[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2611-2613]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 HOME RULE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. 
Norton) is recognized for 30 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  I come to the floor today to begin a series of half-hour 
conversations containing information that I believe many Members of our 
House simply do not have, especially considering how often the 
Constitution and the Framers are cited. I have no reason to believe 
that there is any intention on the part of any Member to deny democracy 
to any American citizen in our great country.
  So during these half-hour Special Orders, I will be offering some 
evidence and information that go back to the Framers and come forward 
into the era when the District of Columbia was granted home rule in 
order to try to inform Members of the standing of the District of 
Columbia, which is often referred to as the ``Federal district.''
  It, of course, is not a Federal district. It is a hometown of more 
than 600,000 residents, which has been granted full and complete 
authority to govern itself--too late, of course, but finally. It was 
too late in this era, but not too late in the history of the country 
because, as the country began, the citizens, indeed, at that time had 
that right.
  The Framers, of course, were confronted with a dilemma. They wanted a 
capital to be located here in the District of Columbia, and they wanted 
that capital to have the same rights as any other Americans. They had 
had an experience in Philadelphia of some concern, when veterans had 
marched on that capital, about who would defend the capital. They tried 
to sort out this dilemma and thought they had by creating the District 
of Columbia--whose residents would have the same rights as every other 
American citizen, but giving the Congress authority over the District. 
Let me indicate how that happened.
  No one who has any knowledge of the history of our country can 
believe that the Framers fought against taxation without representation 
for everybody except the people who happened to live in the Nation's 
Capital. That would be sacrilege to say that of the great Framers of 
the Constitution, particularly since people from this very area, now 
known as the District of Columbia, went to war on the slogan of ``no 
taxation without representation'' and fought and died under that 
slogan. They didn't go and die under that slogan so that everybody but 
themselves could be freed from England and have full democracy.
  It is also clear from looking at the Constitution that there were two 
Maryland and two Virginia signers who made clear that in the land they 
gave to the District of Columbia they weren't giving away their 
citizens' rights. So their citizens in Maryland and Virginia, during 
the 10-year transition period, in fact, voted for Members of this body 
and had the right to vote in Maryland and Virginia.
  Some would call what Congress has done in the intervening years an 
abuse of power. I believe it is a failure to come to grips with what 
the Framers intended. In Federalist 43, James Madison says from the 
very beginning that there would be ``a municipal legislature for local 
purposes, derived from their own suffrages.'' That's, of course, the 
man and the document we rely on when we need some legislative history 
about the Constitution.
  It is very important to note that the first government in the city of 
Washington was established in 1802 when the District of Columbia became 
the Nation's Capital. At that point, contemporaneous with the 
Constitution, there was a city council elected by the people of the 
District of Columbia to fully govern this city the way the districts 
and the jurisdictions of the Members of this body are fully governed. 
In 1812, the city council was permitted to elect the mayor. Before 
that, the mayor was appointed. In 1820 and thereafter, the mayor was 
elected by the people. That continued until 1871.
  It should be said that the status of the District of Columbia, until 
home rule was granted, was constantly a part of the mix, the long, 
tortured part of our history about racial segregation. Many of the 
perpetrators who denied home rule were Southern Democrats. It was only 
when a Southern Democrat who chaired the ``District Committee'' was 
defeated, after the Voting Rights Act was passed, that the District was 
granted home rule in 1973.
  So this has not been a matter of party. If anything, the Republican 
Party had much cleaner hands until recently when, for its own purposes, 
it adopted the posture of deciding that there would be home rule when 
it wanted and that violates every standard, every principle of the 
Framers and Founders when members simply step in and try to abolish 
democratic policy and laws enacted by a local government to which they 
are not accountable.

                              {time}  1300

  It's important to note that when the Home Rule Act was passed in 
1973, the first line said that the purpose was to ``restore'' to the 
citizens of the District of Columbia, ``restore''. Those words, I 
think, were chosen with great meaning and understanding of history, 
``restore'' because it was clear that the people who lived in this city 
had every right of every other American citizen before the city was 
created, that those from Maryland, Virginia, who gave the land, saw to 
it that these rights were preserved. Only in the political maneuverings 
of the Congress itself has that right been at risk, but that right has 
never been at risk except for Members of Congress who did not adhere to 
the principles of full democracy for every citizen of the United 
States.
  The purpose of the Home Rule Act was to restore, not to create, 
rights. Congress can not create rights for people born in this country. 
The rights are given with their citizenship.
  Now the District of Columbia, if one looks at the Home Rule Act, and 
the trends of all of the legislation preceding the Home Rule Act, was 
never given partial home rule except when Members of Congress from 
other jurisdictions decide they want to make changes in the District. 
That is found nowhere in the Home Rule Act, and that flies in the face 
of every principle of those who created the United States of America 
and those who died under the slogan of ``no taxation without 
representation.''
  We created a very diverse democracy, and we have held it together 
through a principle of local deference and local control. We have 
people in one part of the country who detest some of the laws and 
policies in another part of the country, but the first thing they will 
do is honor local control and the right of local citizens to elect 
people who are accountable to them. When those who are not accountable 
to them want to get something done they must go to those who are, 
indeed, accountable to them.
  Congress thought about what enacting home rule would mean. It said, 
there are some specific exceptions. Congress did not leave it to the 
discretion of Members of this body to decide what those exceptions 
would be. Congress, in fact, did something very specific with respect 
to those exceptions because it understood that once home rule is 
granted, there would be differences between the local legislature

[[Page 2612]]

and the Congress of the United States. So it said, this is what we 
mean, and this is what we do not mean.
  These limitations on the District and its council need to be 
rehearsed and need to be understood by anybody who believes in 
democracy as a principle here in the United States, as much as we 
believed in it when all of us stood up for democracy in Egypt and 
elsewhere in the Middle East and around the world. We have got to make 
sure that we're not seen as hypocrites since we are the first to rise 
when there is democracy that is ignored elsewhere, and appear to deny 
it in our own country. That is something the world will never 
understand.
  The Congress, recognizing the differences, spelled out what the 
exceptions would be, and you can imagine why the exceptions were there. 
They have almost nothing to do with anything that a local legislature 
would want to enact. Occasionally they do, and the District simply 
cannot do it because it's in the Home Rule Act, and the District does 
not do it because it's in the Home Rule Act.
  For example, the District of Columbia cannot impose any tax on the 
property of the United States or any of the several States. Well, 
that's important because the property that is most valuable, the 
property that would yield the most revenue, is located in the center, 
the monumental core of the capital, and the District of Columbia would 
not have a thing to worry about if it could tax that property. It 
cannot be done.
  The District of Columbia cannot lend the public credit, the credit of 
the local jurisdiction, for support of any private undertaking. The 
District cannot impose any tax, partial or whole, on the personal 
income of individuals who are not residents of the District of 
Columbia.
  Now, I emphasize that one, because that's one that local citizens 
particularly resent. It's a ban on a commuter tax. What it means is, if 
you come into the District of Columbia to work, as hundreds of 
thousands do from the surrounding region, use the resources, the roads, 
partake of the same public amenities that residents do, nevertheless, 
said the Home Rule Act, the District of Columbia may not impose any 
commuter tax.
  Well, the District, of course, resents that because there are 
commuter taxes all over the United States. But the District isn't 
asking to overturn the Home Rule Act; it's simply asking the Congress 
abide by the Home Rule Act. Maybe at some point Congress would want to 
reconsider this matter. I think my good friends of both parties from 
Maryland and Virginia would not want this matter reconsidered.
  At the moment, I haven't heard anyone say out that this is the reason 
that you find people in the District of Columbia engaging in civil 
disobedience. It is when Congress intervenes into the local affairs of 
the District of Columbia. Yes, the commuter tax is a local matter, but 
it involves other Americans.
  The Home Rule Act says Congress wants you to have as much--I'm trying 
to be fair--those who wrote it would say, we want you to have as much 
jurisdiction, as much authority over your own business as you can. Once 
you go to taxing those from another region, well, we are going to draw 
the line.
  Well, the District resents it, but there is at least a theory for why 
that was done. There is no theory for trying to overturn a law of the 
District of Columbia simply because you disagree with it, pure and 
simple, no theory that can be mustered and certainly not from the 
Framers, who were clear that every citizen of the United States, 
including those who lived in the Nation's Capital, would have the full 
democracy they fought for in the Revolutionary War.

                              {time}  1310

  The Home Rule Act contains a height limit. Although many in the city 
would like to build high, the Home Rule Act recognizes that the 
monumental core has its own Federal meaning because that's where the 
monuments and the Capitol are, and they did not want those buildings 
which are central to our identity as a Nation overpowered by the tall 
buildings, even skyscrapers, we see in other big cities. But there, 
frankly, has not been a great deal of concern about that. Indeed, D.C. 
has its own height limit. The height limit helps the city when it comes 
to tourism. We, too, want everyone to see the monumental core, although 
you will find a healthy number of citizens here who would like to build 
as they build in other cities.
  We are not trying to overturn the Home Rule Act now; we are trying to 
get observance of the Home Rule Act. And when you pass a law that says, 
for example, no District funds may be used on something because it 
offends your personal predilection, you then are violating the most 
basic principle of any democracy, and that is why I have come to the 
floor and will be coming to the floor throughout the year.
  The District of Columbia may not enact any regulation or law having 
to do with any Federal court, any court of the United States. That's 
true of any jurisdiction. And there are a number of others. The 
District of Columbia cannot enact any law having to do with the 
National Zoo. That's a Federal zoo. I'm not sure why someone was 
concerned about that, but that's in the Home Rule Act. And you're not 
going to find the District Mayor or city council or residents going to 
the streets over the zoo.
  They went to the streets because they passed a law that Members of 
this House sought to overturn--and with respect to at least one of them 
have succeeded--and that brings shame on our democracy, because if you 
were to ask the citizens of the United States or of any place in the 
world whether or not any Member of this body should be able to overturn 
a law passed by the local government of the District of Columbia in a 
democratic fashion, you would find almost nobody in this country who 
would say yes, and you would find almost nobody in the world who would 
say anything but, You cannot be serious; you, who preach democracy all 
over the world. If these are your principles, the place and the time to 
apply them is right here, right now, at home.
  It is interesting to know that there was a lot of controversy until 
finally the Home Rule Act was passed, and it is no accident that the 
Home Rule Act was passed during the period of the sixties and the 
seventies when the great civil rights laws were passed. The country 
came to understand that you can hardly have civil rights laws and then 
have people in your own capital who have no mayor, no city council, no 
right to vote for local government, no vote in this body and still call 
yourself a democracy. All of that came together in the sixties and the 
seventies.
  I'd like to refer to two Presidents from that era, the so-called home 
rule era. You will find that every President of the era--in the postwar 
era--agreed with the notion that the District of Columbia should have 
unlimited right to self-government except for the express and specific 
exceptions in the Home Rule Act. It was Richard Nixon who signed the 
Home Rule Act. President Lyndon Johnson, in his message on home rule 
made these comments:

       Our Federal, State, and local governments rest on the 
     principle of democratic representation--the people elect 
     those who govern them. We cherish the creed declared by our 
     forefathers: No taxation without representation. We know full 
     well that men and women give the most of themselves when they 
     are permitted to attack problems which directly affect them. 
     Yet the citizens of the District of Columbia, at the very 
     seat of the government created by our Constitution, have no 
     vote in the government of their city. They are taxed without 
     representation. They are asked to assume the responsibilities 
     of citizenship while denied one of its basic rights. No major 
     capital in the free world is in a comparable condition of 
     disenfranchisement.

  He laid it straight out. How did this happen? Well, the Congress got 
a conscience from time to time and there were periods when the District 
had its full home rule. This is one of those periods. The Congress does 
not intervene into the life of this city--except when individual 
Members disagree with its actions.
  Let me read from Richard Nixon, who signed the Home Rule Act:

       The District's citizens should not be expected to pay taxes 
     for a government which they have no part in choosing--or to 
     bear the full burdens of citizenship without the full

[[Page 2613]]

     rights of citizenship. I share the chagrin that most 
     Americans feel at the fact that Congress continues to deny 
     self-government to the Nation's capital. I would remind the 
     Congress that the Founding Fathers did nothing of the sort. 
     Home rule was taken from the District only after more than 70 
     years of self-government, and this was done on grounds that 
     were either factually shaky or morally doubtful.

  It is morally doubtful for any Member of this body to assume he or 
she has the right to tell the citizens of the District of Columbia how 
to govern themselves unless you are a member of the local body that 
governs the District of Columbia. If that is a principle which applies 
to your district, it must apply to mine. So we greatly resent that we 
are allowed to govern ourselves except when some Member decides that 
some matter would be controversial in his district, so, therefore, he 
wants to deny the District the right to carry out that matter after 
that matter has become a matter of local law. Every Framer would turn 
over in his grave to recognize that we could come to the 21st century 
with such provisions.
  Congress took action in the 110th and 111th Congresses to remove 
prohibitions on the District's use of local funds for medical 
marijuana, for needle exchange, and for abortions for low-income women.
  In the 112th Congress, Republicans re-imposed the ban on the use of 
local funds for abortion. Who do they think they are? They are 
accountable to no one in the District of Columbia. They are in 
straight, sure violation of every principle of the founding document.
  I believe that in good faith many Members, especially newer Members, 
are simply not aware of this history and not aware that it is grounded 
in the Framers' documents themselves. That's why, instead of assuming 
that any Member of this body would intentionally deny democracy to any 
American, I think the way to proceed is for this American, this Member, 
this representative of the people of the District of Columbia, to come 
forward on occasion with information and material that I hope Members 
will take under advisement.
  I thank the Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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