[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8198-8200]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1420
                      FRAGER'S FIRE/APPROPRIATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from the District 
of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for 30 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to speak a few minutes this 
afternoon on two subjects. The first involves both a wonderful evening 
for any Member of Congress and a tragedy in our Capitol Hill 
neighborhood nearby. The second involves the upcoming appropriations 
period.
  Mr. Speaker, last night was a terrific evening if you happened to be 
there. Members of Congress--it looked like equal numbers of Democrats 
and Republicans; we are part of the so-called No Labels Caucus; these 
are Members of Congress who are trying to get beyond the needless 
polarization in this House--decided to go to the baseball game 
together, the Nationals Stadium, our new, terrific stadium here in the 
District of Columbia. It was a Nats-Mets game. I'm sorry to report the 
Nats lost badly. They also played the night before and won, if I may 
also report that.
  I was coming back from this really wonderful bipartisan experience--
we ate hot dogs together, we ate & drank together--me, wine, a lot of 
my colleagues beer--and we talked about anything but the House. We 
talked about what people have said Members need to do more. We talked 
about the game and what was happening in our lives.
  I sat next to a Member I had never met before even though he's on the 
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with me. His name is Rodney 
Davis. It was so funny to hear him talk about how I didn't know him, he 
said he was the lowest man on the totem pole. He apparently was, at 
least in seniority on our committee the last member and I'm near the 
top in seniority. We laughed about that. He laughed about how narrow 
was his margin in getting to the House. I mean, all of this was fun. 
And, yes, the game--the game, of course, was the baseball game.
  He told me about his 12-year-old twin boys. That was really so 
touching--how he missed a suspension vote because he was coaching the 
baseball team where his boys played. So that was the setting of the 
evening. You can't help but feel good when you come home from an 
evening like that.
  Because I have for many years lived on Capitol Hill--I represent the 
District, I am a native Washingtonian and I now live on Capitol Hill--I 
didn't have to go far from Nationals Stadium to come home. But I 
returned to find a pungent smell in the air because the storied 
neighborhood hardware store, Frager's, was in the process of being 
burned to the ground. I could get only so far along Pennsylvania 
Avenue, then everyone had to take a detour. Even this morning, parts of 
Pennsylvania Avenue, Southeast were closed off because of, even then, 
hot spots from the fire. It was like losing a friend--a human friend, 
that is.
  My first thought went to the employees; there are about 65 of them. 
I'm grateful to have learned that it appears no one was injured or 
hurt. This pungent odor--remember, this is a hardware store, so there's 
all kinds of things to go up in flames and all kinds of smells. And 
even though I'm a number of blocks--about six to ten blocks--I could 
smell the odor very deeply from the fire. In fact, the city announced 
that everyone should go in and turn on their air conditioning and not 
come out for a while.
  The employees were still in the building--some of them--but got out 
of the way of the fire, and no one was injured or killed. I understand 
that there may have been a couple of firefighters who were injured. We 
certainly wish them the very best and thank them for fighting what was 
a horrendous, hot, and unusual fire in the middle of a wonderful 
residential neighborhood.
  When a store that's been in the same location for 100 years goes up 
in flames, you begin to realize that it was more than a neighborhood 
hardware store, afterall, and that after almost 100 years in the same 
location it had embedded itself into our Capitol Hill community as an 
institution all its own. It stirred in me something like the emotion 
that I felt when the Eastern Market--our historic, old market that was 
even older than Frager's--went up in flames a few years ago. Those are 
parts of your neighborhood we cannot imagine being without.
  We have since rebuilt Eastern Market so that it looks very much like 
it always did--because it's a historic building and great pains were 
taken to see to it. Now, I'm not yet sure they will be able to do that 
at Frager's. After all, the Eastern Market is a publically owned 
market. That's not the case with this private business, which has 
thrived in our neighborhood through the era of mega-hardware stores. 
Frager's had survived when the era of the corner grocery and the corner 
store of every variety seem to have gone by the way.
  It says everything about Frager's that it could survive in that kind 
of competition, where these multipurpose mega-hardware stores are 
accessible if you want to get in your car. I guess that may be the key 
to why the best of these corner institutions have survived for so long.
  Frager's was not a state-of-the-art building. That's part of the 
reason it could burn down. You go in and they have squeezed goods into 
Frager's that you will not find at our wonderful mega-hardware stores. 
There are things that may have gone out of style, but they're just what 
you need and they're just what goes best with your own home.
  Capitol Hill is a historic district. I live in a historic house. You 
can't do anything to the outside of the house; you can change it on the 
inside. So you can imagine, we're always trying to match up the 
historic eccentricity of our homes with what's available in the stores. 
Well, Frager's is always there to help you. So the loss is, for us, 
monumental.
  I think Frager's has survived all these years not only because it 
happens to often have what we can't find anywhere else, but 
particularly because of the service ethic that is a part of this 
neighborhood institution. You go to Frager's, they know you if you've 
been in there once before. They go out of their way to help you even as 
you try to find your way through the cramped aisles. They have the 
amenities you need. You may still go to the big mega-store, but very 
often you'll try Frager's first--or have to go to Frager's when you 
didn't find it where you might have thought it should have been.
  Above all, such stores in our neighborhoods are tailored to our 
needs. They've learned what people ask for, and they try to stock it 
when no one else would.
  It made me recall Frager's 90th anniversary--about 3 years ago. I was 
so impressed that the neighborhood had a store that is where it was 90 
years ago--and now we are at 93 or so--that could still celebrate that 
it's there and has been there all that time. So I came to the floor on 
that occasion and have since put those congratulatory remarks in the 
Congressional Record.
  So I was really very much looking for another opportunity today to 
salute Frager's and to say to Frager's that yes, we know you are 
different from the Eastern Market. Yes, you have insurance, and you 
don't have taxpayer dollars to help you build. But I think you will 
find a very grateful neighborhood doing all it can to help Frager's 
survive, even as the Eastern Market historic market has survived, 
because there are certain institutions that are endemic to the 
neighborhood; and if they go, it simply will not be the same 
neighborhood.

                              {time}  1430

  The morning after you still couldn't get close to Frager's. I'm going 
to go by this evening and I'm going to try to find John Weintraub, who 
is the owner. This store is located at 11th and Pennsylvania Avenues, 
Southeast. The

[[Page 8199]]

cause of the fire is still not known, or at least was not as of this 
morning.
  John Weintraub bought this store, bought Frager's, from the Frager 
family in 1975. So that tells you that a very good part of its 
existence one family owned Fragers. John Weintraub has moved it 
seamlessly from the original family to Mr. Weintraub. He's hoping that 
his insurance takes care not only of the building, but somehow helps 
him with the salaries of his 65 employees. I'm very pleased that by the 
time I awakened this morning, the Matchbox, another store in our 
neighborhood, had announced that it would offer temporary work to 
Frager's employees until they are able to find employment.
  I was also very pleased to read that the nursery, which was my 
favorite spot at Frager's, was somehow intact. Beside the hardware 
store, which is a remnant of its former self now, was a large nursery, 
an outdoor nursery, with just the kind of flowers you need to start up 
your window box in the spring with all the plants. You could go and 
shop for all plants in the outdoors section of Frager's there. Somehow, 
that section had survived most of the fire. And I hope that we're going 
to be able to go very soon, notwithstanding the destruction of the 
building, to the nursery, to remind everybody that Frager's is alive, 
well, and thriving despite the fire.
  I want also to salute those who stood with Mayor Vincent Gray and me 
just about 10 days ago to announce that as the District of Columbia 
appropriation comes to the floor, we will be looking at the 
appropriators to make sure that they respect the District of Columbia's 
600,000-plus American citizens and the District of Columbia as the 
independent jurisdiction it is and will refrain from directing our city 
on how to spend our own local funds.
  Standing with us at a press conference were representatives from a 
number of organizations: DC Vote, the extraordinary organization that 
leads the fight for district voting rights for our ability to spend our 
own money, and for our right to be treated as other Americans are 
treated. Also there were the groups who are targeted the way that we 
have been targeted. There were the gun safety groups. There were the 
pro-choice groups. There were the health groups.
  The groups include Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, AIDS United, DC Vote, Brady Campaign to 
Prevent Gun Violence, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Center for 
Reproductive Rights, the National Abortion Federation, the Reproductive 
Health Technologies Project, the Black Women's Health Imperative, the 
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and the Center for 
American Progress.
  They said they would alert their members should the District's 
appropriation be targeted for what we call riders, which are 
undemocratic attachments to the D.C. appropriation to keep it from 
spending its own local funds in a democratic manner, as directed by its 
citizens. This, of course, would never be the case for any other 
jurisdiction. But because the Congress has retained some jurisdiction 
over the District, there are Members of this body who would take 
advantage of its jurisdiction to intrude into the local affairs of a 
local jurisdiction.
  Yet, in 1972, the Congress itself recognized that this was wrong. On 
the heels of the civil rights movement, interestingly, it delegated the 
authority for governance to the District of Columbia itself. It was 
about time. It had been done so once before in the 19th century when 
the Republicans, after the Civil War, allowed the District to have 
representation in Congress and a home rule government.
  However, the Democrats came back to power and abolished local 
government and the right to be represented in the Congress. We still do 
not have the vote on the House floor; although we pay taxes at very 
high rates like every other Member's constituents. But at least there 
was some representation.
  Finally, in the mid '70s, the Congress saw how wrong it was to claim 
itself to be the leader of freedom around the world and yet have its 
own capital city with no local governance and no representation in the 
Congress of the United States. However, when it delegated its authority 
to the District for local governance, it did leave four or five 
exceptions.
  The exceptions were, for example, that the Districts can't tax the 
Federal property located in the District of Columbia. And the other 
exceptions were of that kind. Congress didn't add: and Members may at 
any time they have a preference keep the District from spending its own 
local funds the way their own constituents can spend their own local 
funds.
  We will never give up our full rights as American citizens to spend 
our own funds. We raise $6 billion more than some States every year. 
When our folks tell us how to spend that money, we're going to always 
fight to spend it, just as every Member would fight to spend it as 
democratically directed by constituents.
  We had thought when the Republicans--particularly the Tea Party 
Republicans as they call themselves--came they would be the first to 
side with us on this matter because they are supposed to, according to 
their recited principles, resent the intrusion of Federal power, 
sometimes even where Federal power always has been. So we thought they 
would be the first to understand that you don't use the big foot of the 
Federal Government against any local jurisdiction and then somehow 
claim the Constitution because the District does not have statehood 
yet. Not a matter of principle.
  I appreciate how the appropriators have handled our appropriation for 
the last several years. When the Democrats were in charge of this body, 
we were able to get all of the riders off of our appropriation, and 
only one has come back, an abortion rider, and we intend to get that 
one off again. But the others have not come back. And I want to express 
my appreciation to this House for at least keeping those attachments 
off.
  One of them was an attachment that cost lives and has left us with 
people who are ill. That attachment kept us from spending our own local 
money on needle exchange programs, which are widely used around the 
world and throughout the United States. States can't spend Federal 
funds for needle exchange programs, but they can spend local funds. 
Every large city; and many counties spend their own local funds this 
way because it is one of the few proven ways to keep HIV/AIDS from 
spreading.
  The District was kept from spending its own local funds on needle 
exchange programs for 10 years. The result was that the District had 
the highest AIDS rate in the United States for that reason. Right down 
the road, Baltimore, a much poorer city than the District of Columbia--
and the District of Columbia is not a poor city. It is a city of--yes, 
it is a modicum of poor people, but it is a very prosperous city.

                              {time}  1440

  Down the road in Baltimore, you have had for years a better AIDS rate 
than you have had in the District of Columbia because nobody could keep 
Baltimore from using needle exchange programs. These are programs that, 
for example, when an addict is on the street, allow the one city to 
wean him from addiction or at least keep him from passing a dirty 
needle on that will spread the virus, but it is often to wean him from 
drugs because he expects and wants the clean needles to come every day. 
It is a highly effective way. Whatever it is, we have the right to save 
the lives of our own people the way we define if that way is legal and 
constitutional.
  You can imagine the anguish we felt when we could not even save the 
lives of our own people. To its credit and the credit of this House, 
that rider has not come back on our appropriation. I had a meeting with 
Chairman Ander Crenshaw just yesterday. I don't have any idea what will 
happen, but he seems a fair and open man. I was pleased also to bring 
the Mayor to have a meeting with him so that he could meet the chief 
executive of the city. There also are other riders that were on the 
appropriation that are not now on it.
  We've learned to take the offensive, though, because we are left here 
by ourselves--a delegation of one--so it's real easy to gang up on us 
because I'm

[[Page 8200]]

all the District has. It has no Senators, and therefore we try to stop 
such intrusions before they occur. Yes, partly, perhaps, because of 
that--because of the action of our allies in writing the appropriators, 
having their constituents contact appropriators--this may have had an 
effect; but I think what has also had an effect is there are Members 
who, I think, listened to the effect of these riders, and who have seen 
them as inconsistent with the principle of local control and have acted 
accordingly.
  So I say to those Members: you have our thanks and our appreciation.
  I say to my own Capitol Hill neighborhood as I close: that we have 
lived through the tragedy of the loss of a major public institution, 
the Eastern Market. We saw it come back. As Capitol Hill residents, it 
seems to me all of us have an obligation to help Frager's come back, 
too. Frager's has been there when we needed Frager's. Frager's cannot 
depend upon public money. Frager's needs support--and we'll have to 
learn what kind of support it is--from all of us if we value such 
unique neighborhood institutions.
  At a time when our country is growing larger, when it is becoming so 
easy to become anonymous--when the personal and the ability to touch 
and feel that you are heard often seem so distant, when even those of 
us who Tweet and Facebook recognize that, at the same time, we are 
keeping our distance--at a time like this when Frager's brought us 
close, when Frager's made us walk to the store instead of getting into 
our cars, and when we found there, what we could not find elsewhere, 
let us celebrate this institution, with which, I think, every Member of 
the House from whatever community, large or small, could identify.
  I celebrate Frager's. I look forward to its return in a fashion that 
will remind us of a near century's service to those who have lived in 
the Capitol Hill community, one of the oldest communities in the 
Nation's Capital.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________