Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I need to rise first to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), the chairman of the subcommittee, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), the ranking member. I thank the gentleman from Michigan for the great attention, for the scrupulous and careful, tough oversight, but always fair oversight he is rendering as subcommittee chair. And I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who brings a profound understanding of the District and its operations, the first big city ranking member we have had in some years now. The chairman and the ranking member have worked so well together, and that is why we are here today. Let me apologize for taking up the time of the body on whether local jurisdiction can spend its own local money on its own children. I am inclined to think it is pathetic, but this is the procedure that is used here. I hope to have an amendment before this body that will keep this body from spending its time this way. The superintendent I think held out hope, he is a new superintendent, that Federal funds that have been forthcoming will be forthcoming this year. They were not. Yet, this is the 3rd year of a summer school virtual extension of the school year, and it is extended and expanded because we have so many students who test at basic or below basic and because the first 2 years of this expanded summer school have had such a big payoff in educational achievement. I think the body should commend this pioneering program to other districts, because there is none in the United States that does not need it. Essentially what it does is to extend the school year here from 5 to 6 weeks with a 20 percent increase from 22,000 to 30,000 students. This means almost half of the school students in the District of Columbia will be in this Summer Stars program. This is a 267 percent increase in the size of the program, with only a 50 percent increase in funds. The key to the program is a 15-to-1 student-teacher ratio and a 12- to-1 ratio for special education students. The reason the program is expanding is because of the consistent increase in post-test scores over pre-test scores, and in the same significant improvement in the SAT 9 scores. This program is required of every student in the District of Columbia who scored basic or below basic in reading and math. That is the morning program. There is an afternoon program that is optional for children who scored proficient or advanced in reading and math and for all English learners and special education students. Something that works so well and is so well documented I hope will be voted by acclamation. Every child in the United States who needs extended educational opportunities in the summer should have a similar opportunity. I hope Members will look at this program for their own districts.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate that the gentleman from Illinois has yielded me this time, and I appreciate his work on this and so many bills of importance to the African American community and to our country. I appreciate the work of my good friend, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), who is managing the bill, who has always stood for principles of equal opportunity, and the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Watts) for his leadership in bringing forward this bill, as well. Madam Speaker, I am not sure how to approach Juneteenth. It is a date fraught with poignancy and symbolism, poignancy because it is not the date on which the slaves were emancipated. That was January 1, 1863. It was simply the date that the good news finally made its way into Texas; some say by conspiracy, some say just because they did not get there and somebody was waylaid. In any case, it was a cause for great celebration. If one learned 2\1/2\ years late that slaves had been emancipated by the Emancipation Proclamation, that is to say, by executive order, one had every reason to celebrate. We are not here this afternoon to celebrate. This date is fraught with symbolism as well because the news of the civil rights laws has not reached all who need to hear it in America. I speak as a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where I had hands-on experience, up close, to see what enforcement takes, and as a Member of Congress to see what we still have to do now. Nobody who celebrated her emancipation on June 19, 1865, would want us to do anything but make this not a cause of celebration, not even a cause for commemoration, but a cause for combustion, to get the news out to those in the administration, to employers and to Americans throughout our country, that the civil rights laws are not only in the books but they need strong enforcement. Indeed, Madam Speaker, we need new laws as well. I have introduced a racial profiling bill that I hope will be part of the transportation bill coming forward next year. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) is also preparing a racial profiling bill. These bills indicate that there is real unfinished work even on putting laws on the books. It takes us back to the 1960s. We thought we had at least put the laws on the books then. Racial profiling is overt, deliberate, looking in your face, you are black, you are Hispanic, you do not look like me, you are under arrest or at least I-am-stopping-you discrimination. That is the kind of discrimination this is. We cannot let $250 billion go out of this House next year, unless there is a provision that says you cannot get this money unless you have laws barring racial profiling, unless you enforce them and unless you keep racial statistics. Look, if we reduce Juneteenth to a moment of nostalgia, we trivialize its importance. Our country was 2\1/2\ weeks late getting to the slaves in Texas. We are 2\1/2\ centuries late taking care of this business called discrimination. Let Resolution 163 be the beginning of the end of the last great form of overt and deliberate discrimination in our country, the discrimination that stops a man or stops a woman on the street only because that person is black. If my colleagues are willing to vote for this resolution, I hope my colleagues will vote to give it meaning when the racial profiling provisions come to the floor.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, all over America we are hearing the words, ``Happy Father's Day.'' I come to the floor this afternoon to remind America that Father's Day is about more than presents. What are the children without fathers to do? Fully a third of our children in our country are without fathers, being raised by one parent, usually a woman. The numbers are increasing at an alarming rate. The only thing harder than raising children is one parent raising children. Often that is the case today. If there are one-third of children without fathers today in the home, in the African American community that number is two-thirds. The results are appalling to family formation. Chronic joblessness among black males, disproportionate numbers in prison which keep family formation from occurring in the usual way, led me to search for answers. I have been involved in a number of activities, and the most recent was inspired by the Million Man March in 1995. I was concerned that something concrete should come out of this march to capture the energy of almost a million African American men coming to Washington to indicate they were going to do something about reconstruction of their communities and of black family life itself. Yet when they went home and said what am I to do, well, some in fact found lots to do. But for the average unaffiliated black man, there was nothing to capture that energy. Mr. Speaker, I believe that government and business and unions and communities ought to have a response so that this energy could be used to the highest and best effect. I conceived the idea of a commission on black men and boys that would allow black men and boys in the District of Columbia to get together to indicate what to do and how to do it. Recently we received funding from the Department of Labor. This commission, set up in the District of Columbia, will be holding hearings; will identify available sources of government and community and private assistance for black men and boys in the District of Columbia; and will point out what the successes are and what the needs and gaps are. The point is it is not another study, ladies and gentlemen. We know the problem is acute. This is an opportunity to get down to brass tacks, tackling one of the great problems in our country which is fatherlessness, one-parent homes in the African American community, rapidly spreading throughout the United States. George Stark, the former Redskins offensive lineman, is the chair. We have one of our former police chiefs on the commission, the president of the District of Columbia student body, a high school representative, and other men in the city who have been involved in the activities of black men and boys. The most important manifestation of the accumulated difficulties of African American men is the failure to form families and extraordinary patterns of family disillusion. This is a frightening trend that is traced to an essential actor in the African American community: the black male. We cannot do without him. Black feminists like me have been able to draw attention to what has happened to the women raising these children alone, what happens to girls who get pregnant when they are teens. We are bringing that down. It is time to focus on the black man, the other essential actor. When we do so, we can halt this frightening trend which is already having domino generational effects that endanger the children of the African American community. Further delay in bringing a strong, concentrated focus on black men and boys before they become men quite simply threatens the viability of the African American community as we have known it historically in our country from slavery to this very moment. We hope that our own Commission on Black Men and Boys here in the District of Columbia will serve as a model for what other communities can do to bring a focused attention led by black men and boys themselves on an urgent problem in the African American community and in America at large.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I introduce a bill to amend P.L. 105- 33, legislation that has done much to cure uncoordinated efforts of federal and local law enforcement officials in the nation's capital. The District of Columbia Police Coordination Amendment Act of 2001 amends the Police Coordination Act I introduced in 1997, and that was signed that year, by allowing those agencies not named in the original legislation to assist the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) with local law enforcement in the District. Inadvertently, P.L. 105-33 failed to make the language sufficiently open-ended to include agencies not mentioned in the original bill. Prior to the Police Coordination Act, federal agencies often were confined to agency premises and were unable to enforce local laws on or near their premises. Instead, for example, federal officers sometimes called 911, taking hard-pressed D.C. police officers from urgent work in neighborhoods experiencing serious crime. Federal officers were trained and willing to do the job, but lacked the authority to do so before the passage of the Police Coordination Act. Agencies have already signed agreements with the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia enabling them to participate. Federal agencies understand that the extension of their jurisdiction will enhance safety and security within and around their agencies while offering needed assistance as well to District residents. The Capitol Police and Amtrak Police, who have the longest experience with expanded jurisdiction, report that the morale of their officers was affected positively because of the satisfaction that comes from being integrated into efforts to reduce and prevent crime in and around their agencies and in the nation's capital. This non controversial technical amendment to the Police Coordination Act is another step to achieving my goal of assuring the most efficient use of all the available police resources to protect federal agency staff, visitors and D.C. residents.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the gentleman yielding time to me, and I am grateful to him and to the sponsor of the bill, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo). I thank the ranking member, and I must knowledge the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) as a one-man watchdog for human rights in the world, for which this body and our country are both grateful. Mr. Chairman, here we have in this bill the first forward movement to do more than condemn. The unspeakable litany of violations in Sudan leave out none. I do not, therefore, want to go down them. I do want to take issue with the last speaker. I am not sure about our national security, but I do believe that doing something about Khartoum is vital to the strategic U.S. interests in the world. Oil is the engine that is driving the war in the north against the southern Sudanese. They are winning the war. This war is almost over, if we do not do something about it. The southern Sudanese have been so weakened that time is running out. In Khartoum, we see a regime that will soon be a mid-sized oil exporter at a time when the U.S. and the world have escalated oil needs. It is very important to build on the Clinton sanctions that have been in place since 1997. I support the amendment, but minimally it seems to me we have to begin to focus, to scrutinize access to our markets. One way to do that is if we say that if they want access to our markets, tell us about their business operations in Sudan. If they want to get access, at least tell us. If we can deny them access constitutionally and legally, I would be for that. Investors need to be forewarned that indeed we are trying to have significant impact on investments, and since we have reached our own folks, we ought to reach the multinationals, if for no other reason than to level the playing field. Let me speak to another strategic interest. When is terrorism in the world not a strategic interest of the United States of America? Here we have a major supporter and exporter of international terrorism in Sudan, and we have felt Sudan in our own country. The region has felt Sudan in multiple ways. Ask the President of Egypt, Mr. Mubarak, whose life was attempted on from the exporting of terrorism from this regime. We have very important strategic interests. In fact, the last time the world gathered in this way, the last time we confronted a nation and tried to get worldwide support, was of course the sanctions against South Africa, which significantly weakened apartheid. Mr. Chairman, what is happening in Sudan is far more complicated, and if I may say so, far worse than the despotism we saw in South Africa. When the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) and I came to the floor just over a year ago, we were the only two on a special order trying to kind of wake up the consciousness not so much of this body, which had already passed a resolution of condemnation, but hoping that the world out there was looking at us somehow. I want to simply praise the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) for pioneering leadership when absolutely nobody was listening. Since then, since that special order, there have been hearings, press conferences involving the leadership on both sides of the aisle. There have been Sudanese, southern Sudanese ex-slaves who had come to the House of Representatives. We are getting somewhere if we take the leadership for which our Nation is known in the world. Therefore, we must minimally pass this bill and go on to pass the amendment, if we possibly can. Let us make this start now. Let us signify by this bill that we have only begun to fight for southern Sudanese freedom.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for her generosity, and I thank her for her prescience for bringing this resolution to the floor. I also thank the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella), my good friend, who characteristically has come forward for a woman pioneer. I use the word ``pioneer'' here in its literal meaning. I know the term is used loosely. But I mean to avoid cliches here. This woman gives real meaning to the word ``pioneer'': first woman, first African- American woman in the House of Representatives, first African-American woman to run for President, first African-American woman to found a national political women's organization, the National Political Congress of Black Women, now with C. Dolores Tucker as chair. I was one of the co-founders with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) and a number of others, but the leader of that group was the woman who was chief in charge of us all; and that was Shirley Chisholm. Just think of it. A little over 30 years ago, there was not a single black woman who had ever served in this body. Now there are 13 of us. That means that we are coming up on being almost half of the Congressional Black Caucus and over a quarter of the women in the Congress. I am telling my colleagues, it took guts and intelligence and all the other characteristics that one can think of to be the first one to step up here and say I am coming. Nobody has come before, but here I come. For me, it is almost like for the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), Shirley Chisholm is not simply a distinguished African-American woman who I admire as a role model. This is a woman who has been a friend since the days when she and I both served in New York, she in the State Assembly, me as New York City Commissioner on Human Rights. I saw this woman rise in the State Assembly, and I saw her rise to the Congress, and I saw the characteristics that made that happen. Every woman in this body is personally indebted to Shirley Chisholm because of how she made women count in America. When she stepped forward, one did not have to be her color to be proud. Shirley Chisholm was a leader in giving feminism a black face. For that, I am personally indebted. This was a prominent black woman who was unafraid to step up and say, hey, listen here, I am black and I am a woman and I am proud of both, and I do not want to hear about how you are not supposed to be a woman if you are black. She made it safe to be a black feminist. She cleared the way for all of us who regard ourselves as feminists. She was not turned back by the notion of matriarchy or words of that ilk. She of course came to Congress out of her work with women and children in the social services department in New York, seeing the hardships of women and children. She became the special advocate of women and children for her entire life. It was her lifelong mission: minimum wage for women in the New York State Assembly, minimum wage for women right here in this country, minimum wage for domestic workers in the New York State Assembly, minimum wage for domestic workers in the House of Representatives, affordable child care. Child care for poor women, sure. But Shirley Chisholm stood up and said, you know what, the average woman needs child care, too, the average middle-class woman; and she needs it for all day because those are the workdays. Shirley Chisholm of course never stayed in her place. She did not know how to stay in her place. So she did not just stop with her women and children, her lifelong mission. She was there up in front for the all-volunteer army, for the prohibition on arms sales to South Africa before that became an issue in this body, for consumer protection. She was one of the few Members to become a national figure as a result of her service in this place. She became a national Congresswoman. She represented Bedford Stuveysant and Bushwick. If my colleagues know anything about Brooklyn, they know that is a tall order. But millions of Americans of every color thought of Shirley Chisholm as their Congresswoman. Some of us are especially indebted to Shirley Chisholm for countless contributions to the African-American community and to black women in particular. But the United States of America itself is indebted to Shirley Anita Chisholm for 15 years of pioneer service to her country. I want my last words to be understood because I spoke of her service to African Americans and to black women in particular. But I want it to be understood that I believe the United States of America itself is indebted to Shirley Chisholm for 15 years of pioneering service to her country in the House of Representatives.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise, from time to time, to acknowledge the accomplishments and milestones of the citizens and organizations of the District of Columbia, whom I have the honor to represent in Congress. As a life-long advocate for civil rights, I am particularly proud to have within my constituency some of the oldest and most established Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered civil rights organizations in the United States. These organizations work tirelessly, despite the triple scourges of racism, homophobia, and taxation without representation which belabor the District of Columbia, to extend, without regard to race, sex, religion, national origin, sexual orientation and gender those civil and political rights which are taken for granted by some Americans to all Americans, especially those Americans residing within the four quadrants of the District of Columbia. Today I take particular pleasure in acknowledging the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, one of America's oldest partisan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered civil rights organizations on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary, this Thursday, June 7, 2001. In 1976, my constituents, Paul Kuntzler, Richard Maulsby, and Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, founded the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Since its founding, the Stein Club has become a powerful and respected participant in the political life of the District of Columbia. The Gertrude Stein Club ceaselessly fights not only for human and civil rights, but for the inclusion and acceptance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered persons within the political process of the District and the Nation. The Club's success is reflected among its members who now hold, and have held, responsible government positions. These include: D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham; the Director of the D.C. Office of Boards and Commissions, Ronald Kin; Mayor Anthony Williams's Gay Community Liaison; Philip Pannell, and former White House Counsel Karen Tramontano. The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club has always been at the forefront of efforts on behalf of human rights, domestic partnership, HIV services, hate crimes, employment non-discrimination, As part of their 25th anniversary celebration, the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club will honor two outstanding gay leaders: Andrew Tobias, Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee; and Paul Yandura, Executive Director of the National Stonewall Democratic Federation. Andrew Tobias enjoyed a national reputation for his work in the gay and lesbian community and for the Democratic Party. He is an author and financier who has helped the lives of millions of Americans with his sound financial advice, Mr. Tobias is a true renaissance man and ``The Best Little Boy in the World.'' My constituent, Paul Yandura, despite his youth, is a seasoned veteran of national politics. Mr. Yandura served in the Clinton/Gore Administration, in both political and executive capacities responsible for constituency outreach, public/ media relations, event production and he advised the President on a variety of policy issues which included E-Commerce, HIV/AIDS, fair housing and LGBT civil rights. Mr. Speaker, this week that marks the 25th Anniversary of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, also marks the 20th Anniversary of the discernment of an illness which we now know as AIDS. On Friday, June 5, 1981 the Center for Disease Control published in the Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report an article on five gay angelino men in their late twenties and early thirties who contracted Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. In the twenty years hence we, both as Americans and as Members of Congress, have been remiss in our duties. While we have passed much legislation, we have failed to enact The Employment Non- Discrimination Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act; we have not stopped the dizzying spiral of prescription drug costs, and the District of Columbia still has not voting representation in Congress. Mr. Speaker, I ask the House both to join me in congratulating the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club on its 25th Anniversary and to join me in re-doubling our efforts to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination and Hate Crimes Prevention Act, to provide affordable access to prescription drugs for all Americans who need them, and to bring some measure of democracy to the citizens of the District of Columbia during this Congress.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation which would remove the provision in the Southeastern University charter requiring that one-third of the Board of Trustees be Southeastern alumni. Southeastern University President Charlene Drew Jarvis and the Board of Trustees have asked me to introduce this corrective measure. Southeastern University was incorporated by Act of Congress on August 19, 1937. Its charter contains a provision requiring that one-third of the University's Board of Trustees be alumni. On September 9, 1997, 1 received a letter from Southeastern University President Charlene Drew Jarvis asking that I introduce legislation to remove this provision. On September 9, 1997, 1 also received a letter from Board of Trustees Chair Elizabeth Lisboa-Farrow confirming that the Board of Trustees had authorized President Jarvis to seek this change. Copies of both letters are attached. The Board of Trustees would like this provision removed in order to let the University draw from a wider pool of potential Board nominees. Because the University was incorporated by an Act of Congress, only the Congress can effectuate this change. Southeastern University is an important and productive institution which contributes to the economy of the District of Columbia by offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs geared specifically to the needs of working professionals. Under the able leadership of Southeastern's President, Dr. Charlene Drew Jarvis, the University has begun to rebound from difficult financial circumstances. This legislation will allow Southeastern to expand its fund raising potential to complement these efforts. I urge my colleagues to support this corrective measure.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Well, let me first thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez), and I want to thank my good colleague as well, the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen), for her leadership in bringing to the attention of the Congress and of bringing our two caucuses together to focus on where AIDS has spread and the changing face and color of AIDS. I want to thank the gentleman from Texas especially for being at the Sunday 20-year celebration, because I think his speaking and my speaking made the point we are trying to make here, and that is that this disease has changed radically in 20 years and we are here this evening to make that point. I appreciate that there will be other Members, so I will, therefore, speak rapidly. The theme of what I want to say is that after 20 years, we owe it to the almost million who have been infected in this country, almost half of them dead of the disease, to stress prevention over every other issue, because this is indeed a preventable disease. Members know the fight I have personally had in my own district just to get needle exchange, something that every scientific organization believes is an important way to prevent AIDS, especially since today 30 percent of the new cases are women. That is something that is radically different from 20 years ago. And these women, of course, are getting AIDS largely through infected drug transmission. The fact that at a time when we need to be turning our attention to the developing world, and many of us in the Congressional Black Caucus, for example, have been working on AIDS in Africa because the continent is being devoured by the disease, the whole notion that we would have to turn back to teach some of the lessons of 20 years ago is absolutely heartbreaking. Parts of our community, particularly Hispanics and blacks, were never reached because they were never targeted. One of the reasons they were not targeted is because of the opprobrium that attended AIDS because it was seen as a homosexual disease. In both our communities there is homophobia. And we in the Congressional Black Caucus and in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have an obligation to stand against homophobia first and foremost so that people can come out and understand that this disease can be prevented and so that they can acknowledge the need for safe sex. But today we are having to teach the lessons to black and Hispanic gays that we taught, we thought, to white gays 20 years ago, because the lessons were not learned by them. We have one of the best, indeed a world-renowned AIDS clinic here, the Whitman-Walker Clinic. It should be downsizing. Instead of reaching to white gay and bisexual men it is now having to reach to black gay and bisexual men. How heartbreaking it was to read that gay men in San Francisco, the most conscious gay population in the world, is having an uptick in the epidemic. These are white gays. What this teaches us is that every 3 or 4 years we better teach the same lesson. Because we have youngsters who were 13 then, they are 17 now, and they did not learn it then. We cannot assume that this lesson has ever been taught. In the Congress, my colleagues know that we have been successful with the new treatments, and there may be some irony in that. It costs $10,000 to $12,000 a year per person. This is a preventable disease. That is not the best use for the health care dollars in our communities or in our country. We must teach the lesson of prevention so the health care dollars are not used for preventable diseases, but more often for many who suffer in our communities and our country from diseases we still do not understand. We have been unwilling to get at the explicit nature of the education that needs to take place. This is a country that does not mind talking about sex very explicitly. We show sex, the sex act, to young children on TV in the daytime, but we will not talk about condoms, we will not talk about safe sex, we will not explain that to children. If we are not explicit about sex to teens, they are not listening to us. They get those messages from their media. They need to get it from us so that we can prevent this preventable disease. Our goals, as we continue the fight 20 years later, are laid out for us. Upgrade the downgraded White House AIDS Office, search for a cure, search for a vaccine, get prescription drugs, get needle exchange, fight for hate crimes legislation, and for ENDA. But, above all, remember those who died before the message of safe sex was even understood, and remember those who died before there were protease inhibitors. The only way to remember them is not simply by grieving for them, and tonight we do grieve for them, but by pledging to them that we will move to make sure that the 20-year anniversary is the beginning of yet another downturn in the prevalence of this disease and that we ourselves will lead the downturn by making that message clear not only in this Congress but in our own communities. Again, I thank both of my colleagues for the service they have rendered the Congress and the Nation this evening.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Illinois, for yielding time to me. May I begin by thanking the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump) for his work on this bill, and for his work with the Senate in getting a bill that I think is one that we all appreciate for what it will mean for the memorial that has been under discussion. I honor the gentleman from Arizona for his service, and understand and appreciate his anxiety to get on with the memorial. Let me say, as a child of World War II who grew up during the war here in the city, I understand why this memorial means so much to the men who fought this war. It is the case, however, that anyone who loves the city and admires the uniqueness of Washington and the Mall could not possibly want the particular memorial that will go up. The memorial, of course, as I said in my own remarks on the House floor on last Tuesday, was pretty much a done deal, in any case. At least we will not be adding to the injury that many Americans feel about having any man-made object in the midst of one of Washington's great vistas, especially a very controversial design that does not begin to do justice to the men and women of World War II, who brought justice to the world. At least now we have understood that no memorial can rise without administrative review and oversight. The bill assures us that there will be experts from the National Capital Planning Commission to wrestle with the many problems that remain when we are putting a football field-sized memorial where no object was ever meant to be. This poses unprecedented challenges that I hope the NCPC will meet. What we are doing is putting a huge memorial below the water table, and we have to have somebody there, for example, to figure out how to pump water, which will need to be pumped out continuously, and how to make sure that it is treated and does not go into the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. Let me put everybody on notice now, they had better not put a contraption on the Mall that looks like some kind of machinery in order to do that. We have to find a way to do that. We were very concerned about the wooden foundations on which the Washington Monument is built. In those days, that is how one built a monument. Disturbing the subsoil when the water is pumped out presents a real challenge to the NCPC. Nobody has ever figured out how to do that. They had better figure out how to do that. What do we do to deal with the old growth trees that are a proxy for the beauty of the Mall itself? We had certainly better not knock them down. If the NCPC had not already been there, the National Park Service, in preparation for the memorial, would already have concrete helicopter pads on the Mall. The NCPC, I thank them very much, stopped that. That is but one indication of why we do need administrative oversight. For those who come in from Maryland and Virginia, for the millions of tourists who come every day, the NCPC still has to figure out how this memorial, with its tour buses, with its traffic, can go up without closing 17th Street to traffic. That is a challenge I would not want to have. Many of the elements of the Mall now, such as the lighting and sculptural elements, will be in the hands of the NCPC, so not just anything the builders choose will go up. I struggled very hard to have this wonderful memorial put in a unique spot. I want Members to go to Constitutional Gardens. Constitutional Gardens is a huge space hidden right off from the Mall. The reason nobody knows about it is because there is a line of trees as one marches toward the Lincoln Memorial, and we have to go up over a hill to see it, but then we come upon a huge space with a wonderful pool and we say, why is there nothing here? There is nothing there, and that was the first site that everybody wanted for the World War II memorial. I am very, very sorry that that was not the site chosen. Then it would not have been in competition with anything else. It would have been the first memorial to rise there. It is a huge and wonderfully undiscovered space. Mr. Speaker, I worry about what we are doing to our Mall, quite apart from the World War II memorial, because everybody knew that the World War II memorial, if any memorial deserved to be on the Mall, the World War II memorial did. I just want to use my 3 minutes left to warn the Congress away from fooling with the Mall. We who live in the District have, in essence, been left by the Framers to be guardians of our city. The Framers always wanted people to live here, people who did not come and go, like Members of Congress or tourists. I am a fourth-generation Washingtonian for whom this city and its history, not just the city as it is today, means everything. The Mall, Mr. Speaker, is the urban equivalent of the Grand Canyon. There should never be anything in the middle of the Grand Canyon. There should never be anything planted straight in the middle of the Mall. That is done now. What we have to remember, though, is that the Mall is a very small, centrally-located spot. There is a huge competition to continue to put things on the Mall. It is already crowded. We are grateful that President Reagan signed the Commemorative Works Act, which keeps us from willy-nilly putting anything that comes to mind on the Mall to any person whom we happen to admire. There was opposition to this memorial, and that opposition has done an important service. Without that opposition, the memorial design would not have been scaled down. There was opposition in the Senate, there was opposition throughout the country. What we would have had was a gargantuan embarrassment to all Americans, and especially to our veterans. In a democracy, opposition of this kind matters, and often can and in this case has resulted in improvement. Here, unfortunately, we have had a redesign which, like so many redesigns, is pedestrian and will be, unfortunately, invidiously compared with the evocative simplicity of the Vietnam Memorial. Let this memorial be the last of its kind on the Mall. The NCPC has thoughtfully suggested many other locations in and around the Mall for future memorials. Finally, let me ask Members to take a walk before the construction begins. Go up to the Washington monument site and look at that unobstructed vista for the last time. I ask Members to see it while they can still contemplate our two great Presidents whose monuments lie at either end of that axis. And please remember this, that the only eternal cities in the world are not located abroad. They are not only Rome and Paris. Washington is meant to be an eternal city because it is the home of our eternal democratic values. One of those eternal places in this eternal city is our Mall. It is one of our last remaining spaces left to us by the framers. Let us remember what it was really meant to be.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington on the 125th anniversary of the oldest synagogue in the District of Columbia. The Society is housed in the synagogue structure along with the Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum. The historic synagogue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the D.C. Inventory of Historic Sites. The original dedication ceremonies took place on Friday, June 9, 1876 with President Ulysses S. Grant and Acting Vice President Ferry in attendance. Over the years the building has gone from being a synagogue to a church to a bicycle shop to a barber and a sandwich carryout. In 1969, the Society saved the building from demolition by moving it from its original location at Sixth and G Streets Northwest, to make way for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's headquarters, to the corner where it permanently sits at 701 Third Street, Northwest. The Society is a nonprofit organization aimed at chronicling and preserving the Washington area's rich Jewish community history. The Society brings the community's past to life through museum exhibits, tours, lectures and children's educational programs. Without the Society's work, our nation's capital would have lost an important part of its past. Through their work to preserve the synagogue they have also saved an important Washington landmark. The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington should be commended for their tireless work and dedication to the history and therefore, the future, of both the District of Columbia's secular and Jewish communities.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today we introduce the Racial profiling Prohibition Act of 2001 (RPPA). Congress is decades late in doing its part to insure that law enforcement officers no longer stop or detain people on the street because of their color or their apparent nationality or ethnicity. It was not until 37 years ago that Congress passed the first civil rights law that had any teeth. The 1964 Civil Rights Act finally barred discrimination against people of color in employment, public accommodations and funding of public institutions. Yet, today, irrefutable, and widespread evidence from every state confirms racially and ethnically motivated stops by police officers and shows that Congress has urgent, unfinished business to update the nation's civil rights laws. This bill, which is overwhelmingly supported by both the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) as original co-sponsors, seeks to eliminate both legal and constitutional problems that arise when a person is stopped by a police officer because of skin color, nationality or ethnicity. Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA), enacted in part to implement the 14th Amendment requirement of equal protection, forbids the use of public money for discriminatory purposes. The bill we introduce today, is based on both the 14th Amendment, which gives power to Congress to implement its equal protection responsibilities and on the spending clause of the Constitution, which allows Congress to put conditions on the receipt of federal funds. The federal funds that are the focus of our bill today are the vast sums contained in our transportation legislation. The last transportation bill, known as TEA-21 (Transportation Equity for the 21st Century Act) authorized $172 billion for highways in 1998. The new transportation bill, which Congress will enact next year, will authorize at least $250 billion in highway funding. By introducing our racial profiling bill today, we serve notice that Congress must not authorize another huge highway bill that does not effectively bar the use of transportation money to fund racial profiling stops on those highways. The strength of our bill lies in what it requires and what it would do. The bill requires three important obligations if states are to qualify for federal transportation funds. First, law enforcement officers may not use race, national origin, or ethnicity in making decisions concerning a stop unless they are relying on a physical description that may include race to determine that a particular individual may be the person sought. Second, states must adopt and enforce standards prohibiting the use of racial profiling on streets or roads built with federal highway funds. Third, states must maintain and allow public inspection of statistical information on the racial characteristics and circumstances of each stop. Only three states even prohibit racial profiling today; ten others require only racial and ethnic data collection. As important as information concerning who gets stopped is, what makes our bill effective is its sanction: the withholding of federal funds from states that fail to meet the three obligations of the statute. Money for streets, roads, bridges and other infrastructure is ardently pursued in the Congress. Each state and locality receives funds that are indispensable to building and maintaining major parts of its infrastructure. Next year's authorization will mean nearly 50 percent more in transportation funding to states and localities. These funds will either reinforce pervasive racial profiling or help eliminate it. The power of transportation funding to command the necessary attention and bring quick results has been repeatedly demonstrated. Congress has successfully used federal highway funding to compel states to attack some of our most urgent problems, for example, reducing drunk driving among minors; requiring the revocation or suspensions of driving licenses of convicted drug offenders; and establishing a national minimum drinking age. Police stops of people on the streets because they are black or Hispanic or of any other non-majority national origin requires the same urgent action. Withholding federal highway funds works because it hurts. The threat of losing highway funds has proven to be a powerful incentive. We saw the power of this incentive as recently as last year's Transportation appropriation. Congress enacted a provision requiring states to enact .08 blood alcohol content (BAC) laws by 2004 or being forfeiting their highway funds. In only the first six months after that provision was enacted, six states have already passed .08 BAC laws. Many more are sure to follow in order to preserve precious highway funds. A racial profiling provision in the 2003 federal highway funding bill would give the same set of alternatives to the states--effective enforcement of racial profiling legislation or loss of federal funds. If Congress is serious about eliminating this last disgraceful scar of overt discrimination in our country, let us put our money where our mouth is. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, every Member of this body is anxious to see a memorial to the women and men who secured our freedom with their personal sacrifices and their lives. We can assure a memorial on the present timetable or sooner without passing this radically destructive bill that will do irrevocable harm to the World War II memorial itself by eliminating indispensable oversight for the largest and most significant memorial on the Mall since the Lincoln Memorial was constructed almost 80 years ago. We can keep a memorial on schedule without destroying the Commemorative Works Act, signed by Ronald Reagan 16 years ago specifically to assure oversight of all construction on the Mall. Those of us who wanted the extraordinary vista between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial left unobstructed lost that battle several years ago. This bill responds to press reports that left the impression that the National Capital Planning Commission, the NCPC, would reconsider the entire World War II memorial project. Both the NCPC and recent press reports have corrected this erroneous notion. The matter is before the NCPC again only because the Justice Department spotted a legal flaw that a holdover member had called the vote into question. That would have imperiled the memorial. This bill is not only unnecessary, it throws out the baby with the bath water that has already been eliminated. The only overreaching left now is in this bill. It would leave a huge memorial to rise on the Mall, without any Federal law or agency with the power or the expertise to assure that the memorial builders meet their commitments and that the many problems that have been identified are caught and avoided. Here are some of them: Assuring that contaminated groundwater would be pumped out continually and treated before continuing into the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay inasmuch as the memorial is to be built below the groundwater table; Protecting the structural integrity of the Washington Monument's wooden foundations as groundwater in its subsoil is pumped out; Replacing the groundwater upon which the old growth trees that beautify the Mall depend; Assuring that helicopters have a place to land without putting helicopter pads on the memorial, a National Park Service proposal which was recently stopped by the NCPC; Accommodating tour buses off the Mall area; Assuring that the vital 17th Street artery of the District used by Virginia and Maryland commuters and tourists alike near the Tidal Basin is not closed to traffic; Ensuring oversight of the nighttime lighting plan still to be developed; Ensuring oversight of the sculptural elements of the memorial and any inscriptions on the walls; Ensuring compliance with what has already been approved. This bill, which had no hearing and is informed by no meetings with relevant agency personnel promises serious unintended and counterproductive consequences that could be both embarrassing and disastrous for the memorial. In the past, the Congress has always avoided the precedent this bill would set; using our power to tamper with the detailed oversight necessary to assure the integrity of the Federal presence. Vote no. The NCPC has already gotten the message.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I reintroduce the District of Columbia Public Safety Reimbursement Act of 2001 with some urgency. The city has become the focal point not only of the large number of standard national events that come annually, but of an ever-increasing number of volatile, even violent and disruptive events. The District, which has recently revived from a serious fiscal crisis, will be seriously disadvantaged by the federal government itself if the city must continue to take on the financial burden of the national demonstrations of people who come to this city because of the federal presence. The bill is strongly supported by the District, especially by D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey, whose officers are deflected from fighting serious crime, and by Mayor Tony Williams, who must also commit the resources of many other agencies when national events occur here. The annual contribution authorized by this bill would reimburse the District for the considerable services the Metropolitan Police Department (MDP) and other D.C. agencies provide every year to cover the many national events and activities that occur here because the District is the national seat of government. One need only consider some of the event and demonstrations held in recent years to understand what offloading similar federal costs would do to any large city. Examples are too numerous to detail, but here are some examples. Of the cities where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demonstrations were held, the District was the only one where significant violence and disruptions did not occur. Last year, Congress was so impressed and relieved about the city's handling of the IMF demonstrations that it passed a version of the bill I am introducing today on a one-time basis and awarded the District $4.4 million that partially reimbursed the city. Another prominent example points up how the cost of federal events has been transferred to the taxpayers of the District of Columbia. A ragtag gang of racists and anti-Semites calling themselves the American Nationalist Party (ANP) came to Washington in August 1999. The District government was left to pick up the tab of $500,000 for police protection for the demonstrators and for the pro-human rights groups who rallied against the ANP on the Mall as well as at another location to counter the Nazis. The enormous expense had to be incurred because of the huge reaction to the announcement of the NAZI demonstration, even though only a half-dozen actually showed up. City police and agencies had to spend local taxpayer dollars in any case. From the Million Man March to the federal Millennium event at the Lincoln Memorial, similar events, large and small, of every variety occur with great frequency and cannot proceed without the work of our police force and city agencies. The MPD is at the center, from the extensive logistical preparations to the on-duty time guarding and facilitating the event itself. The right to assemble is a precious constitutional right. It is available to all and must be protected for all. However, those who come here seek the attention of the national government, not the D.C. government, and the cost should be borne, by American taxpayers, not D.C. taxpayers. Further, residents see our police every time the President moves outside the White House complex because all traffic stops while our police line the streets to assure the President's safe passage. The Congress itself frequently uses our police department--from the annual State of the Union address, when officials and citizens converge on the Hill, to unusual events, such as the funeral following the tragic killing of the two Capitol Police officers almost three years ago. Cabinet officials, the President, and Members of the House and Senate, not to mention other federal officials and agencies all use the MPD as if it were a hometown police force they had bought and paid for. Actually they pay nothing. In countless ways on a daily basis, federal officials and tourists alike get excellent D.C. police protection free of charge. The District cannot continue to plan for ever larger numbers of demonstrations on an ad hoc basis with insufficient funds. The Congress needs to award the funds in advance to assure that the District budgets sufficient funds in advance to manage these events safely and professionally. The bill I introduce today places financial responsibility where it belongs. There are two important grounds for this bill, one statutory and the other historical precedent. The statutory basis is the 1997 Revitalization Act, where the District of Columbia traded the federal payment for a much larger federal assumption of stat costs. However, the Congress nevertheless preserved the right of the District to receive a federal contribution. The Act provides: ``The unique status of the District of Columbia as the seat of the government . . . imposes unusual costs and requirements which are not imposed on other jurisdictions and many of which are not reimbursed by the federal government.'' The Revitalization Act (Section 11601) therefore allows ``for each subsequent fiscal year [after FY 1998], such amount as may be necessary for such contribution.'' The second basis for a designated public safety contribution is historical precedent. Separate from the annual federal payment, the Congress has traditionally appropriated to the District additional funds for public safety purposes. Amounts have ranged from five million dollars to 30 million dollars, depending on the need and public safety issues arising in the particular year. Such funds have been appropriated for national events in other jurisdictions as well. Two years ago, Congress included five million dollars to help cover police costs during the WTO meeting in Seattle. Here in the District, there has always been a consistent congressional understanding that police work in the nation's capital necessarily involves the federal and national interest and deserves special and unique support. Thus, I am asking the Congress to return to its original understanding of its responsibility for a share of public safety in this city, specifically for police protection for national and federal events by reimbursing the city for the cost of police protection. The bill requires the District's Chief Financial Officer to submit receipts for the cost of such protection to the D.C. Appropriations Subcommittee at the end of each fiscal year. I want to emphasize that I do not introduce this bill simply to get extra money from the federal government, as desirable as that would be. I introduce this bill because these cost are beyond the control of the District and therefore create mounting pressures on the city's budget. It will be years before the District has a tax base of residents and businesses adequate to support the city through good, moderate, and bad economic times. The D.C. Public Safety Reimbursement Act builds on cost justification the Congress itself has long accepted. The annual amounts would be small and would not be a gift from the federal government. They would be payment for services rendered to the President, Congress and the federal government by the Metropolitan Police Department and the agencies of the D.C. government. The matter has now become urgent. The District must be able to plan its budget as the Congress expects. This planning cannot be done if the Congress itself does not include an annual mechanism for reimbursement to the city for services rendered to protect the federal presence.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I kindly thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) for yielding the time to me. I congratulate him and the sponsor of this resolution, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller). I want to commend him for his leadership, particularly on charter schools, which stands out in the stellar leadership that he has given on the issue of education during his years in the Congress. I come to the floor because the District of Columbia is proud to say that it has probably, I think I can say without contradiction, a greater percentage of its children in charter schools than any school district in the United States. And part of the reason for this is the accommodation of the Congress with me in 1995. There were fierce fights about vouchers and the imposition of vouchers on the District of Columbia. And, yet, the majority had a point, you cannot say to somebody in the first grade, we will get these schools fixed maybe by the time you are out of school altogether. The child is in the first grade only once, and I was particularly open to the notion of charter schools as an alternative to the public schools of the District of Columbia, even though I was then and remain opposed to vouchers which the people of the District of Columbia strongly oppose, believing that public money should go to public schools, either public schools in the regular public school system or public charter schools; and we believe that our experience indicates that this is by far the best alternative for those truly searching for an alternative to public schools which need fixing. The Congress passed a school reform bill which was, in essence, a public charter bill for the District of Columbia in 1995. Look what has happened since then. Thirteen percent of all public school students in the District of Columbia are enrolled in 40 public charter schools. There are public charter schools in seven out of our eight wards. Nearly two thirds of all the public charter school students qualify for free or reduced lunch, yet about half of our public charter schools offer academically rigorous curricula of the liberal arts. Many of the rest offer curricula in particular subject matters, the arts, foreign language, immersion, technology. The rate at which charter schools have come on line in the District of Columbia is a model for an alternative school system within the public school system for our country. Over 70 percent of the D.C. public charter schools have fewer than 300 students and small classes are the norm in these charter schools. Many of the parents say they want the charter schools for this reason; they wanted smaller classes. They wanted smaller schools, and they wanted to be freed from the central bureaucracy of the public school system. They wanted to innovate. Interestingly at the moment, Mr. Speaker, the scores of our public school children are better than the scores of our charter school children. Our public schools have a new mayor, a new school board and new rigor; but we are proud and pleased that we have this great diversity of charter schools here. The charter schools have pushed our public schools, so that now our public schools are doing very much better than they were doing. And the very thing that we said we wanted the charter schools to do, to be a competitive force to the public schools, has come true. We do not believe, by the way, that private schools would be that kind of competitive force, because the private schools are outside of the public school systems. We have some of the best private schools in the United States, some of the best private Catholic schools and some of the best private schools that are secular. But when you see a school in your neighborhood dealing with precisely the same children you are dealing with last year and they now have moved to another school and they would rather be in that school, that, my friend, is competition. That is why we believe that the best competition for the public schools are not vouchers, are not fancy schools, by or whatever other name you call them. But a charter school right next to a public school where the child is going, compare how those children are doing, and then you will have real competition between your public school and your charter school. And your public school will do what our public schools are doing, our public schools will have to do better.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I am outraged at the use of old-fashioned abortion politics to get at a serious problem. Let me indicate just how serious the problem is. I participated recently in a press conference called by the American College of Nurses and Midwives here in the District of Columbia, now published in an AMA Journal. In the District of Columbia, autopsies had been performed on pregnant women. What was discovered was that there were 13 homicides of pregnant women that had not been reported along with maternal deaths. These 13 unreported deaths accounted for 38 percent of pregnancy-associated deaths. Now, these women had several things in common. They tended to be very young, 15 to 19; they were unmarried; they were murdered early in their pregnancy. There was no category in the FBI or accepted among the States to report these deaths. I have written to the FBI to ask that a category be created, and I have written to the GAO asking that a study be done of such deaths throughout the country, because clearly what we found here is nationwide. What is our answer this afternoon? Our answer is a clearly unconstitutional bill that defines a fetus as a person, in direct in- your-face violation of Roe v. Wade. There is a real problem out there. That problem is here in the Nation's capital. It is in your districts as well. The substitute, the Lofgren substitute, gives us an opportunity to do something about a horrible crime, rather than play the same old abortion politics we have been playing ever since Roe v. Wade. In the name of nameless murdered pregnant women, unnoted even in the crime records, let us seize the opportunity to pass a constitutional bill that will help eliminate a crime of immense and unspeakable seriousness. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I am pleased to introduce the District of Columbia College Access Act Technical Corrections Act of 2001. I am particularly pleased and appreciative to be joined by my colleagues, D.C. Subcommittee Chair Connie Morella and former Chair Tom Davis, who are original cosponsors of this bill and were original cosponsors of the landmark College Access Act that has proved so successful. This bill is necessary to correct three problems that have arisen in the administration of the District's Tuition Assistance Grant Program, authorized in 1999 with the passage of the District of Columbia College Access Act. The Act allows D.C. residents in-state tuition at public colleges and universities nationwide or a $2500 stipend at private colleges and universities in the region. First, the bill amends the College Access Act to remove a provision limiting the benefits of the Act to residents who graduated from high school before January 1, 1998. The bill would allow current college seniors and a smaller group of juniors who are presently excluded from the program, but are otherwise eligible for College Access Act benefits to receive those benefits. The arbitrary cutoff date, which was not included in the bill passed by the House, was put in the bill in the Senate out of concern that there might not be enough money to cover all eligible students. Fortunately, the evidence does not support this assumption, allowing the students eligible in the original House bill to be funded. The District has received over 3500 applications and placed over 1600 students at colleges and universities across the country. The program's $17 million appropriation was originally derived with the assumption that current college juniors and seniors would indeed qualify, and the program currently has the funds to allow these students to participate. It is inherently unfair for D.C. residents who are college freshmen and sophomores to get the benefit, while students who are juniors and seniors do not. Second, the bill removes the arbitrary three year deadline for college admission in order to be eligible for the benefits in the College Access Act. The bill as passed in the House never intended to deny in-state tuition to students who had to work after high school or who have decided to get a college degree later in life. The three year deadline language was also placed in the Act by the Senate to control the cost of the program. However, the District has done a study of Third, the bill closes the loophole that currently allows foreign nationals who live in the District to receive the benefits of the Act. The congressional intent of the bill was to provide state university system-type higher education options to D.C. residents, not foreign nationals who happen to live in the District. Most of these students already have the option to take advantage of their own country's higher educational systems. The bill merely mirrors the Department of Education's own statutory requirements on this matter. The positive impact of the College Access Act on the District of Columbia has been extraordinary. For the first time, D.C. students have the same higher educational choices available to them as residents of the fifty states. This bill seeks only to include those who were arbitrarily left out of the Act from receiving these benefits. The end of the current school year is rapidly approaching and current college seniors will begin to graduate in May. Because of the necessity for swift passage and the noncontroversial nature of this bill, I am asking Chairwoman Morella to seek to have the bill placed on the suspension calendar as soon as we return from recess. I urge all of my colleagues to support this important, noncontroversial measure.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, last December 2, 2000 in Washington, DC, members of the Stewart Family celebrated the 100th year Anniversary of Stewart Funeral Home. John Thomas Stewart, Sr., a young African-American Christian man traveled along dirt roads and trolley tracks to Washington, DC, holding tight to a big dream. He was determined to serve his community and to provide dignified funeral services for Washingtonians. He borrowed money from his brothers and sisters to purchase a casket and a gravesite, and then walked to a Northeast Washington home and arranged for the burial of a child. Mr. Stewart founded the Stewart Funeral Home at 62 H Street NW, Washington, DC, marking the beginning of a rich heritage and tradition of professionalism and community service in the Washington, DC metropolitan community, referred to by the Stewart family as ``The Tradition of Stewartship.'' To meet the needs of rapid growth, John T. Stewart, Sr. and his family expanded the business and twice moved the funeral home to new locations on H Street NE. During this first half-century, the elder John Stewart became well-known throughout the local community for his Christian charity, kindness and benevolence. The Federation of Civic Associations in 1957 dedicated a booklet in commemoration to him that stated, ``. . . John Stewart did not aspire to be famous or great. Rather, he was a plain, God-fearing man who sought only to live a full and useful life, devoted to his family, his business, his church and the community. He was dedicated to helping others and lending a helping hand to the less fortunate. He carved out a niche in the hearts of his neighbors through his kindness, tolerance and generosity. His unselfish willingness to help others, without thought of credit or reward, looms large in the rich spiritual legacy he left, transcending fame and greatness.'' John T. Stewart, Sr. had the wisdom and forethought to share his knowledge and philosophy with his eventual successor, John T. Stewart, Jr. John T. Stewart, Jr. was indoctrinated with the proud Tradition of Stewartship and continued his father's legacy. He and his wife, Margaret Stewart, who gave up her career as a teacher in Prince George's County, continued the tradition of sympathy and service to the community, serving in both leadership and advisory roles in numerous civic, religious and public service organizations. In 1964, with continued growth of the business and inherited dedication to providing top quality care and sympathy, John T. Stewart, Jr. built a first rate facility at 4001 Benning Road, NE, which today stands as a landmark institution in Washington, DC. This new and modem facility was built as a memorial to John, Sr., the founder of Stewart Funeral Home. And like his father, John Stewart, Jr. provided guidance to his sons in funeral service and in the importance of community responsibility. In 2001, Margaret Stewart, her sons, John T. Stewart III and Carlin O. Stewart, and her granddaughter, Stacye, vigilantly continue the Tradition of Stewartship. Stacye, now under the tutelage of her father, John III, represents the fourth generation of the Stewart Funeral Home family. While their business has changed locations a few times over the last hundred years, the Stewart family has held steadfast to the legacy and landmark principles of quality, integrity, and dignified professional services and community involvement. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to pay tribute to the Stewart family for their outstanding contributions to our community.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) for yielding me this time. I especially thank him for the thoughtful substitute he has put forward because what he has done is to listen to the people who have estate tax problems and responded directly to them. Mr. Speaker, the substitute has relief for small businesses, for farmers, and for people who have worked hard to accumulate modest wealth. In other words, for those who need it. Mr. Speaker, I never thought I would hear Americans argue for heredity wealth. That, I thought, was the major difference between the Old World and the new, between Europe and America. I am bemused by the notion of a dead man paying twice. People who inherit wealth have not paid once. The children of the rich, who get the lion's share of the benefits from this bill, have not paid a dime of money they have worked for. This bill, the majority bill, turns progressive taxation, the hallmark of the Federal Tax Code, on its head. We hear about transferring wealth from the rich to the poor. The majority's bill transfers funds from the poor to the rich. The majority has tried to get away with having Americans believe that they are or could be helped by estate tax repeal. The whistle has been blown on the majority bill, thanks to some very principled rich folks who got up and told the truth about who would get the benefits and said that it should not be them but people far poorer than them. They exploded the leading myth behind this bill. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, almost no one would benefit from the majority bill. That is a lot of money to give to no one.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today Senator Tom Harkin and I are introducing the Fair Pay Act of 2001, a bill that would require employers to pay equal wages to women and men performing equivalent work but not the same work in an effort to remedy the pay inequities that women continue to endure. We introduce this bill simultaneously in both Houses as an indication of the preeminent importance many American families attach to equal pay today. A recent Labor Department study, requested by Senator Harkin and voted by Congress last term bolsters the goals of the Fair Pay Act (FPA). The Labor Department studied wage trends among federal contractors. Its conclusions are far more important than the perhaps predictable finding that the gender gap for federal contractors is about the same as it is for U.S. employers as a whole. The most important Labor Department finding is that the major cause of the pay gap is the segregation of women into female-gender occupations. The Department makes the startling finding that, ``Since 1979, the contribution of occupational segregation to the pay gap has jumped from explaining 18 to 46 percent of the gap.'' This finding virtually demonstrates our Fair Pay Act claim that the only way to combat pay discrimination today is to attack directly the practice of paying women less because they are doing ``women's work.'' We cannot come to grips with the pay problems of the average American family without confronting the reality that the average woman works in an occupation that is 70 percent female, while the average man works in an occupation that is 29 percent female. Pay tracks gender. Today, many more women have equivalent pay problems than traditional equal pay problems, thanks to the 1963 Equal Pay Act. Important as it is to update the EPA, it has been clear, at least since I chaired the EEOC in the Carter Administration, that the EPA needs major revision to cope with the stubborn pay problems that trap most women and their families. The Fair Pay Act accomplishes the necessary revision without tampering with the market system. A woman would file a discrimination claim but, as in all discrimination cases, she would have to prove that the reason for the gap between herself and a male co-worker doing equivalent work in the same workplace is discrimination and not other reasons, such as legitimate market factors. Gender, of course, is not a legitimate market factor. The good news from the Labor Department study is that gender segregation has fallen since 1970 because women with greater opportunities have moved into traditionally male occupations. The bad news is that there is a limit to how much we want to encourage teachers, nurses, factory workers, librarians, and other indispensable workers to abandon these vital occupations in order to be paid a decent wage. The frightening flight of women from vital work and occupations has left children without teachers, hospitals without nurses, and communities and employers without other vital workers. The Fair Pay Act recognizes that if men and women are doing comparable work, they should be paid a comparable wage. If a woman is an emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, she should be paid no less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one sex. If a woman is a social worker, a traditionally female occupation, she should not earn less than a probation officer, a traditionally male job, simply because of the gender associated with each of these jobs. The FPA, like the Equal Pay Act (EPA), will not tamper with the market system. As with the EPA, the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove discrimination. She must show that the reason for the disparity is sex or race discrimination, not legitimate market factors. As women's employment has become an increasingly significant factor in the real dollar income of American families, fair pay between the sexes has escalated in importance. There are remaining Equal Pay Act problems in our society, but the greatest barrier to pay fairness for women and their families today is a line drawn in the workplace between men and women doing work of comparable value. I ask for your support of the Fair Pay Act to pay women what they are worth so that their families may get what they need and deserve.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, during the month of March 2001 we celebrate Women's National History Month. This year's theme is ``Celebrating Women of Courage and Vision.'' All across this country, Americans are promoting community, school and workplace celebrations honoring women's accomplishments, contributions, courage and vision. In the Nation's Capital, the District of Columbia Commission for Women will participate in the national observance of Women's History Month to recognize the courage and vision exhibited by women of the District of Columbia. Mr. Speaker, women of every race, creed, color and economic background have contributed to the growth and strength of our community. For more than three decades, programs of the District of Columbia Commission for Women have provided all our citizens with opportunities to bring attention to the creative, civic and professional accomplishments of women. This year as part of its Women's History Month observance, the District of Columbia Commission for Women will establish a scholarship at the University of the District of Columbia to support women in pursuit of their academic and career endeavors. Mr. Speaker, I urge you and all our colleagues to join with me in commending the District of Columbia Commission for Women and its members for their dedication, courage and vision.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I have just come from a subcommittee hearing of a subcommittee of the Committee on International Relations, on which I do not serve, but the Chair and the ranking member were kind enough to afford me the courtesy of sitting at a hearing today on Sudan. I come to the floor today as part of the effort of an increasing number of Members to draw to the attention not only of the House, but of the country the need to step forward on slavery, genocidal war, bombing of humanitarian workers, and forced conversions of Christians and animists to Islam, the worst litany of human rights violations in the world today. The world is full of human rights violations. We have spoken up on many of these violations, and done much on many of them. We have not been able to get hold of this atrocious situation, although this House and the Senate have almost unanimously condemned these violations in Sudan. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne), the ranking member of the subcommittee, and I had a 1-hour special order last year. No Members joined us then, but just this week the multilateral, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), and a bipartisan group of Members held a press conference on Sudan indicating that this House, Members from both aisles, indeed, are not going to sit still for the outrage in Sudan without moving forward. We have a new Caucus on Sudan chaired by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), perfectly bipartisan in nature. Soon another resolution from the House condemning the violations in Sudan will come forward. Thus far the most dramatic response has been that schoolchildren have bought other children and women out of slavery in Sudan. As important as that is for drawing attention to the atrocities in Sudan, it is hardly a grown-up response to what is happening in southern Sudan. At the hearing today and among all of those concerned, we hear a plethora of responses. It is important to settle in on some immediate as well as long-term responses. Everyone knows that related to the long-term responses to stop the war in Sudan, what leads to the slavery, what leads to the genocidal bombings, is the search for oil by Khartoum, bombing its own people in the south to depopulate it so it could get to that oil without sharing it with the entire country. But in the meantime, there are a number of things we can do. Surely we need to bypass the Khartoum Government and use religious organizations and nongovernmental organizations in order to get food aid and medical and other assistance to the people of southern Sudan. Surely we now in this country ought to be leading the United Nations toward a condemnation of the war of the north against the south. There are some who want a no-fly zone, although I do understand that the problem there is that it could engage us in hostilities with Khartoum. We may not be there yet, and perhaps we should not get there, but we cannot sit still for what is going on in Sudan. Recently I signed on to a letter circulated by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) for a special envoy so we could begin to restart diplomatic relations. President Clinton had a high-level special envoy. President Bush says he is not partial to special envoys. Yet if this is a way to try to break into this outrageous situation, then so be it. What we must do this session is move beyond what we did last session: a special order by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) and I on the floor, a resolution by the House and Senate condemning the bombings. This is a very complicated situation, and we cannot stop the war of the north against the south in Sudan. We cannot eliminate slavery through some emancipation proclamation from the United States. We cannot go and buy children and women out of slavery. We cannot stop the worst conversions. But we are the strongest power in the world. We have got to find a way to use that power to stop the war in Sudan, or at least to get a cease-fire so we can begin to pull the sides apart and help restart that country toward a democracy.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, as we speak, one part of the Progressive Caucus budget has already become well known in the country; that is, our American people's dividend which, as it appears, may well be introduced in the Senate. We proposed $300 per family member. The Senate looks like it is going to promote $300 per worker. I would just as soon declare victory if Senators did, because it would return us to the proud tradition of progressive taxation long associated with the Federal Tax Code. This is allegedly a quick fix. It certainly is, because that is all this economy needs now. Witness the Consumer Confidence Index that came out yesterday, which was way up above expectations. If we need more, we can revisit the tax cut later. One part of the Progressive budget that I would like to focus on is the forgotten stepchild of the Federal budget, that is, affordable housing. We have experienced the biggest housing boom of the century, and the worst housing bust for affordable housing since the Great Depression. As the economy has spun up, housing costs have spun out of control. There is zero, amazingly zero, for affordable housing in the majority's budget. The Progressive Caucus budget would give $2 billion. Amazingly, the majority actually cuts public housing repairs by $1 billion. We would increase it $500 million, because at the very least, we ought to save what pitiful housing stock we already have invested in. There is more than enough tax cut to pay for help for affordable housing for working people. We would only make a start with our budget. Surely, a start is what working people are entitled to. The Progressive Caucus budget focuses on the documented priorities of the American people: Affordable housing, prescription drugs, money for school construction and funds to reduce class size and electoral reform, finally.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Wilma Lewis, the first woman in the history of the Nation's capital to be U.S. attorney, is leaving the office she has served with great distinction. From prosecution of hard-core street crime to complex white-collar violations, U.S. Attorney Lewis has left an extraordinary record. She and her predecessor, Eric Holder, who went on to become Deputy Attorney General, had more in common than their background as the first African Americans to be appointed. They were both longtime Washingtonians who were also very able lawyers. Most of the jurisdiction of the U.S. attorney here is D.C. criminal and civil law that elsewhere lies with a local prosecutor. Mayor Williams, Council Chair Cropp, and I have written President Bush to ask that he appoint as U.S. attorney a distinguished lawyer with deep roots in the D.C. community, as Ms. Lewis and Mr. Holder had. That is the way to be sure that not only Federal law is carried out, but that crime keeps coming down, as U.S. Attorneys Lewis and Holder assured.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I introduce the No Taxation Without Representation Act in the House as my good friend and colleague Senator Joe Lieberman introduces the bill in the Senate. We are simultaneously introducing the No Taxation Without Representation Act in the Senate and the House to make the point that we intend to travel both roads at once. In America, there are no House citizens and Senate citizens. The Framers were clear that American citizens are entitled to representation in both houses. Whether you are a fourth generation Washingtonian, as I am, or a newly naturalized American from El Salvador, as many of my constituents are, you are entitled to full representation in the House and Senate. This bill takes a fresh approach to the denial of voting rights to almost 600,000 residents of the District. We are asking Congress to erase the shameful double inequality borne by no Americans except those who live in our capital: inequality with Americans whose federal taxpaying status automatically affords them voting representation, and inequality with Americans in the four territories who, like the District, have no vote but in return are relieved of federal income taxes. In keeping with the nation's founding principles, our bill puts the full question to the Congress: first and foremost, that D.C. residents insist upon full and equal voting representation, but the bill also poses the corollary principle emblazoned in our history by the American Revolution itself: that there should be no taxation without representation. We put the same demand to the Congress that the founders of our nation put to King George, ``Give us our vote, or give us our taxes.'' Confronted with the alternative: D.C.'s $2 billion in federal income taxes or voting representation for its citizens, we believe that Congress ultimately will choose the vote over the money. In a democracy, Congress will understand that it must be where its constituents already are. According to polls, most Americans believe the citizens of our capital already enjoy congressional voting rights. When informed otherwise, almost 75% of American say that Congress should give those rights to us now. In framing the issue as we do for the first time today, we mean to make ``taxation without representation'' more than a slogan--and a lot more than a cliche. This bill expresses the new energy for D.C. voting rights that has become palpable in the District. The revived determination of residents was fueled by the landmark D.C. voting rights cases, where the Supreme Court directed D.C. residents to the Congress for relief. To the Congress they have come in the largest numbers for D.C. voting rights in 25 years, first for a hanging-from- the-rafters town meeting and then for the month-long campaign to get back the vote in the Committee of the Whole we first won in 1993. Today, we are back again with a new voting rights bill and support from one of the great leaders of our country. We will keep coming back until the American principle of one person, one vote lives in the capital as it does in the rest of the country. We may not be there yet, but we will get there as Joe Lieberman recruits sponsors in the Senate and I gather colleagues in the House. We will get there as Congress comes to recognize that already a sizeable majority of Americans support our rights and are the wind at our backs.