Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the leadership of the gentleman from Illinois and his counterpart on the other side of the aisle for her leadership in bringing forward this important resolution. I want to recognize the leadership of two gentlemen from Georgia, of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop) who is the sponsor of this resolution for stepping forward with a resolution that belongs on the floor, and, of course, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) who has just spoken, who led a commemoration in Statuary Hall for the 40th anniversary of the march before recess, and who is the last remaining living leader of the civil rights march on Washington. He led us, who were then members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, as a very young, the younger leader then, and he continues in that role as one of America's preeminent civil rights leaders today. I do not think this is an occasion for doing what people around the country have been doing all through August, were you there. Of course, we were there, and people really think about being there in a way they ask where were you when John F. Kennedy was killed. They remember where they were then or where were you on September 11. The march on Washington is like that for millions of Americans, where were you, and people like to say I was there, and of course, people are very proud of having been there because it was the first civil rights march for equality in the history of the United States here in Washington. I was there as a law student, a staff member of the march on Washington. Frankly, this is not a time for nostalgia. I think that grand occasions like this, when we commemorate a change-making event like a march on Washington, are occasions for taking stock, the distance traveled, the distance to go. Nothing could have been more moving than the events around the 40th anniversary, our own commemoration, here in the House, the moment the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) will remember when he and Mrs. King and I unveiled that stone marker and saw for the first time the marker where Martin Luther King spoke before, now on the Lincoln Memorial. Three of Reverend King's four children were there, the very four children he spoke of in that speech on August 28, 1963. This is an occasion, if one is a Member of the House of Representatives, for looking at how the world has changed since then and how the civil rights movement has changed our world. When the march was held, essentially African Americans had carried one demand, one single demand for the more than hundred years since the civil war. It was not a plethora of issues we had before us. It was one demand: Enact into law, country of mine, equality unto law. That is all. After that march, that happened, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Little did I know then that I would come to enforce a section of that Act, Title VII, as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 15 years later. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, perhaps the most important because it empowered African Americans to do what they had to do for themselves; and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Actually, much of the legislative agenda of black America has been accomplished if we think about actual laws that need to be written to say thou shalt not discriminate. We will have a hard time thinking about it. Most of our time will be spent on enforcement. There is one I hope this House thinks about and that is a law that should be attached to the Transportation Bill outlawing racial profiling. Mr. Speaker, that is the single example of overt discrimination left unattended in our laws. But while we had one challenge and I can tell Members that staff had no problem coming up with that idea at the March on Washington, today if I would ask what is the one demand of the civil rights movement, Members would say wait one moment, and then go down a whole list of demands because we can now come forward with those demands: economic parity; educational opportunities; the criminal justice system where a whole generation of young black men are being locked up for minor drug offenses, killing the black family in our community; health care. We can move on to these challenges. We have 38 African American Members, and we can move on to these challenges because the civil rights movement moved us on, the overriding challenge of equality under law. There is much to be done even to that reality, equality under law; but the resolution we honor today, the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, should send us first into reflection about moving toward the completion of the job of laying aside our racial past and moving on into a period of full equality.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the work of one of the finest public servants with whom I have had the pleasure of working in the District of Columbia. After 30 years, Herbert Leonard, Jr., a native Washingtonian, will be retiring from his position as the Government Relations Officer for the District of Columbia at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority WMATA. WMATA will be losing a valued employee and I will be losing a treasured counsel and advocate. Since 1973, Herb has worked closely with other elected and government officials in the District of Columbia as well as civic associations, advisory neighborhood commissions and businesses. Over the years, many of these groups have recognized Herb for his efforts in their communities. Today I, too, honor his work. I cannot count the number of times that Herb has gone above and beyond the parameters of his job in order to assist me in bringing comfort and support to my constituents. Whether facilitating transportation for a constituent with disabilities or helping disadvantaged children at my annual Christmas parties, Herb has been dedicated, respectful, and responsive to the needs of the people of the District of Columbia, particularly those in the greatest need of assistance. With his energy and intelligence, Herb Leonard could have been a success in any line of work he desired. Indeed, Herb holds several U.S. patents and in 1965, he was chosen by then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, as one of 85 prominent black businessmen to visit predominately black colleges in order to convince minority youth of the importance of getting a good education and to encourage them to take advantage of the increasing career opportunities in business and industry. With the world at his feet, Herb chose to make public service his vocation, and for that, we should all be grateful. Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to join me in wishing Mr. Leonard the very best in his new endeavors.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, this House has a proud bipartisan record of reserving scarce Federal funds for public education. We cannot convincingly make the District of Columbia an exception to that record. The majority of the city council, the majority of the elected members of the school board, and as the member who has represented the city for 13 years, the majority of the residents of the city are just like your districts and overwhelmingly oppose vouchers. Hundreds of them, led by the clergy of our city ministers and rabbis, came to fan out to tell the Congress that just last week. If you are willing to vote to give public money to private schools this year, you better be prepared to answer back home. Of course you can say, well, the District of Columbia is different; you know, the schools are so bad. There are school districts exactly like the District of Columbia in every State of the Union. Those of you from Michigan know about Detroit. If you come from Georgia, you know about Atlanta. If you come from Connecticut, you know about Bridgeport. If you come from Texas, you know about Houston and Dallas. And I do not know all of your rural districts, but I am sure they will match the District in test scores and all the rest of the deprivations that lead to bad schools. So you go home, if you will, and tell them that in the year when the unkept promise of special education remains outstanding, while the schools in your district are being called shortchanged, that is okay; there was one district in the United States that I was willing to give private money for public schools. So you go home and tell them, well, I am not for it here, because that is the hypocrisy I hear time and again, but this is one district in the whole United States that I was willing to dig in my Federal pocket and draw out some public money for private schools and it will never happen again. There is a 5-year appropriation here. You will be doing it year after year. And you go home and tell them, when there is a backlash now developing against the bipartisan No Child Left Behind, that that $9 billion unfunded mandate, that is okay, we are taking care of that. Meanwhile, we had some private schools in the District of Columbia that we simply had to fund this year. This is a voucher-only bill. If you vote for the Davis amendment, you are voting for vouchers for our country. If you vote ``yes'' on final, you are voting vouchers if the Davis amendment is in the bill. Vote ``no'' on Davis. Vote ``no'' on final passage. Do not flip-flop on vouchers. You will pay the price. We will try to see to it that you do.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to close for my side with one word. Opposition to private school vouchers is one of the few bipartisan policy issues remaining in our country today. You will seldom find an issue where almost two-thirds of the American people are in agreement. And what they believe, according to all the data, is that money from the public Treasury should not be siphoned off to private schools. Diversion via the Davis amendment would begin that process for the first time in U.S. history. I ask my colleagues to think about the momentous nature of this vote and to vote against the Davis amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Virginia is not only a good personal friend, he is a good professional friend, and he has always been a good friend of the District. More often than not we are on this floor arguing on the same side, fighting for what the majority in the District wants, including the majority of the members of the council and the majority of the elected members of the school board. This happens to be an exception, but we are going to keep on working together because we are so close. It is ironic, I must say to my good friend though, that he has got a legislative rider on here. He made two points of order today. He is regularly on the floor opposing Committee on Government Reform riders, but he has taken this bill to the Committee on Rules in order to allow himself to put a rider on this bill. This bill legislates on an appropriations bill. But I really want to use my time not to rehash the arguments we have heard, but to make some corrections based on what I have heard. My good friend from Virginia earlier said during the debate that the District spent more than Arlington and Fairfax, and some others have gotten up to say that we spend more than any other State. I keep hearing that. It keeps being said. It is false. I want to read from an official schools document: ``Despite differences in student needs, even with Federal funds included, the D.C. public schools spend less per pupil than Arlington or Alexandria, and not much more than Montgomery or Fairfax.'' Remember, Montgomery and Fairfax spend a whole lot of money on children that are not at all disadvantaged, and huge numbers of mine are severely disadvantaged. The gentlewoman from Pennsylvania said that our schools would actually be better off without these 2,000 children. Actually, we will lose $25 million in combined Federal and local per-pupil funding because schools are funded on a per-pupil basis, and that is in addition to the $40 million that the schools are already being cut this year. It certainly is not true that we are saying to our children, and I would certainly never say it, Hey, wait until the schools are fixed. Indeed, we applaud the options that are available to our public schools; the largest number of charter schools in the country, the transformation schools, which have seen a breakthrough in test scores that no public or private school has ever done for our most needy children, our out-of-boundary possibilities for our children. I applaud especially the work of the Washington Scholarship Fund. That is for now. The Washington Scholarship Fund, which with private money as I speak is doing exactly what this bill will do, but probably will not do it if this bill passes, because Federal money will replace their private money that they have been using, much to their credit, to send our children to local private schools. We want our own choices. That is all we are asking. You take your choices, the ones you have in your districts. Leave us to our own choices. Do not accuse us of giving no choices to our children. The most important thing I could say at this time, though, would be to correct the notion that the so-called three-sector approach, which developed only after there was great criticism of vouchers in the District of Columbia, somehow amounts to an equivalence of funding for the charter and public schools with vouchers. Please hear me on this: this Davis bill has 5 years of authorization for vouchers. What happens for the public and charter schools is this year, on a one-time-only appropriation, we throw some money at the public schools in order to ease the way for vouchers. I was able to get money for our charter schools, a great deal more than this last year, without having to pay a price in vouchers. Next year I guess we will have to come begging at the table because, unlike the voucher money, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) had the opportunity to add public schools in a bill I offered in committee that would have put us on the same footing, but we are not on the same footing. We have got 5 years of vouchers, one-time-only money for the public schools, in this appropriation. That is the most problematic money the Congress ever has to offer. We have been demonizing the public schools of the District of Columbia. Be my guest. But if you expect that sending our children to private schools will correct their problems, then you need to look at the GAO study of 10 years of experience in all the schools that have used vouchers. What they have found is there is no significant difference between the children using the vouchers in their performance on tests and the children who are in the public schools. Thirty-seven States have turned down vouchers. If you vote for the Davis amendment, you are voting for a private school voucher and a voucher only. We do not think that that vote will pass silently into the night. We believe that a vote for vouchers anywhere in the country, especially in this economic climate, will be heard and felt throughout the country, and especially in your own districts. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen) who has worked in such a bipartisan fashion with the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) on this appropriation. I want to thank them both for their bipartisanship, bipartisanship without compromising their principles, but also for their sensitivity to home rule and the fact that this is an independent jurisdiction that ought to be able to speak up for itself the way jurisdictions of every Member of this House can. I am proud how far our city has come under the leadership of Mayor Williams and City Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp and our city council. We have come a very long way from insolvency to a city now that is in better shape than most jurisdictions in the United States because of the prudence of our local leadership. I want to talk about what this bill is about because this is not our usual D.C. appropriation where I would normally thank the President for funding my tuition access bill, and let me do it anyway, probably the most popular legislation in the District of Columbia because it allows young people to go to any State-supported institution anywhere in the United States; but nobody will remember the D.C. appropriation 2003 for anything but one issue. Members simply have to concentrate on what they are voting on. This is a bill with a vouchers-only provision. We will hear promises about maybe in the Senate they will have some money. That bill is in huge trouble in the Senate, and of course some money has been put in for public funding when there was an uproar in the city about funding vouchers, and then the pro-voucher officials came forward and said wait a minute, we have a three-sector approach, and we will get some money for the public schools, too. But everybody understands the public money is a cover for vouchers. It is a way to take the sting out of vouchers. This is one of the most anti-voucher jurisdictions in the United States of America. They have tried it here for 20 years, and this is a jurisdiction which sent me, their Congresswoman, time and again, back here to ask Members to veto their appropriation to keep vouchers from being attached to it until President Clinton could somehow negotiate them off. So the people of the District of Columbia have not turned around on a dime and flip-flopped and said we want vouchers. All Members need to do is sit in my office and they will know where they stand, because the elected officials, the majority of the elected officials of the school board, the majority of the city council, have written to you to say we do not want vouchers. What is important for every Member to know and to understand is that this is not only a vouchers-only bill so that is what Members are going to be voting on, but this will be the first time in the United States of America that the Congress of the United States has sent money to private schools, something that huge numbers of Members on the other side of the aisle have crossed to this side of the aisle to vote with us to say we will never do. There is a reason people do not do it. They do not do it in part because two-thirds of the American people oppose vouchers, if we want to get down to particulars. But this year is the last time we would want them to do it because this is the year when if Members went home for recess, Members heard a bipartisan backlash against a bipartisan bill, the No Child Left Behind bill, because people are now beginning to pay the unfunded mandate for No Child Left Behind, and now Members are going to vote to send money to private schools with that $9 billion unfunded mandate. Schools are in the worst crisis that they have been in our country since World War II, the worst funding crisis, according to all of the data coming forward. What do Members have in your own districts on CNN and everywhere else? Slick, expensive ads, national TV, the opening salvo to a new nationwide drive for vouchers in every district, just as that well-funded set of forces have wanted to do for some time. If Members pass this bill, if Members vote for vouchers, they will send a signal to every private school in the country, every organization of private schools, to every organization of religious schools, that this is the time to bring pressure to get the same kind of private school deal that the District of Columbia got, and Members can expect the same slick ads right in their district. Mr. Chairman, many Members have heard from our mayor. He is my good friend, and will continue to be my good friend, even on an issue like this. We will continue to work closely on the issues affecting our city. He has pressed this Congress, but he has not successfully pressed the elected officials of the District of Columbia or the people of the District of Columbia. We have the letter from the council chair and Members have the letter from the parents' association. Perhaps Members saw the hundreds of D.C. residents, led by ministers and rabbis who fanned out all over this Congress on Wednesday to say do not do vouchers in this city. We are not to be your pilot. Do not experiment in the District of Columbia, experiment in your own States. The city has a situation here which is not cost free. We are undergoing $40 million in cuts, another $25 million will go out if 2,000 students exit if the schools are funded on a per-pupil basis. D.C. has a $50 million unfunded No Child Left Behind mandate right now. All of our elected officials should be down here trying to get that money the way Members of Congress have. The District of Columbia wants Congress to respect their alternatives. We are ahead of virtually every district in this Congress on alternatives. We have our own charter schools, the largest number in the United States per capita. They have long waiting lists. Those are the chosen options of our people by our people. We have 15 transformation schools for the poorest children in the District of Columbia, the first breakthrough in Stanford 9 scores in the history of the city. That breakthrough will no longer occur unless the funding that the city has put in continues. And then, of course, a child in the District of Columbia can go out of boundaries; something that Members' districts have yet to do or have finally been mandated to do, we have been doing for decades. Members do not want vouchers in their districts. They have been voted down on the floor. I represent this District of Columbia. I am here to tell Members you do not want them in your district, and we do not want them in our district. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it is not because a huge majority, almost two-thirds of the American people, oppose vouchers; and why would Members think it would be any different in the District of Columbia? It is no different. Mr. Chairman, Members should not forget where their constituents stand when they cast their vote today. I certainly have not forgotten where mine stand.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, this amendment promises to be perhaps the first of three voucher-only votes in this body at this time. The first will be on this bill to remove or strike the funding for vouchers; the second would be the Davis bill, which will try to legislate vouchers onto this appropriation; and, of course, if vouchers remain in the bill, the third would be the vote on the bill itself. The $10 million in this bill is not a lot of money, and that is really not what this controversy is about. It does not look like a lot until you look at where it comes from and where it is going and what will follow as a result of our vote. First of all, first let us look at where the money is coming from. This money has come straight out of education. It took a vote in the Committee on Appropriations transferring money from the Labor-Education appropriation over to the District appropriation in order to fund this bill. It came straight out of education for this bill. So we already see that this is not new money, as has been claimed, that this is money straight out of education, and that is where voucher money always comes from, because there is only one pot of money. Different folks may designate that pot, but there is only one pot of money, and that is where this money is coming from. It is coming from it for the first time, if you vote for this bill and against my amendment. If you indeed vote to allow vouchers to remain in this bill, it will not go unnoted. I do not know where you were at recess, but I know that every State in the Union is crying about unkept promises for Federal money. The biggest unkept promise is special education, which is taking down education systems in entire States, including the District of Columbia. We promised 40 percent. We have not come close to that. Then, of course, there is the backlash against the No Child Left Behind bill. That was a bipartisan bill. We are losing folks everywhere because of that unfunded mandate, because there are going to be children that are not going to be able to graduate from high school because the funding to help them prepare for the tests is not there. As long as there are mandated costs on our States and school districts, it is simply impossible to justify diverting a single dollar of public money to private schools. Now, I know that there are Members here who voted in committee for vouchers for the District who have never voted for vouchers generally on a Federal bill, because you can do anything on the District of Columbia. You can savage their public schools, as if your States, I would say to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), did not have such schools in Southern Virginia, as if California, Mrs. Feinstein, did not have the L.A. School District in it. And yet these folks will not vote to have vouchers so that those school districts, sometimes rural, sometimes big city, can have the same treatment as the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia schools have improved, but you will not find me an apologist for the D.C. government and its problems or for the D.C. school system. I am proud of the fact that scores have gone up for the last 3 years. I am very proud of the transformation schools, where, with extra services for parents and children alike, we now see a breakthrough that no private school and no public school has ever accomplished. These are the poorest children in the District of Columbia. They have the least conscious parents. They have got foster parents, sometimes they have got no parents at all or hardly any parents; yet we have been able to break through because we provided a lot of extra services for the parents and for the children alike. Private schools and religious organizations will not see a vote for vouchers for the District of Columbia as a vote that can be contained here, and they are going to try to do all they can to make sure it is not contained here. The pro-voucher forces have shown how well-funded they are. They have been into your States, sometimes two or three times, to get on the ballot; and you have turned them back every single time. Not a single voucher referendum in the United States of America has passed. But they keep coming back, because they have got a lot of money, and you see that money on television ads as I speak. If you want to fund vouchers, do it the way the Washington Scholarship Fund did it. Fund the vouchers through private funds. Do not displace those private funds with public funds.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Ms. NORTON

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

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to thank the gentleman for the leadership he has given to this issue to mitigate some of the almost total losses of the airports in this district which handle charter flights and commercial flights. This is the Nation's Capital. One can imagine a major business destination without any charter flights for almost 2 years. What we are asking for is a pittance compared to what the losses have been. Originally I think the amendment was $15 million. It is now $8.2 million. I do want to indicate that these airports I think are three small ones, in Maryland, perhaps Virginia, and there is, of course, the larger one here in the District. They said whatever regulations, in fact, that we come forward with they will meet. Instead they have been closed. At the very least what we have got here is close to a taking. We ought to compensate them somewhat for what they have done. We compensated all the other airlines. There is no other commercial aviation in the United States, indeed in the world, that is closed today except in this region. We ask for forbearance and for some compensation. That is all it would be, some compensation.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I wanted to put on the record what I learned at a Congressional Black Caucus hearing. The rap is put on these children that they are not as far ahead as they should be. I asked why they were not exposed to reading, and the testimony was there had been, until recently, a Federal mandate against exposing these children to the kind of early access to reading that other kids get in nursery schools. The problem is with the Feds and not with the program.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2210 will dismantle Head Start, despite its proven effectiveness for our children and despite its demonstrated scientific validity.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a bill to give the mayor of the District of Columbia the same authority over the National Guard as the governors of all 50 States. My work as a Member of the new Select Committee on Homeland Security has convinced me that this bill is necessary now more than at anytime in the District's history. In some circumstances where a suspected terrorist incident occurs and in all circumstances constituting local emergencies, the mayor of the District of Columbia should have the same authority as governors. The National Guards in the 50 States operate under dual jurisdictions, Federal and local, but the D.C. National Guard (DCNG) has no local jurisdiction, no matter the local emergency. The President of the United States as the Commander in Chief alone has the authority to call up the National Guard for any purpose, local or national here. Each Governor, however, as the head of state, has the authority to mobilize the National Guard to protect the local jurisdiction, just as local militia have always done historically. Most often this has meant calling upon the National Guard to restore order in the wake of civil disturbances and natural disasters. Today it could mean acting quickly to respond to an incident that may be local or terrorist-related because it may be impossible to tell which. The mayor, who knows the city better than any Federal official, certainly should be able to call on the DCNG to cover local natural disasters or civil disturbances without relying on the President, who may be preoccupied with national matters, including perhaps war or security matters. It does no harm to give the mayor the authority. Today it may do great harm to leave him powerless to act quickly. If it makes sense that a Governor would have control over the mobilization and deployment of the State National Guard, at the very least it makes the same sense for the mayor of the District of Columbia, with a population the size of that of small States, should have the same authority. The mayor of the District of Columbia, acting as head of state, should have the authority to call upon the DCNG in instances that do not rise to the level of Federal importance to implicate the powers of the President. Today requiring action by the President of the United States could endanger the life and health of D.C. residents and visitors and those who work here in the event of an emergency. Procedures now in use require the mayor to request the needed assistance from the Commander in Chief for a local National Guard. My bill does not cause the President to lose his power over the D.C. National Guard. The President could still nationalize the Guard at will, as he can with the Guards of the 50 States. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, I succeeded in including a provision in the Homeland Security Act recognizing that the District of Columbia must be an integral part of the planning, implementation, and execution of national plans to protect city residents, Federal employees, and visitors by including the District of Columbia, as part of the region, as a separate and full partner and first responder in federal domestic preparedness legislation. Allowing the mayor control over the DCNG helps recognize the new responsibility he now has in protecting the entire Federal establishment--the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Federal agencies--from terrorist attacks. At a minimum, such recognition also demonstrates the respect for local governance and home rule that every jurisdiction that recruits members of the military to its National Guard deserves, especially today when the Guards are no longer weekend warriors, as the Iraq war demonstrates. If the mayor has local control over his own Guard, the Executive would give up nothing of his necessary control because the President would retain his right to nationalize the DCNG at will, as he can for the states. The confusion that accompanied the September 11 attack plainly showed the danger inherent in allowing bureaucratic steps to stand in the way of responding to emergencies in the Nation's Capital. September 11 has made local control of the DCNG an imperative. This bill is another important step necessary to complete the transfer of full self-government powers to the District of Columbia that Congress itself began with the passage of the Home Rule Act of 1973. District authority over its own National Guard apparently was not raised during the Home Rule Act process. However, then it was unthinkable that there would be war in the homeland, much less terrorist threats to the nation's capital. What should be unthinkable after 9-11 in an era of global terrorism is allowing to stand old and antiquated layers rather than stripping them away. Giving the mayor of the District of Columbia authority to call up the National Guard could make the difference in protecting the safety of the residents, Federal employees, and visitors alike. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Ms. NORTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel).

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).