[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16273-16276]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1130
    PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4850, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 
                        APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 724 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 724

       Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this 
     resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule 
     XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the 
     Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of 
     the bill (H.R. 4850) making appropriations for the government 
     of the District of Columbia and other activities chargeable 
     in whole or in part against the revenues of said District for 
     the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, and for other 
     purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed 
     with. All points of order against consideration of the bill 
     are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and 
     shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by 
     the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on 
     Appropriations. After general debate the bill shall be 
     considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. Points 
     of order against provisions in the bill for failure to comply 
     with

[[Page 16274]]

     clause 2 of rule XXI are waived except: sections 116, 126, 
     130, and 131. During consideration of the bill for amendment, 
     the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole may accord 
     priority in recognition on the basis of whether the Member 
     offering an amendment has caused it to be printed in the 
     portion of the Congressional Record designated for that 
     purpose in clause 8 of rule XVIII. Amendments so printed 
     shall be considered as read. At the conclusion of 
     consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall 
     rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as 
     may have been adopted. The previous question shall be 
     considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to 
     final passage without intervening motion except one motion to 
     recommit with or without instructions.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bonilla). The gentleman from Georgia 
(Mr. Linder) is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), 
pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During 
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose 
of debate only.
  H. Res. 724 provides for consideration of H.R. 4850, the District of 
Columbia Appropriations Act of 2005, under an open rule, as is 
customary with most annual appropriations measures.
  I am very pleased that the normal, open amendment process outlined in 
H. Res. 724 will allow a Member to offer any amendment to the bill, as 
long as it complies with the standing rules of the House.
  The rule provides 1 hour of debate in the House on the bill equally 
divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of 
the Committee on Appropriations. The resolution waives all points of 
order against consideration of the bill.
  H. Res. 724 waives points of order against provisions in the bill for 
failure to comply with clause 2 of rule XXI, which prohibits 
unauthorized appropriations or legislative provisions in an 
appropriations bill, except as specified in the resolution.
  H. Res. 724 also authorizes the Chair to accord priority in 
recognition to Members who have preprinted their amendments in the 
Congressional Record. This procedure will help the House in considering 
amendments in a more orderly manner. Finally, H. Res. 724 provides for 
one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
  Mr. Speaker, with respect to the underlying legislation, I want to 
begin by commending the chairman of the Subcommittee on the District of 
Columbia of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen). He has done a good job in working with the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) in crafting H.R. 4850, and the 
bill deserves the support of the House today.
  This provides the District of Columbia with a $560 million Federal 
payment, and it provides $8.2 billion in funds for the District of 
Columbia's governmental activities. Both of these figures match the 
President's budget request.
  On a parenthetical note, I would note that the county in which I 
live, Gwinnett County, Georgia, has 50 percent more citizens than the 
District of Columbia and provides all the same services with the 
exception of welfare, and it does it for $1 billion a year.
  Mr. Speaker, this rule provides for an open amendment process for 
consideration of the FY 2005 District of Columbia appropriations bill. 
I urge my colleagues to support this fair rule.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) for the 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, this rule is typical for most appropriations bills, and 
I would support it. I rise today, albeit reluctantly, in support of the 
District of Columbia appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005.
  Mr. Speaker, as there is no perfect legislation and certainly not 
when it comes to funding matters, I would be remiss if I did not say 
that the bill includes provisions that are controversial and 
detrimental, in my view, to the District's residents and the country as 
a whole. I do not have to tell any of my colleagues about the 
uniqueness of the District of Columbia as a Federal city.
  It is the only place in the Nation where constitutionally Congress 
can exercise micromanagement at the highest and lowest levels. It is 
the petri dish of the country where the ideological differences of 
those in this body wreak havoc on the lives of some 560,000-plus 
District of Columbia residents.
  Taking into consideration the fact that the District of Columbia has 
no voting representation in Congress, we should be mindful of the 
privileged duties and be careful not to put our own parochial agendas 
on the table when considering this legislation. The underlying 
legislation includes a direct Federal funding increase for the District 
of $18 million over last year. A large part of the increase will go 
towards paying the cost of the District's court system as well as 
related criminal justice programs.
  The bill also provides for direct appropriations for the Resident 
Tuition Support program and $13 million for District of Columbia 
charter schools. It also includes $14 million for school vouchers, 
despite the fact that a significant portion of the funds appropriated 
last year for this controversial program went unused.
  The underlying legislation also includes legislative riders that 
prohibit the use of funds for abortions, registering same-sex couples. 
And for the distribution of clean needles and syringes. This bill has 
quickly become a smorgasbord of controversy.
  Hot-button social issues should not enter into play when considering 
the needs and lives of the residents of the Nation's capital. It is 
high time that we as lawmakers in this great body stop playing 
political chess games with our responsibility to this process. We 
should allow the people of Washington, D.C. to govern themselves.
  Funding for the education of the Nation's children and the overall 
healthy well-being of its citizens should be our primary focus and 
goal. The District of Columbia appropriations bill is not the stage to 
act out experimental projects that will not necessarily prove 
beneficial in the end. We must be mindful of the District's citizens 
that we have been given charge of. They are silenced in this process by 
the Constitution, and we must be responsible in our actions on their 
behalf.
  I urge my colleagues to consider this responsibility when voting on 
the underlying legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may 
consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), 
who knows more about this appropriations measure and about the things 
of which I just spoke.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. 
I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) and the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Hastings) for their work in the Committee on Rules on this 
bill.
  Everything is relative in the Congress and, I appreciate the bill 
that has been brought forward this year, particularly when I compare 
the time that this body has had to take up on the smallest 
appropriations in prior years, and so I thank both of the gentlemen for 
their work. I want to thank and congratulate the full committee 
chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), and the full 
committee ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), for 
the way in which they urge and guide our appropriations bill through, 
because of their concern for the process and their respect for self-
government in the District of Columbia. And their guidance has been, I 
think, heard and felt this year.
  I am particularly grateful to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Frelinghuysen) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Fattah), who did all the heavy lifting on this work. I am grateful 
for their bipartisan efficiencies and cooperation in handling this 
appropriations. They have been mindful of the fact that

[[Page 16275]]

Members are here appropriating funds for a city, not a Federal agency; 
and that makes all the difference in the world.
  First, most of the money comes from the taxpayers of the District of 
Columbia. This is one of the great anomalies that the Congress has 
thrust on itself to force taxpayer funds from the District of Columbia 
to come here and be blessed. And by the way, I thank the committee that 
from time immemorial the committee does not, in fact, go into the body 
of the District of Columbia budget. Everybody understands that that 
would be treacherous. So mostly it comes here for oversight and for 
attachments that the ranking member spoke of, attachments that would 
never be abided in Members' own districts. But I am very pleased to 
simply have this money get out of here with the kind of rule that the 
Committee on Rules has come forward with this year.
  There are huge hardships in any delay in the District of Columbia 
appropriations, hardships, chaos in city operations, hardships on 
District of Columbia residents. When our appropriations do not go 
smoothly and it has to go back and forth, the biggest hit is taken by 
school children and the schools of the District of Columbia. All manner 
of problem breaks out with ordering school books, with having to send 
supplies back because the appropriations is not out yet. I will not 
regale you with those problems this year, particularly since the 
Committee on Rules and the Committee on Appropriations have worked so 
hard to bring this forward.
  I do note for Members, particularly those Members who have not had to 
go through this ordeal before, who are scratching their heads saying, 
what am I doing here considering the appropriations of a city, that 
this appropriations has had the oversight of the authorizing committee, 
the Committee on Government Reform, whose chairman is the gentleman 
from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) and the ranking member is the gentleman 
from California (Henry Waxman).
  It has had the oversight of, of course, the Committee on Rules, and I 
thank them for the way they have done the rule this year. And, of 
course, it has gone through the subcommittee and the full Committee on 
Appropriations.
  Let us look and see what these three committees have come forward to 
recommend to this body. I will call it a clean bill because everything 
is relative, and this is a clean dirty bill; but it is the kind of 
bill, perhaps the best bill, that one could get from this House.
  Now, all the old attachments are there, and the ranking member has 
spelled out some of them. I cannot say enough about how much those 
attachments are resented in the District of Columbia. I cannot say 
enough about the price residents pay for them. Perhaps the worst price 
is paid for the needle exchange attachment where none of our own money, 
there is some private money, but none of our own money can be used to 
save the lives of men, women, and children with AIDS now being spread 
in the District of Columbia faster than in any other jurisdiction in 
the United States, most of it intravenously; and we cannot do what I 
must tell you dozens and dozens of jurisdictions do and have done with 
great effect in halting AIDS, and that is to professionally use needle 
exchange programs now recommended by literally all the great scientific 
authorities.
  The attachment forbidding abortions for poor women when hundreds of 
jurisdictions all over the United States, in fact, fund abortions for 
poor women speaks for itself. Why should one jurisdiction be the 
exception in the United States of America?

                              {time}  1145

  Of course, I suppose the House should really think about how to hang 
its head in shame, that there is an attachment that bars the District 
of Columbia from using its own money to lobby for its own rights. 
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, try not to turn over in your 
graves. In the year 2004, we have the Congress saying that American 
citizens cannot use their own tax money to lobby their own Congress 
where they have no vote for their own rights.
  My colleagues heard me. I hope they will not hear me have to say this 
again. I do not think that anyone in this House has anything to fear 
from hearing from elected officials and from the residents of the 
District of Columbia using their own money to petition their government 
for their basic rights. It is one of the great shames of this bill, and 
one that I cannot believe today enjoys majority support of Members of 
this House.
  So I am asking, in short, the House to respect the work of the 
Committee on Rules, the work of the Committee on Appropriations, and 
yes, by direction the work of the Committee on Government Reform, and 
in doing so, I am going to lead by example.
  I am asking Members not to come forward with amendments. I am going 
to lead by example because there is an amendment that I feel strongly 
about. Again, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings) spoke of that 
amendment as well, and that is an amendment I fought in this House with 
a lot of Republican support last year, when I sought to keep the House 
from imposing vouchers against the will of a supermajority of the 
elected officials, the great majority of the people of the District of 
Columbia, and yet, this was done to the District what has not been done 
to any other district.
  I intended to come forward with an amendment, even if I had to 
withdraw it, and I would have had to withdraw it because it would have 
been out of order, to take the $4 million that is lying on the table, 
that cannot be used for vouchers because not enough residents came 
forward in the grades that the bill calls for in order to take up the 
vouchers. All along we had said that what District residents want is 
charter schools if there is to be an alternative. They have our D.C. 
public schools. We have the largest number of charter schools per 
capita in the United States, and I think that is shown by the fact that 
the waiting lists continue to grow in charter schools. Yet there is $4 
million left on the table that has not been used for school vouchers.
  So I intended to come forward and say, Pick that money up off of the 
table, and let it be used by the children of the District of Columbia; 
but I am going to respect the work of the Committee on Rules, I am 
going to respect the work of the Committee on Appropriations because 
they have come forward with a bill without additional attachments, and 
I am not going to offer that amendment. It particularly would have been 
subject to a point of order or would have drawn people down here to 
talk about it.
  But if the point is to compliment the Committee on Rules and the 
Committee on Appropriations for the efficiency with which they have 
handled this committee, then I think I ought to get in line with what 
they have done, and I will, therefore, not come forward with such an 
amendment during the debate.
  The matter never passed in the Senate. It passed here by one vote. 
This was the test vote for the prescription drug vote. This was the 
vote that was kept open over 40 minutes while they flipped somebody in 
order to let vouchers go through. It never did get through in the 
Senate. It was simply attached to an omnibus bill.
  This is the great hall of democracy, great Congress of democracy. So 
I feel strongly about it, but I also feel strongly about the way in 
which the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on Rules have 
accommodated the District of Columbia during this appropriations 
process, and I am not going to waste the time of this body, and I ask 
other Members not to waste the time of this body.
  I understand a letter went around concerned that a Council member had 
put a bill in to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. I do 
want Members to know that that was put in on the last day of the 
Council. Everybody went home, taking no action on it, and this is an 
election year.
  One of the things we ought not to do is rise to every bait. 
Obviously, this is not a bill that was considered serious, certainly 
not at the moment, because

[[Page 16276]]

it would have been introduced earlier and there would have been some 
action on it. If we really feel so moved to come to the floor, it seems 
to me we ought to wait and see if the District of Columbia, in fact, is 
going to act on the matter or if there, in their own Council, they can 
dispose of the matter. At least give us that respect.
  Just like there were Members who were concerned about slots. Boy, 
they could not have been more concerned about slots, as I am. I am with 
my good friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), when it comes 
to gambling. I am kind of an extremist on the question of gambling. I 
consider the kind of gambling that goes on, in slots especially, a kind 
of tax on the poor.
  They tell people it is going to be used for their schools. Fine, 
well, let people who can afford in a progressive fashion to pay for 
schools do it. It is a real game played on the poor. I could not hate 
it more. The people who bring it forward in this city are playing a 
game on the city, particularly on the poor people of the city.
  This is basically a class matter. Better-educated people look at the 
odds and tend not to play these slots. Poor people who, after all, do 
not have the same opportunities, who cannot see any other way for their 
ship to come in, are most vulnerable to certain kinds of gambling 
measures.
  So this matter has come forward in the District. Guess what, the 
majority of the City Council has already said they are going to 
overturn it.
  Suppose we had jumped up here and run to the Committee on Rules and 
run to the Committee on Appropriations without giving the sensible 
Council of the District of Columbia the right to say, Slots is not 
economic development, and we do not want that sleazy stuff in the 
District of Columbia. We do not want it even if we were not the capital 
of the United States, but we certainly do not want it, not in the 
capital of the United States.
  We understand who we are, and I am saying to other Members, who would 
be inclined to come down and offer amendments, to give us the 
opportunity to consider these matters. My colleagues can always have 
their opportunity because there is always another appropriation, so 
they can always come forward with the very same matter. At least give 
us the respect of dealing with the matter ourselves, particularly if it 
is a bill that has only been introduced at the end of the session, then 
everybody went home.
  Note that all of the committees I have cited have come to the same 
conclusions, have come forward with a cleaner bill than I have seen in 
some time. These are only the committees that spend any time on the 
District of Columbia, and I apologize to all Members that we are having 
to spend any time whatsoever on an appropriation that, if it means 
anything to them, they are in trouble because when the people back home 
find out they are spending any but the time that they are committed to 
spend by law on somebody else's money, and almost all of this is our 
money, I do not think they would be very pleased.
  Anything that would be, shall we say, ``untoward'' had opportunity to 
come to the attention of the Committee on Appropriations, the 
authorization committee, and the Committee on Rules, and they have put 
forward the bill that we see before us; and I ask my colleagues to pass 
the bill we see before us.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I have to certainly say that while I have 
apologized that Members are having to consider this matter at all, and 
I do apologize for it, at the same time I want to say this is a burden 
that they could relieve themselves of. This entire process violates the 
most basic American idea, that is, the idea of Federalism. It is the 
idea of local control on local matters.
  The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen) and the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) have worked very hard to make this 
process no worse than it already is by doing it as the law requires. I 
ask my colleagues to respect their work. I ask them to respect the 
people of the District of Columbia. I ask my colleagues to pass this 
rule so that we can get the District's own taxpayer-raised money to the 
District of Columbia.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for 
time, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I 
move the previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________