[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 95 (Friday, June 8, 2018)] [House] [Pages H5009-H5012] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SHOULD BECOME THE 51ST STATE The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the minority leader. Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this time on the floor to speak about making the District of Columbia the 51st State. I am not going to simply glow about how important that would be for my district, because we have found that most Americans believe we already have the same rights they do. I want to describe one of the oldest cities in the United States, a city that is bigger than two States, that is to say, has more residents than two States, more residents than Vermont, more residents than Wyoming, and about as many residents as seven States of the Union. The people I represent, 700,000 of them, are number one in taxes paid to support the Government of the United States, yet they have no representation whatsoever in that body down the hall, the Senate of the United States. In fact, I am grateful that the House understands that I should vote in committee, where most of the work is done, but when a bill comes to the House floor, even if that bill singularly affects the residents of the District of Columbia, every Member of this body, except the Member who represents the District of Columbia, can vote on that bill. That is not justice, that is un-American, and it offers strong evidence, I think, of the underlying reasons why the District of Columbia should become the 51st State of the Union. We are making progress. We have got almost all the Democrats on our statehood bill. And if there is Democratic control of the next Congress, I will seek a vote on D.C. statehood on the House floor. I got a vote on D.C. statehood when I first came to the Congress. It is time to have another vote on D.C. statehood. We have more than half of the Democrats in the Senate, and I will get all the Democrats in the House and all the Democrats in the Senate before the end of the 115th Congress. Most Members of the House come to this place knowing little about the Capital City. I don't blame them. I don't see why they should know much about it, except that it is the tourist mecca of our country; that 30 million [[Page H5010]] people from around the world, including from their States, come to see the extraordinary monuments in our city. So Members shouldn't know any more about my district than I know about their districts, and yet Members come to this floor to not only vote on matters affecting my district, but on laws that would take away or overturn laws passed by the legitimate government of the District of Columbia. When Members come, I greet them, offer them help in finding housing and the rest, and that is about the end of it. So if they come to the House to vote, they don't know anything more about the city, except if they happen to stay here, and we welcome them, than they did when they walked in the door. But every Member needs to know that 700,000 Americans host them, and they need to know, when they are called upon to interfere with the local laws of the District of Columbia, they should treat our local laws the way they would have their local laws treated. I particularly speak of my Republican colleagues, who are the chief proponents of local control. They don't want the Federal Government into not only their business, but sometimes they try to get the Federal Government out of Federal business, and yet it is my Republican colleagues who are the chief abusers of what we call District Home Rule, what Americans call the right to self-government. I need to give you examples of what I mean when I say Members try to overturn our laws, and I need to say that I often am able to keep them from doing so, even without a vote on this House floor, because of the way I think through what my role is. I have got to think of a way to keep people who overwhelmingly outnumber me, obviously, and are the majority in this House, from overturning my own local laws. We have barely succeeded in doing so, but I will give you an idea of what I mean. I should begin by saying that because this is a city, a big city, that its laws would be more progressive than in many other parts of the United States. For example, the District of Columbia government has passed a Death With Dignity Act. This is a controversial bill. Six States have passed it, including States represented by the Republican leadership of this House. It is a bill that allows a person to take his own life with minimal help from a physician. It is very controversial. Six States have passed it; so has the District of Columbia. It is nobody's business but theirs. I have kept this law from being overturned, but I have had to fight to do so for at least three years. Let me give you another example: the Local Budget Autonomy Act. Why would there be a Local Budget Autonomy Act? Everybody knows that if you levy your own local taxes, no one should have anything to do with that, but the District of Columbia does not have the right to have the final say on its own budget, because any Member of the Congress can try to overturn the District's budget. Are they interested in the budget? Do they try to overturn the budget itself? No. But when the budget comes here, Republicans use it as a vehicle to overturn laws that they don't agree with, and that is why our budget is here, this budget that was raised by the residents of the District of Columbia, this local budget. {time} 1315 In order to keep our budget from coming here at all--what is it doing here--a referendum overwhelmingly passed by residents called the Local Budget Autonomy Amendment Act essentially said, that is it. It shouldn't come here. The House has tried to repeal that at least three times. I have saved it from being repealed largely from marching over to the Senate. Perhaps the most persistent attempt on the part of the Congress are efforts to wipe out the District's gun safety laws. It is a big city and, yes, big cities are where you have most of the gun violence, so the District has tough gun safety laws. And yet, every single year I have to protect our gun safety laws from Members of Congress who are not answerable, are in no ways responsive, to the people of the District of Columbia. Our residents can't vote them out of office. They can vote only me out of office. They can't touch them. If that doesn't fly in the face of American democracy, I can't tell you what does. Senator Marco Rubio has introduced a bill to wipe out all of our gun safety laws since 2015. I have saved D.C. gun laws from being eliminated. But Senator Marco Rubio from the State of Florida, where the Parkland youngsters are, who have taken nationwide their own campaign to get this Congress to pass sensible gun laws. Yet Senator Rubio, aided by Representative Tom Garrett of this body, would eliminate all of the District's gun safety laws, including the District's ban on guns in schools; including making the District of Columbia a unique exception to a Federal law called Gun-Free School Zones Act, which means you cannot have a gun within a school zone. Everybody could have that except the District of Columbia. Senator Rubio and Representative Garrett would repeal the District's ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. Assault weapons in the Nation's capital? Imagine who would be endangered if there were assault weapons here? And I do not refer to the residents of the District of Columbia alone. Anyone who visits our city will often find traffic stopped while caravans of high-level officials go by. Sometimes they will be Members of Congress. More often they will be world figures. Imagine if just anybody could have an assault weapon in the Nation's capital, particularly today. Yes, I have been able to stop it. But why should I have been put to that effort when I represent 700,000 tax-paying citizens of the United States who had already done it? I do have to show you how low or laughable these efforts can become. I have stopped a bill that prohibited my city from using its own funds to keep certain kinds of flushable products from being sold in the District of Columbia. They stop up toilets. The Member who proposed this, Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, perhaps because it is so laughable, ultimately withdrew it. We came on the House floor to expose it. But I cite the flushable wipes amendment to show these anti home rule efforts know no bounds. You might ask, well, why would Representative Andy Harris want to do this? I don't know for sure, except that there is a manufacturer of those wipes that has surfaced and, as you may know, many Members get campaign funds from people who ask them to place matters in bills. They don't ask them to put them in our appropriations, but that is what happened, and I had to get that one out. I do want to publicly thank Representative Harris for withdrawing his amendment. To give you some sense, though, of how the District of Columbia has to pay attention, not only to its own local laws and preserving them, but has to ask its Member to do what every other Member does a lot on national matters. So while I am working on national bills, during the first year of the Trump Presidency, I had to defeat 15 bills to overturn the District's gun laws. I had to block bills that would gut the public school system laws by making D.C. use its own local funds for private schools. Yet Congress has defeated an education bill that defeated amendments to an education bill that would have allowed school districts to spend its own money on private schools. They took private school vouchers out of the national bill, but a Member tried to put vouchers on the District. Defeated that one. And there are others, but I won't go down the list of them all. Understand that that work is important to my District, but it is work that no other Member has to pursue because you cannot interfere with the local laws of any other Member. At the same time, however, for example, I had and did get full funding to rehabilitate the Memorial Bridge. That happens to be important because millions of Americans use that bridge. They come to Arlington Memorial Cemetery and use that bridge to get there. They come to the Nation's Capitol to see our iconic sights, and they use that bridge. Now that was a national bill. That is the kind of bill, Federal bill, that most Members work on that they are proud of. [[Page H5011]] I bring it up because that work, which as a Member of Congress I must do for the Nation, as well as my city, is quite apart from protecting the local laws of my city. Let's take the affordable healthcare act. Virginia has just signed on, belatedly, to the affordable healthcare act. I am in the national fight with most Members, certainly on my side of the aisle, to maintain that law. And we have maintained that law. In spite of President Trump's attempt to overturn it. In spite of more than 40 attempts by my Republican colleagues to overturn it. D.C. needed it, because with the ACA, 96 percent of D.C. residents are now covered by healthcare. That means virtually everybody. But in that effort I am in league with other Members on a national law. That is what I should be paying attention to, first and foremost. Another example of a national law which is important to the Nation and to me is passage of the Dream Act, to protect these children who were brought to the United States as infants or small children by their parents, who know no other country, and now face deportation because technically they, of course, are not citizens; even though they don't know El Salvador or Mexico or any other of the countries from which they would have come. Of the 800,000 Dreamers, 800 of them are in the District of Columbia, so I am like many Members who come to the floor on that issue. But that is a national bill. That is what I am supposed to do in the Congress. In our city, if somehow we could not save the Dreamers, that would be $50 million annually gone from our economy; that is how productive they are. I have had a town meeting with them. These are the most impressive young people I have ever seen speak to our residents. Mr. Speaker, could I ask how much time I have remaining. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bacon). The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia has 27 minutes remaining. Ms. NORTON. After you have heard all of these abuses of American democracy, you may have some understanding why I believe that the District of Columbia should become a State, and why statehood is the only remedy for the abuses that I have described. But, do not think that there are no Republicans who understand some of the issues I have described. I regret that my good friend, a conservative Republican, Representative Darrell Issa--and I say I regret, because I don't think that every Republican should be put in the same category. I cite Rep. Darrell Issa, because he was chair of a committee on which I serve, and decided to have a hearing on our local jurisdiction. He asked the Mayor to come, the chair of the City Council, and those who handle the budget. He listened and he indicated his surprise to know that the District's financial condition and reserves and its growth as a local economy, were among the best in the Nation. After that hearing, learning, for example, that our budget was the envy of the States, Representative Issa himself endorsed budget autonomy and worked tirelessly with me and with local officials, as well as Republican interest groups, to try to secure at least the autonomy over our budget; at least over our budget. These are what we call the components of statehood. So even if my Republican friends are not for statehood, there is no reason not to be or to stand against the elements of statehood. And we certainly may well get those before we get statehood itself. For example, clemency. The President has the authority of clemency over the District of Columbia. Well, he doesn't know a thing about the District and, as a result, when clemency comes out, normally the District inmates are not even included. That is a classic matter for local governments. Yes, budget autonomy is one of them. Even the District's local laws have to come here and sit for 60 days, 30 days, or for criminal laws, 60 days, to see if anybody wants to overturn these laws. This is a remnant of more than 200 years ago, when the District had no home rule, as we called it, or self-government. Of course the Congress doesn't choose to use that section, so they could get rid of this legislative autonomy because they reserve their energy for the budget. With a budget here, they use that as the vehicle to overturn the District's laws. {time} 1330 What I think most Members of Congress do not know is that the District's local economy is one of the strongest in the Nation, and let me prove that. It has got a $12.5 billion budget. That is larger than the budget of 12 States. My district has a $1.75 billion surplus. That kind of surplus, that large surplus, almost $2 billion, is the envy of the States. My district has a per capita income higher than that of any State, higher than that of California, of Massachusetts, of New York. That is one of the reasons why the people I represent pay the highest taxes per capita in the United States. The total income of the residents of the District of Columbia is higher than the income of seven States. Its consumption, given its income expenditures, is higher than those of any State. And, of course, what we are seeing is a city that is flourishing. Its population growth rate is the highest since the 2010 Census. In fact, the District now has a larger population, as I indicated, than two other States that have representation to vote on this House floor. DC would only qualify for one vote, and Vermont and Wyoming, have two Senators as well--even with fewer residents than the number who live in the Nation's Capital. One way to understand why the residents of the District of Columbia resent being treated as second-class citizens is to understand its highest tax rate, Federal tax rate--the highest in the Nation--amounts to $12,000 per resident, more per capita than any residents of any States. Yet no matter what the bill, no matter how impacted the District is, I will not vote on that bill. What hurts more than the failure to allow the District to vote on most bills is the failure to allow the District to vote on bills to go to war. The residents of this city have fought and died in every war, including the war that created the United States of America. Please remember the slogan that the Framers and the residents threw up to win their freedom. It wasn't, ``Freedom in the large.'' It was, ``No taxation without representation.'' We ask for statehood based on the original understanding of the Founders of our Nation who were willing and, indeed, did go to war for the principle of no taxation without representation. Well, the people I represent have gone to war without a vote to go to war and without a vote upon returning from war. The sacrifices should be clear to see. World War I--and here we are talking about casualties--more than three States. World War II, more casualties from the District of Columbia than four States. And then it only goes up. The Korean war had more casualties than eight States. And, of course, the Vietnam war had more casualties than 10 States. That ought to be reason enough for the District of Columbia to be made the 51st State. More important than paying the highest Federal taxes per capita, more important than being excluded from a vote on the floor of the Senate, it is the sacrifices our residents have made for their country that speak loudest, most prophetically, about the right of residents to be treated equally. May I inquire of the time remaining, please. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman has 15\1/2\ minutes remaining. Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, it is not as if the Congress of the United States has never understood the injustices before you. The reason I come to the House floor today is because there is turnover in the House all the time and many Members have never heard this until now. And why not? Because you don't listen to what happens to somebody else's district. You are too busy dealing with your own district. That is how we like it, and that is how we would like to make it for every Member of the House. Yes, almost 45 years ago, the House understood the injustice of what was then the case. The District had no self- [[Page H5012]] government. It intermittently had some self-government in the 19th century--and may I add, that the height of that self-government was about the same as the District has now: a Delegate Member of the House and the right to local government. And who gave them that? It was the post-Civil War Congress, which was a Republican Congress. The Republicans lost their way, and they are chiefly responsible now for the District's not having what their own party understood should happen after the Civil War. They had fought a Civil War for democracy for everyone, and they, indeed, began the home rule process that was lost after Reconstruction and renewed again almost 45 years ago with the 1974 Home Rule Act. Here again in the 20th it wasn't the Democrats who were solely responsible. Yes, it was a Democratic Congress, but it was a Republican President, President Richard Nixon. He said, in signing the Home Rule Act: ``As a longtime supporter of self-government for the District of Columbia, I am pleased to sign into law a measure which is of historic significance for the citizens of our Nation's Capital.'' Remember, this is President Nixon talking, saying: ``I first voted for home rule as a Member of the House of Representatives in 1948, and I have endorsed the enactment of home rule legislation during both my terms as President.'' Then he went on to say: ``. . . it is particularly appropriate to assure those persons who live in our Capital City rights and privileges which have long been enjoyed by most of their countrymen.'' That was a Republican President and a Democratic House acting in a bipartisan way to give the District self-government, a self-government which it has handled better than most of the State and city governments since. And that is not the only example of Republicans working with us to do what almost surely will take some bipartisanship. Representative Tom Davis of Virginia worked with me on a bill that, in fact, got a vote in both houses and, indeed, we would now have in the District, a House vote if that bill had passed. I was in the minority. Representative Tom Davis was in the majority as a Republican. I regret that he has resigned from Congress to go on to higher and better things, as he saw it. He worked with me and had hearings. What he discovered was that the State of Utah, a very Republican State, had missed getting a vote it thought due that State, and Representative Davis discussed with me the possibility of pairing the District of Columbia with Utah--one Democratic vote and one Republican vote--and nobody would gain if the District got a House vote. Now, Representative Tom Davis was not for statehood, but he did not believe that we would call it the people's House without giving the residents of the District of Columbia a vote in that House. The Governor of Utah came to testify for it. The Republican Members from the House and the Senate voted for it. It was a one-to-one, and it was perhaps the best chance for voting rights, certainly, that we have had since the creation of the Republic. Well, if we got that kind of bipartisan support for at least the House vote, why doesn't the District of Columbia have a vote on the House floor as I speak? The answer is that the National Rifle Association succeeded in getting a Member to attach to the bill, in the House, an amendment that, in exchange for the House vote, the District would have had to give up all of its gun safety laws. I have just indicated to you the kinds of sacrifice that would have meant. The assault weapons ban would be gone, just to name, perhaps, the worst of them. That is an offer we had to refuse, and it is the closest we have come to equal rights as a Federal district. But it is not the closest we will ever come. We will give priority during the next Congress to budget autonomy, autonomy over our own budget; legislative autonomy, to keep our legislation from having to come to this floor. A local prosecutor--the DA who everyone associates with your local jurisdiction is not who enforces criminal law in the District of Columbia. It is the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who does both local law, local criminal law, and, of course, Federal law. Mayoral control over the National Guard; your Governor can call out your National Guard because only he knows the ins and outs of safety when there are issues affecting the National Guard. The National Guard is usually used for things that are local in nature, such as hurricanes and flooding. {time} 1345 The President knows almost nothing about that or about the authority to grant clemency, as I mentioned earlier in these remarks. Also, of course, control over the appointment of local judges and the operations of the local courts. Yes, D.C. courts are title I courts. What that means is that these judges who handle only local matters--local criminal and civil matters--are appointed by the President of the United States and have to stand in line to get approved by the Senate of the United States. I have simply summarized some of the hardships of not being treated as an equal jurisdiction under the Constitution of the United States and some of the benefits of citizenship that the District would obtain if such equality were indeed granted. It is true that the District has never achieved this equality, but I do not fret that it is out of hand. When the next Congress resumes, I have indicated any number of things I will pursue. In addition, if my party controls this Chamber, I will ask for a vote on the House floor. I will ask for that vote, even though I am not certain by any means that that vote would result in statehood. I will ask for that vote, because I want to put it to this body exactly what it means not to have the same rights they have. When my party controlled this House, I did not get statehood, but I was able to get what is called the vote in the Committee of the Whole. That is a vote on some business on the House floor. My Republican friends actually sued the House for allowing the District of Columbia, whose residents are number one per capita in Federal taxes, this vote on the House floor. They went to the Federal District Court, then to the Court of Appeals, but they did not have the gumption to go to the Supreme Court. So I voted for my District at least on some matters in the Committee of the Whole. And I will seek that vote, even short of statehood. I represent one of the Nation's oldest cities. I represent 700,000 residents who have overpaid their dues--have overpaid them in war, have overpaid them in taxes. We are overdue as we pursue democracy for other people around the world in assuring that there is democracy for everyone in our own country. We should begin with the residents of our own proud Nation's capital. I ask the House to think deeply about what lies in your hands, and that is not only the ability, but the obligation to make the 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia whole by making the District of Columbia the 51st State of the United States of America. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________