Government takes 42 percent of the 
land for its own purposes. So we are trying to find a way to deal with 
this crisis before it gets out of control and without imposing any 
additional burdens.
  This method, this simple transfer, based on the taxes commuters 
already pay, gives us a reasonably accurate calculation of the services 
used by Federal employees. It is a predictable amount, which allows the 
District to do the necessary budget forecasting. It costs commuters 
nothing, it costs the American people nothing extra, and it is tied to 
commuters' salaries, so it goes up very modestly, and you do not have 
to come to the Congress every year to get it appropriated, because it 
takes place simply as a part of a simple transaction, tax transaction.
  We think that when we have done what the District has done, which is 
to pull itself out of the worst financial crisis in 100 years; when we 
are in the middle of a recession and yet the District still has a 
surplus because it has been so prudent; in other words, we have our 
operating budget under control, we think it is fair to come to the 
Federal Government and say we have another kind of deficit; it is a 
structural deficit. It has nothing to do with our operating deficit. 
Trust us, we are never going to let the operating problems get out of 
control. It has nothing to do with the operating budget. But

[[Page 3211]]

we do have this problem which is entirely of your making, you the 
Federal Government, because the Federal Government has not thought 
about this problem and certainly the Congress has not.
  We introduced this bill, the Mayor and the city council Chair stood 
with me, indicating the importance of the bill to the city. I 
appreciate that regional members have seemed open. They have not 
embraced the bill yet, but they say that it certainly does not hurt 
their own constituents in the region and it will not hurt the American 
people. I ask for my colleagues' study of this bill and ultimate 
approval.

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