[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10760-10762]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1400
              BUDGET AUTONOMY FOR 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 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  Members may be aware that I come to the floor occasionally in order 
to make certain that Members have the full background as they find 
themselves in the perplexing situation of receiving legislation on a 
local government and local residents.
  We had a misunderstanding--I can only think it was a misunderstanding 
this week--when Senator Rand Paul, who I know has been a student of 
history when it comes to the Constitution, engaged in actions that had 
the effect of compelling a bipartisan group of Senators to pull back 
their budget autonomy bill for the District of Columbia.
  First, recognize that the Framers didn't go to war with American 
citizens, including citizens who live right in the very city in which 
we are now meeting, the District of Columbia, only to leave them out of 
the very franchise and local control that made the Framers commit what, 
I'm sure, the British believed were acts of treason when they rebelled 
against England for its refusal to recognize that taxes are a matter of 
local control. Bear in mind that those who went to war included the 
residents of this city and that the Framers in every respect showed 
that they respected the fact that the citizens of this city were 
included among those who went to war.
  For example, in the transition period--10 years--as the District of 
Columbia moved to become the Nation's Capital--the four Framers of the 
Constitution from Maryland and from Virginia made sure through 
legislation that their members lost nothing, in as much as Maryland and 
Virginia had donated the land to the Nation for our Nation's Capital. 
Maryland and Virginia citizens were allowed to vote in their 
jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia. They voted for Congress, and 
they were treated in every way like other Americans at that time. In 
1802, when full transition to become the Nation's capital occurred, 
they lost what they had been promised. They lost their full rights as 
American citizens.
  The District got back some of those rights under a Republican 
President 39 years ago when the District was granted home rule, the 
right to govern itself, under the Home Rule Act.
  Richard Nixon said at the time:
  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.
  So the Congress returned to the District some measure of home rule in 
1973. In returning a good measure of home rule, the Congress 
nevertheless said to the District that, while it had authority over its 
own budget, the budget had to come to the Congress of the United States 
before it became final.
  We are trying, as I speak, to make sure that that budget does not 
become a vehicle for denying the very principles that the Framers 
fought for and that every American stands for. This is not a country 
where you can pay taxes and somebody else can have something to say 
over how those taxes will be used. That would cause another rebellion. 
When this matter was put to the American people in a recent poll, here 
is what they said: more than seven in 10 believe that the District of 
Columbia should control its own budget.
  I suppose in America people are saying, Duh, of course. That's a 
basic founding principle. Why do you need to tell us that?
  We need to tell you that because there are attempts here--and there 
was an attempt just this week in the Senate--that contradicted the 
increasing bipartisan consensus for local control by the District of 
its own local funds, funds that not one Member of this body has had 
anything to do with raising. So when you put that to the American 
people, you get a predictable answer: seven in 10 say yes to local 
control by the District alone of its own local funds.
  What does that mean in terms of Democrats and Republicans?
  Seventy-one percent of Democrats and, by the way, 72 percent of 
Republicans support it. I'm not surprised at those figures. Seventy-one 
percent of Democrats--and slightly more--72 percent of Republicans 
believe that the people who pay taxes and happen to live in their 
Nation's Capital should be treated as full American citizens when it 
comes to how they spend their own local funds.
  That principle is not always recognized in this body, and that's why 
I've come to the floor today, because I do not believe that the failure 
to recognize this principle comes from venality. I think it comes 
because there is turnover in the Congress and because people don't 
focus on the anti-democratic bills that come before them, so they 
simply do what they are told to do. They don't do much analysis of 
their own about why they may be voting as a Member of Congress to 
overturn local laws.
  Last year, the District of Columbia government was almost shut down 
three separate times. I don't think I could find a Member of this 
body--in fact, I'm sure I can't--who would say that when the Federal 
Government is engaged in a Federal fight over Federal spending that the 
District of Columbia should have to shut down, too; but that was the 
case because the District of Columbia local budget--its balanced budget 
(unlike our own)--which had been approved by the Appropriations 
Committee, was still here. Because it was still here and for no other 
reason, the District of Columbia three different times had to prepare 
for a shutdown of the city government, and had to prepare for the 
consequences of the possible violation of contracts and other serious 
consequences through no fault of their own.
  It's important to note that a Senate appropriations bill this year 
does contain my no-shutdown bill for the District of Columbia, which 
simply says that the District of Columbia doesn't shut down if the 
Federal Government shuts down; of course, if the city is spending only 
its own local money, that's okay for the city to do.
  When I refer to a bipartisan group of congressional leaders who 
support budget autonomy, I'm speaking of leaders who have been in the 
Congress, and have been in the District and have seen what the effects 
of not treating the District as a full local-controlled jurisdiction 
have been. In the House today, I am grateful to Chairman Darrell Issa, 
chairman of the committee with some jurisdiction over the District of 
Columbia, who is a leading proponent of budget autonomy for the 
District of Columbia, so much so that he has his own bill for budget 
autonomy, which is very much like my own.

                              {time}  1410

  In the Senate, Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins had a 
bipartisan bill in committee this week for budget autonomy for the 
District of Columbia much like Chairman Issa's. Budget autonomy has 
been supported by majority leader Eric Cantor. Budget autonomy has been 
supported by the Republican Governor of the State of Virginia.
  When we note what happened in the Senate on the bill, we cannot 
believe that it came from animus or some sense that the District of 
Columbia is not a city whose citizens should be treated as other 
American citizens are treated. Yet, as the bill went to committee, 
Senator Rand Paul appeared to have proposed any and every amendment he 
could think of, amendments that no self-respecting American 
jurisdiction could possibly abide, not because there is anything 
inherently

[[Page 10761]]

wrong with these amendments, but because they violate what the voting 
majority of taxpaying residents of the District of Columbia have 
approved as local law.
  The Senator did not say he disagrees with this or that policy and he 
wants to make sure that the District does this or that thing. He said: 
I think it's a good way to call attention to some issues that have 
national implications. We don't have control over the States, but we do 
for D.C.
  Oh, really? What control do you have over our local funds? Do you 
raise a cent of it?
  This must be a misunderstanding. Since Senator Rand Paul founded the 
Tea Party Caucus in the Senate and is the champion of small government 
and local control there, I choose to believe that this freshman Senator 
had not yet come to grips with the rather complicated history of the 
Nation's capital. If he had, I don't think he would have put forward an 
amendment that would require the city to allow conceal-and-carry 
permits. We may not have a problem with conceal and carry in the United 
States, but that's not what the people of the District of Columbia, who 
pay taxes here, have written into their constitutional local laws.
  Moreover, public safety is the essence of local control. If you look 
to the two or three issues that nobody should have anything to say 
about in another local jurisdiction, surely at the head of the list 
would be local police power, when that power is consistent with the 
Constitution.
  Then a stream of other amendments came forward from Senator Paul on 
abortion, one of them on licensed firearms dealer, one of them having 
to do with labor organizations. It's as if the Senator went down a 
checklist. He virtually said so himself. He said: What national issues 
can I highlight using the District of Columbia?--as if the city were 
nothing but a plaything and not a jurisdiction of 600,000 American 
citizens who have fought and died in every war, including the war that 
created the United States of America, of 600,000 citizens who pay the 
second highest Federal taxes per capita in the United States. That's 
600,000 citizens, one of whom was killed in Afghanistan last month. It 
means 600,000 Americans who have every right to demand equal 
citizenship.
  Nevertheless, good news, from bipartisan support and from national 
polls, continues to roll in. The Senate has just passed out of 
committee the D.C. budget. The most the Senate and the most the House 
should do is act as a pass-through as long as the D.C. budget does not 
violate the Constitution. Of course, no local budget belongs in the 
United States Congress. However, D.C. does not yet have budget 
autonomy. Yet there is nothing, in American principle or American 
history which says that once you have the local budget through here, 
you can just do anything you want to do, overturn local laws or 
restrict funds that Congress had nothing to do with raising.
  I met Tea Party people for the first time when they came to Congress. 
I thought local control was their most basic principle. In fact, 
Senator Rand Paul would like to get the Federal Government out of 
issues where the Constitution allows the Federal Government to be. But 
what about hopping over Federal issues and trying to interfere in the 
business of a local jurisdiction? That's against his principles; that's 
against everything the Framers stood for.
  Polls within the last few months show that the overwhelming majority 
of Americans believe Congress should pass a D.C. budget without 
changes. Who is this overwhelming majority? Seventy eight percent of 
them are Democrats. Once again, Republicans lead the pack at 81 
percent.
  This is how the question was framed:
  ``Today, Members of Congress are withholding approval of Washington, 
D.C.'s local budget unless the city agrees to a series of unrelated 
provisions on issues ranging from guns to abortion. Do you think 
Congress should or should not interfere in the city's local affairs and 
budget in this way?''
  If anything, the issue was framed against D.C. Because you can bet 
your bottom dollar that of this 81 percent of Republicans who answered 
that Congress should not interfere with D.C.'s local affairs and budget 
were many who, in fact, oppose abortion and oppose any restrictions on 
guns or gun owners. Yet this is how they responded when asked a base 
question, a fundamental question regarding, if it is local money, 
should a national body in Washington have any right, whatsoever, to 
impose its will on a local budget.
  Congress does lag occasionally behind the American people. This is a 
big lag. But the lag does not include several leaders of this House and 
of the Senate.

                              {time}  1420

  Senator Joe Lieberman is retiring this year. He has been a champion 
of equal citizenship for the residents of the District of Columbia, 
whether it was voting rights or statehood or budget autonomy. Equal 
citizeship rights for District of Columbia citizens, in many ways, 
partially define his service.
  Yet the first budget autonomy bill to pass at all in Congress came 
from Senator Susan Collins, when democrats were in the minority. That 
was in 2003. That bill went all the way to the floor and was passed in 
a Republican Senate. It was the House that did not pass it or D.C. 
budget autonomy would be law today.
  So when I speak of first principles, I think there is great evidence 
that those first principles resonate in the Senate and resonate in the 
House. They resonate in the House when Representative Issa puts forward 
a budget autonomy bill, it resonates in the House, when Majority Leader 
Cantor, in fact, says he supports budget autonomy.
  I don't believe that the average Member even desires the opportunity 
to use 600,000 American citizens as playthings through a local budget. 
We joust with one another. We disagree with one another. But I don't 
believe when it comes to this serious matter that if we had an 
opportunity, one on one, to speak with Members of this body they would 
give you a justification for a federal body overturning the will of the 
people of a local jurisdiction.
  That is why I say this afternoon that by assuming that disparate 
treatment of any American citizens, even those who live in the District 
of Columbia, must reflect a misunderstanding that I hope, by coming to 
the floor from time to time, I can help clear up. Unequal treatment of 
American citizens flies in the face of the very principles that 
particularly Members of this House have professed from the moment the 
112th Congress convened: Get the Federal Government out of our lives, 
even where the Federal Government has historically been in our lives; 
get the Federal Government out of any opportunity to get involved in 
our lives.
  Witness the view of Republicans on the Affordable Health Care Act. Up 
with local control, and when it comes to local money, hands off.
  You might imagine that when the District raises $6 billion from local 
citizens, they wouldn't want anybody telling them anything about how to 
spend their local funds. The District spends that money on some matters 
and in some ways that are different from the way the jurisdictions of 
my colleagues spend their own money. Isn't tolerating these differences 
what is most wonderful about America?
  The Framers put together a nation that was very different, that has 
kept us from going to war with one another over issues by above all 
separating out local from Federal, meaning if you stay in your part, we 
won't go there. We will only go where matters of national concern are 
to be found. That was the promise.
  I must say, to my colleagues, that's the promise that's been kept for 
every American district, except my own. And that is why I have called 
Senator Rand Paul. I have not been able to speak to him yet. I am going 
to ask to sit down with him. I am going to walk over to the Senate to 
see if I can have a good conversation with him about the District of 
Columbia, because I have no reason to believe, given his own short 
history in the Senate, that he means to

[[Page 10762]]

do anything but carry out his own originalist principles, his 
principles that local control is different from Federal intervention. 
Given a conversation, we can at least make some headway on what the 
District means to our country and how the citizens of this city feel 
when they are basically kicked around.
  We're powerless to do anything about it. If a bill comes to the floor 
which keeps us from spending our own money, every Member of this body 
can vote on that bill except the Member that represents the District of 
Columbia because, as of yet, the Congress has not, in fact, given the 
District the voting rights that we have given to the people of 
Afghanistan and Iraq, with citizens from the District of Columbia among 
those fighting for their freedom. So I don't think anybody would blame 
us for coming forward to ask for what every other American takes for 
granted.
  What is truly gratifying to me, even as I complain about the 
withdrawal of a budget autonomy bill in committee, which Senator Joe 
Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins had worked so hard to perfect, what 
encourages me is, first, the leadership we have in the House for budget 
autonomy, the leadership that continues to stand strong with us in the 
Senate. But most of all, Mr. Speaker, what encourages me is what these 
two charts tell us about our country, tell us about what the American 
public believes, tells us what they overwhelmingly believe--that 
American citizens have a right when it comes to their own funds raised 
by them and them alone.
  Yes, I take heart in the fact that while there are only small 
differences between Democrats and Republicans on subject autonomy, 
those who most favor control of the city's own budget by its own local 
citizens are Republicans, who are, it seems to me, only confirming 
their own principles.
  And when it comes to whether or not the Congress, when the D.C. 
budget comes here, should pass it clean, just as it was when it came, 
or should in some way use it to profile national issues, you have even 
greater majorities essentially sending Congress a message that it 
should pass the D.C. local budget without changes. Seventy-eight 
percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Americans regard this as 
something of a truism. My colleagues represent the people included in 
these massive majorities.
  I don't expect my colleagues to spend a lot of time on the District 
of Columbia. I ask only that when the budget of a local jurisdiction 
comes here that there be some thought behind what you do when you have 
the vote on that budget and I do not. In a real sense, I ask you to put 
yourself in my position. I am a Member of the House of Representatives. 
I have the same standing that all of you have, except I do not have a 
vote.
  I would be so bold as to ask my colleagues to put themselves in my 
position when they see Members of this House or Members of the Senate 
try to direct the District about how it ought to spend its own local 
funds. I ask you to put yourself in my position because I think there 
would be some genuine empathy with the position in which I find myself, 
representing 600,000 citizens who have lived up to every obligation of 
citizenship ever since the founding of the Republic of which they have 
always been a part, but never with equal citizenship.
  We will continue to come forward in good faith and in the spirit of 
understanding and in the hope that, with greater highlighting of the 
discrepancies between professed principles and how they are 
occasionally carried out, change will come in a country which is always 
striving to live up to its own ideals.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

               [From the Washington Post, June 27, 2012]

                   Rand Paul's Situational Principle

                          (By Editorial Board)

       Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) came to Washington on the wave of 
     the tea party movement to limit big government. ``I think a 
     lot of things could be handled locally . . . the more local 
     the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, 
     rather than having a federal government make those 
     decisions,'' he said during his 2010 campaign. So how to 
     explain his spoiling a move to give the District autonomy 
     over its own tax dollars by--and this is really rich--
     injecting the federal government into local affairs?
       We thought we could no longer be surprised by congressional 
     hypocrisy when it comes to the nation's capital, but Mr. 
     Paul's willingness to turn his back on his supposed 
     libertarian principles and devotion to local rule is truly 
     stunning.
       A bill that would give D.C. officials the ability to spend 
     local dollars--we repeat, locally collected, locally paid tax 
     dollars--without congressional approval was pulled from 
     consideration this week after Mr. Paul introduced a set of 
     amendments that would dictate to the city policies on guns, 
     abortions and unions. ``The last senator I would expect it 
     from,'' said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), telling us 
     that she has never seen so many amendments offered at one 
     time by a single member to restrict D.C. rights. Ironically, 
     Ilir Zherlca, head of the advocacy group DC Vote, said that 
     Mr. Paul initially had been seen as a potential ally for the 
     District because of his views on small government.
       Mr. Paul told The Post's Ben Pershing, ``I think it's a 
     good way to call attention to some issues that have national 
     implications. We don't have [control] over the states, but we 
     do for D.C.'' In other words, ``I am doing this because I 
     can''--not exactly the argument one expects to hear from 
     someone who has railed about federal intrusion. As Mr. Zherka 
     pointed out, Mr. Paul's brief for small government is not 
     whether the federal government has the power but whether it 
     should use it.
       A spokesman for Mr. Paul e-mailed us a reminder that the 
     District is not a state but a federal jurisdiction: ``Efforts 
     to change that have failed, and until it is changed it is not 
     only the prerogative but the duty of Congress to have 
     jurisdiction over the Federal District.'' What we don't get 
     is how someone who raises the banner of a movement inspired 
     by a time when Americans were ruled without representation 
     could be so unsympathetic to the rights of D.C. citizens who 
     are in the same position.

                          ____________________