Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. It has been remarkable, in a debate where Republicans invoke democracy, to hear Republican after Republican come to the House floor and say that they want the District of Columbia ceded to Maryland, without indicating that the Maryland delegation has given permission to accept the District of Columbia. If you believe in democracy, I suggest you ask the State of Maryland before you cede back anything to that State.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. When the Constitution was written, first of all, Senators weren't popularly elected; they were appointed, not elected, number one. Number two, when the Constitution was written there was a 10-year period during which the District essentially had all the same rights it had always had because the Framers guaranteed to Maryland and Virginia they would not lose those rights. So when the seat moved over and it became the jurisdiction of the Congress, only the Congress could fulfill the mandate now that the city was under its jurisdiction to grant the city the right to vote. We are asking for the right to vote only in the House. And the Senate, somebody would have had to appoint Senators at the time. So that could not have been done.

Ms. NORTON. Has he agreed therefore to support the bill when in fact the vote is taken?

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. NORTON. I will support that, if the gentleman will support this bill by voting for it on the floor.

Ms. NORTON. I can understand why the Members on that side don't want to be spoken to directly. Nobody knows what would have been the result of that vote. The least of all who know is the other side. One thing we do know is that it was a perversion. It would have been a perversion to even allow a vote about guns, a vote about guns that would have deprived the District of its own right to decide the issue in order to decide whether it should have a vote. The decision therefore to pull the bill was legal and the delay saved the principle that we should be voting on one basic right, the basic right that is before us today in the House Voting Rights Act.

Ms. NORTON. Reclaiming my time, it is certainly true that the vote was delayed and it was legal to delay it. By delaying the vote, do you know what the leaders of this House did? They saved the reputation of this House throughout the world. No one knows what would have happened. But no vote on guns occurred. You don't know what would have happened. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Ms. NORTON. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman argues about an unprecedented procedure. What about the unprecedented procedure that the other side used to delay this bill, sending the message around the world to delay this bill when it was delayed the last time? This procedure is legal. Therefore, if you want to use procedure to stop the bill, you should say so. The fact is you have raised a constitutional point. You are not a constitutional scholar, and no Member of this House is, even I, who was a constitutional lawyer. Therefore, when in doubt about something as precious as the right to vote, when the people we are talking about have paid taxes and have gone to war since the birth of the Republic, surely we should err on the side of encouraging everybody to vote for the bill, send it to the Senate, and let the one institution that can decide constitutional questions, the Supreme Court, make that decision.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I respect the gentleman, who indeed has, as always, given me and the city respect, and I know he understands what it must be like to be in the Congress for 17 years and come to the floor and see people debating your budget and your laws and you can't even vote on them. I appreciate that the gentleman came to the floor on procedural matters. If the differences between the gentleman and me are on procedure, would not the better side of valor be to allow people on both sides to understand that you favor voting rights; and if your problem is constitutionality, I am sure the gentleman will understand that there is a third branch of government who can decide this matter for us both, particularly since he concedes that opinion on the constitutional question is divided.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker will the gentleman yield?

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, for more than 4 years, thousands of Americans and others around the world have sought this bill and contributed ideas, time and effort, beginning with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who added to her long and unequivocal push for full rights for District citizens, her personal attention and intervention when it counted most to move this bill forward. And majority leader Steny Hoyer, whose outspoken dedication to our rights overcame procedural malevolence to bring today's bill forward. However, the idea originally came from the Republican side. When I was in the minority, moved by his personal sense of right and wrong, Congressman Tom Davis smartly and doggedly started us down the bipartisan path to equal votes for the District and for Utah. Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, since his election in 1964, has robustly argued that rights for D.C. residents must match their burdens. Henry Waxman, first as ranking member, now as Chair, began leading a principled effort for equal rights for D.C. citizens long before I was elected to Congress. Utah Governor John Huntsman, and the Utah delegation, Representatives Bishop, Cannon and Matheson, forged a unique partnership on their understanding that Utah and D.C. residents felt the same sense of loss and should obtain these precious rights together. The local and national civil rights organizations formed themselves into a formidable D.C. voting rights coalition, led by D.C. Vote, which gave the effort, organizational know-how and boundless dedication, and the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, which has carried D.C. voting rights as a major civil rights cause for decades. The official international human rights entities abroad have gone on record to ask the United States of America to conform with international law by granting voting rights to the citizens of its capital. My own colleagues of both parties, who passed this bill in committees by overwhelming votes, 29-4, 24-5 and 21-13, especially my Republican colleagues, have joined this effort for the District of Columbia and for Utah out of principle. The District of Columbia's four home rule mayors and city councils, particularly current Mayor Adrian Fenty and City Council Chair Vincent Gray, and, most especially, the residents of this city, living and dead, have fought for equal citizenship over the ages. Today, we will get the vote I predict, at least in the House. Mr. Speaker, I give great praise to a State which is the most Republican State in the Union for having unabashedly and continuously joined with us out of a deep sense of grievance of its own, that its missionaries, temporarily abroad in the service of their church, were not counted in the last census, and, thus, the State was deprived of a seat that they believed they were entitled to. I would like to quote Governor John Huntsman, the Governor of the State, who came and said, ``I have not extensively studied the constitutionality of the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, but I am impressed and persuaded by the scholarship represented. The people of Utah have expressed outrage over the loss of one congressional seat for the last 6 years. I share their outrage. I can't imagine what it must be like for American citizens to have no representation for over 200 years.'' We will pass this bill today. We will put it in the hands of two Republican Senators from Utah, Senators Hatch and Bennett, and there I believe it will fare well, because the people of Utah want this vote, their vote, as much as we want our vote. I ask, in testament to that, that two editorials from the Salt Lake Tribune be included for the Record. [From the Salt Lake Tribune, Mar. 13, 2007] Utah's 4th Seat: One Quibble Aside, New Bill Would Do the Right Thing It's back. A bill before Congress would give the District of Columbia its first voting member of the House of Representatives and Utah its fourth seat in that body. We favor it because Utah's rapidly growing population is entitled to a fourth seat. There are things about the bill that could be better, but the overriding principles are right. The 600,000 people of the District of Columbia have a delegate in the House but she cannot vote on the floor, That's a cruel irony in a nation that fancies itself a beacon of republican democracy. That situation is an accident of constitutional history. The founders fashioned D.C. so that no state would have the advantage of being the seat of the federal government. But it is the states, under the Constitution's language, that elect U.S. representatives and senators. For more than 200 years, that circumstance has denied the people of D.C. votes in Congress. This bill would rectify that by treating D.C. as a congressional district for purposes of representation in the House. At the same time, it would increase the membership of the House from 435 to 437. One seat would go to D.C. The second would go to the next state in line for another seat because of population growth, i.e., Utah. The reason for this second provision is to preserve the existing partisan balance in the House. D.C. presumably will elect a Democrat. Utah presumably will elect a Republican. Our major quibble with the bill, H.R. 1433, is that it would have Utah elect its new member-at-large, that is, statewide, rather than by congressional district, until after the 2010 census and reapportionment. We believe that is a mistake because it would allow every Utah voter to vote for two members of the House while every other voter in the U.S. could vote for only one. Besides, the Utah Legislature last year created four equal congressional districts in anticipation of an earlier version of this bill which failed in the last Congress. The at-large proposal would spare Utah's sitting members of the House from running in special elections to fill the four new seats. While that is a real hardship in terms of fundraising, it would be worthwhile to preserve the principle of equal representation. The quibble: The bill would have Utah elect its new member at large, that is, state-wide, rather than by congressional district, until after the 2010 census and reapportionment.

Ms. NORTON. I would be glad to do it. If the Member doesn't want to face me face to face, I will address the Speaker, you will get the point.

Ms. NORTON. I will not yield, sir. The District of Columbia has spent 206 years yielding to people who would deny them the vote. I yield you no ground, not during my time. You have had your say, and your say has been that you think that the people who live in your capital are not entitled to a vote in their House. Shame on you. Then they want an open rule. They want an open rule so they can deny the vote. The American people will have nothing but praise for the Democratic leadership because the Democratic leaders have found a way to observe two cardinal principles, the principle most basic of all, the right to vote, yes, the principle of fiscal responsibility. Now, the Democrats could never have thrown the foul ball that was used to delay this bill, and the reason is, of course, that the other side spent 12 years building a deficit and didn't observe the PAYGO rule, and so there would have been no germaneness issue. I don't think that was so smart. The bill was open to an outrageous attempt to repeal our gun laws. We are a free people. We are entitled to have the same jurisdiction over our gun laws they have, and we are going to insist on it. And the Democratic leaders did not bow to that trick. Instead, they went back and found a way to keep to the principle of finally paying for what we do, as you should have done for more than 10 years.

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the gentleman for his strong advocacy for the rights of all Americans. I must begin by saying when you hear people come to the floor and invoke the word ``fairness'' in a debate where they oppose the basic right to vote, they drain that word of all of its meaning. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the rule proper. I would like to offer some thanks during this rule period. And I would like to say a word about Utah, our very strong partner about whom we hear little because they are so far away. The other side, after the last vote on this bill, clucked that they had actually stopped our people in the Nation's Capital from getting a vote. Imagine how that was received all around the world. Now they come to the floor with the nerve to object to the procedure. Mind you, the substance is really what they are after. If in fact the District of Columbia was a largely Republican city, these Members would be on the floor arguing for voting rights for the District of Columbia just as the radical Republican abolitionists gave us the vote, which was then taken from us, and gave us home rule.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, today, I am again introducing the Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act (NDECA), as I have done since 1994, after working with the residents who were responsible for a ballot initiative passed by D.C. voters in 1993. NDECA will require the United States to disable and dismantle its nuclear weapons when all other nations possessing nuclear weapons enact laws to do the same. NDECA further provides that when U.S. nuclear weapons are dismantled, the resources for supporting nuclear weapon programs would be used for our growing human and infrastructure needs, such as housing, health care, Social Security and the environment. Tragically, instead of nuclear disarmament, nations around the world have increased in efforts to seek or acquire nuclear capability. Last week, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1737 (2006) under Article 41 of the Charter's Chapter VIII, imposing sanctions on Iran for failure to halt uranium enrichment and mandating that Iran cease all sensitive nuclear activities. China's acquisition of nuclear weapons particularly underscores the dangerous spread of these weapons as a potent destabilizing force in world affairs. North Korea, at least in part in response to early aggressive talk by this administration responded in a dangerously paranoid fashion by announcing that it is expanding its nuclear capabilities, and today few doubt that North Korea has acquired a nuclear device. The North Korean threat has become so serious that the Administration recently reversed course and agreed to freeze North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. India and Pakistan have moved back from the precipice of several years ago but each remains poised with nuclear weapons. The invasion of Iraq and the resistance of the Administration to end the war have cost the United States much of its leadership on the nuclear proliferation and other urgent international issues. This country would be non-credible in dissuading other nations who aspire to become or remain nuclear powers if we ourselves took greater initiative in dismantling our own nuclear weapons program. We moved in the right direction when the Senate ratified the Moscow Treaty in 2003, which provides that by 2012 both the U.S. and Russia will reduce their long- range warheads two-thirds from approximately 6,000 warheads each to 2,200. However, the Administration has failed to build on this effort. According to a recent study, Securing The Bomb: An Agenda for Action (May, 2004; prepared by the Belfer Center, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government): Total nuclear-threat-reduction spending remains less than one quarter of one percent of the U.S. military budget. Indeed, on average, the Bush administration requests for nuclear- threat-reduction spending over FY 2002--2005 have been less, in real terms, than the last Clinton administration request, made long before the 9/11 attacks ever occurred. Instead, the Administration has moved to increase the country's nuclear capacity. However, the problem today even more complicated than nuclear disarmament by nation states. The greatest threat today is from inadequately defended and guarded sites in many countries where there is enough material to make nuclear weapons and many opportunities for terrorists or nations without weapons to secure nuclear materials. Astonishingly, because of the absence of presidential leadership, less nuclear material was seized in the two years following the 9/11 attacks than in the 2 years immediately preceding the attacks (Securing The Bomb: An Agenda for Action, May 2004). In my work on the Homeland Security Committee, I know that threats from nuclear proliferation and available nuclear material are more dangerous in the post 9/11 era than in 1994, when I first introduced the Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act. It is more urgent than ever to begin closing down nuclear capability here and around the world. Today our country has 45 million people still without health insurance, a long list of other urgent domestic needs put on the back burner following the invasion of Iraq and large tax cuts to wealthy people and corporations, an economy burdened with a dangerous deficit, and millions of Americans pushed back into poverty during the last four years. As the only nation that has used nuclear weapons in war and still possesses the largest arsenal, the U.S. has an obligation to begin the arduous process of leading the world in the transfer of nuclear weapons funds to urgent domestic needs.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Thompson and the ranking member, Mr. Oberstar, and his ranking member as well for this very important legislation that has come forward today. Perhaps you, too, can hear the collective sighs of the American people now that we are doing something about rail and mass transit. They have wondered, and how could they not, whether the bombs that were planted in Madrid and in London would somehow find their way into their own subways or whether the Hazmat accidents could be more than that here in this country. I was moved by these vulnerabilities to be the lead sponsor first of the Safe TRAINS Act, then the Secure TRAINS Act. After all, 800,000 Federal workers use our Metro daily. That did not inspire the Federal Government to move forward. Finally, we have a bipartisan bill to relieve the national anxiety of the average American about the forms of transportation she uses most. They watched as we poured billions into air travel security. We had to do it, it was after the fact. But we left huge vulnerabilities. Union Station, for example, the hub of the entire region, you have beneath it the trains running underneath a hall where Members every other day come to celebrate in the evening one or the other kind of event. The District of Columbia was driven by the vacuum to actually pass its own rerouting legislation that has not even been dismissed ever yet. That shows you how vulnerable we are. The bill finally instructs the Department of Homeland Security to exercise leadership, to use its expertise so that transit systems are not working on security on a case-by-case basis. We can't protect the country by shoring up one mode of transportation alone--a virtual invitation to then move elsewhere. I think there is an important lesson here. I am on the Aviation Subcommittee, so I have wanted to shore up air travel. But by shoring up one mode of transportation, we may be offering a virtual invitation for terrorists to go to the next most vulnerable target. That turns out to be rail and mass transit, where we could least afford terrorist events. That is where the American people are. I thank both sides of the aisle for coming together on this bill to go precisely where they are to protect the public at last.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I ask my colleagues not to be fooled. The House will give you plenty of times to vote on guns in the District of Columbia. This is not a motion to recommit, it is a motion to shoot the bill dead. Most of the time you can vote for the motion to recommit and still save the bill. Not true here. If you vote for the motion to recommit, you will kill this bill. Please do not do it. This matter is in the courts. No matter what we do here, it is a nullity because it is now in the Federal courts, and it is in the Federal courts, on a constitutional question, and that will rule the day. These people are trying to kill voting rights for the District of Columbia. They have prevailed on guns here before, they will do it again. Those of you who are for guns and for voting rights for the District of Columbia, vote against the motion to recommit or else you are voting against voting rights for the residents of the District of Columbia.

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I want to end this debate by finally letting genuine constitutional scholars speak to this bill. To guarantee the Framers' promise to the citizens of Maryland and Virginia, who contributed their land to form this Capital City, the very first Congress enforced the District clause of the Constitution by law, guaranteeing the status quo during the 10- year transition period, and they said, by law thereafter, as memorialized in the Constitution itself. The Framers had left Congress fully armed with ``exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatsoever,'' which former Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth Starr, who testified in favor of the bill, said, left Congress with power ``majestic in scope.'' Professor Viet Dinh, President Bush's former Attorney General for Legal Policy, his point man on the Constitution in the Ashcroft Justice Department, testified in two separate committees that the bill is constitutional. He said that since the birth of the Republic, the courts and the Congress itself have treated the District as a State in treaties and in statutes and in applying the Constitution to the city. Members who reject the views even of conservative scholars and of the Supreme Court and the Federal courts supporting their views should be confident to send this bill to a conservative Supreme Court. Members are elected officials who can neither run nor hide behind their personal and inexpert views on the Constitution. Another branch will be held fully accountable for that weighty decision. Our decision, in just a few minutes, is just as weighty, today when the world sees us at war, we say, to spread democracy and wants to know whether we practice democracy or merely preach it. Our decision comes down to whether this House wants to be remembered for granting the vote or denying it, and whether this place will be the people's House or the House for some of the people.

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, has the gentleman yielded back his time?

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the Chair of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis). (Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the chairman of the Oversight Committee without whose leadership we could not have come to this day, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman). (Mr. WAXMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me his time. Madam Speaker, this bill is covered with the full handprints of scores of Members, beginning on the other side of the aisle with Congressman Tom Davis, who planted and tirelessly cultivated the seed; and Utah Members Cannon and Bishop, joined by Mr. Matheson, the State's only Democratic Member. However, it was leadership that got us to this historic day, especially Speaker Pelosi's personal insistence, Majority Leader Hoyer's outspoken energy, Chairman Conyers' decades of persistence and Chairman Waxman's indispensable guidance. I am inspired daily by the citizens of this city, personified by Emory Kosh, a staff assistant in my office here in the House whose second child was born while he was serving in Iraq. Emory's military service follows in the tradition of D.C. residents, who first fought in the Revolutionary War to establish ``the Republic for which we stand,'' have fought and died for their country in every war since, and, like other Americans, have always been obliged to pay Federal income taxes, today ranking second among the 50 States and the District of Columbia in taxes paid to support the Government of the United States. Today, I come forward in their name. Our forefathers in this city were the three Virginians who signed the Constitution and the three signers from Maryland. Yet some seriously argue that the Virginians, the Marylanders and the other Framers fresh from the Revolutionary War, waged specifically to obtain representation, contributed land where thousands of their own residents resided, some of them veterans of the Revolutionary War, and then signed away their rights in the new Constitution. However you vote on the District's voting rights, do not slander the Framers. For two centuries, the fault has been right here in the Congress, not the flawed vision of the Framers. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I just want to say, I will not object. I will not object, out of the sense of fairness that I hope that every Member will bring with them to the floor when the time comes to vote on this bill. I will not object, because Mr. Rohrabacher, who may disagree with my bill, has at least understood that the Republic will not go on as long as the residents of the Nation's capital are denied a vote in the Congress and has himself introduced his own version of a voting rights bill.