Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, House Concurrent Resolution 49 authorizes the use of the Capitol grounds on May 5 for a public program to promote bicycle safety. The program is sponsored by Earth Force, a nonprofit organization for children. The goal of this youth program is to teach children the proper ways to ride bicycles and to encourage safe bicycling programs within our communities. In 1996, over 350,000 children ages 14 and under were treated for bike-related injuries. It is estimated that collisions with motor vehicles account for 90 percent of all bicycle-related injuries. Event participants will ride their bikes through a mock city set up on a pavement near the Capitol. During this exercise, they will receive safety tips and instructions on how to make bikes safer. Mr. Speaker, I support House Concurrent Resolution 49. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Franks) and the committee for supporting the resolution. I would also like to commend the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and a founder and active member of the Bike Caucus, for his sponsorship and enthusiastic support for this resolution. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a sponsor of the concurrent resolution.

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

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 135, a bill to extend the war risk insurance program through 2003. This program allows the Federal Aviation Administration to issue insurance to airlines flying into war zones when it is in the national interest for the airlines to do so and commercial insurance is not available on reasonable terms. The war risk insurance program was first authorized in 1951 and it has served the country well. Since 1975, the nonpremium option under the war risk insurance program alone has been activated over 5,000 times. Recently it has been used in support of Operations Desert Shield and Storm in the Middle East, Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti and Operation Joint Endeavor in Bosnia. As Members can see from its scope, it has been an active part of our Nation's foreign policy and national security efforts. In March, we extended this program for only 2 months until May 31, 1999. With the continuing activities in the Persian Gulf and the current situation in Kosovo, it would be unfortunate to allow this program to expire. I would hope that we could quickly pass this legislation to avoid any lapse in this crucial program. I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Duncan), the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski) for their leadership, and I urge my House colleagues to support H. Res. 135. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 911 is a bill to designate the Federal building in Raleigh, North Carolina, as the ``Terry Sanford Federal Building.'' Senator Sanford served his country and his State for over 6 decades and this designation is a fitting acknowledgment of his devoted service. FBI agent, World War II paratrooper, college president, governor, and United States Senator are all designations given to Terry Sanford. As Governor of North Carolina from 1961 to 1965, Sanford advocated and supported a number of nationally recognized innovations in education, including establishing technical and vocational schools. He championed State support for performing arts schools and dedication of revenues for public schools and teachers' pay. His leadership and diligence led Harvard University to name him as one of the most effective governors of the 20th century. Hard work and loyalty to the interests of his constituents distinguish his service in the United States Senate from 1986 to 1992. Duke University benefited enormously from his tenure as university president. With wisdom and vision, he guided that educational institution to becoming a leader in the fields of medicine and law. Mr. Speaker, the bill has bipartisan support. The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) have been particularly supportive. It is with great pleasure that I join in broad, bipartisan support for H.R. 911 and urge its passage. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), sponsor of the bill.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Wise).

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

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 myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, House Concurrent Resolution 48 authorizes the use of the Capitol grounds for the Sunrayce '99 solar powered car event scheduled to be held on the Capitol grounds on June 20, 1999. During this event, college women and men who have designed and developed their own solar power cars will begin a five-State run from the Capitol grounds to Orlando, Florida. In addition to highlighting the innovation and ingenuity of design and engineering by the college students, the event will emphasize the power and benefits of solar energy. General Motors, Electronic Data Systems, and the Energy Department are once again cosponsors of the event. The event's sponsors will assume all responsibility for expenses and liabilities related to the event. As with all Capitol event, sales, advertisements, and solicitations are explicitly prohibited on the Capitol grounds for the event. I support House Concurrent Resolution 48 and urge its passage.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, we are reintroducing the Ron Brown Tort Equality Act today because it is the first opportunity to commemorate the third anniversary of the tragically needless crash of the plane carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others in Croatia. Congress was out of session on the actual anniversary date, April 3rd of this year. This uniquely poignant accident will be remembered as a singular American tragedy. It is still hard to believe that 33 Americans and two Croatians were killed in a crash that our government could have prevented. The 33 Americans on board that plane were from California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Since the crash, my cosponsors and I have regarded it as a solemn obligation to accomplish two purposes: (1) help secure damages for a loss that can never be repaid, and (2) help see that no such accident occurs again. We reintroduce the bill today spurred on by the vigilance of the families who lost their loved ones in the crash and who are intent on preventing other such tragedies. Since the last introduction of the bill on April 15, 1997, the families have been invaluable allies in helping us gain cosponsors and in keeping this bill alive. Just last week, members of the families met with congressional staff from the offices of cosponsors and me in a valuable strategy session. One result of that meeting and of further consultations with the families is the reintroduction of the Ron Brown tort Equality Act of 1999 today. The families deserve more than the official funerals, the much deserved tributes, and our continuing grief. They deserve more than the insult to their injury that would remain if the law are not altered in light of the tragedy and families are not fully compensated. I believe that the Congress eventually will do the right thing and that the President will sign the right bill. The Air Force Accident Investigation Board report was honest and forthcoming. It concluded that the accident resulted from the negligence of federal employees involving three independent causes, ``any one of which had it not existed would have prevented the accident.'' The command gave authorization to flight procedures that had not been properly reviewed and approved; the aircrew made errors in planning and executing the flight; and the approach to the airport was improperly designated. In addition, inadequate training was a substantial contributing factor. When negligence is this pronounced, compensating the victims also has a deterrent effect on those responsible for assuring that such serious negligence is not repeated. Thus far, however, there have been few indications that federal authorities are serious about assuring that no such tragedy occurs again. Two Article 15 disciplinary actions, two letters of reprimand, and 12 other actions were taken against particular officers. Is this all that our government can do? Following the shocking crash in Croatia, is this the extent of the federal obligation? First, for the families of civilian federal employees, there is the obligation to do more than grant a few thousand dollars through the Federal Employee Compensation program. Our obligation is to amend the law to reach the very few instances of gross negligence, like this horrendous crash, that may occur. The bill would allow federal civilian employees or their families to sue the federal government but only for gross negligence by its officers or employees. Because there will be few instances where gross negligence can be shown, this is a small change in our law. This change will allow the families of federal employees to seek the compensation they have every right to expect while leaving the integrity of the federal government's worker compensation system intact. There also were non-federal employees on that fated plane for whom no compensation is possible today. Astonishingly, federal law does not allow compensation when private citizens are killed or injured overseas. The failure of the Federal Tort Claims Act to allow for any compensation for civilians is either callous or an oversight in the law, and I believe that it is in need of correction. After all, private citizens can sue under the Act for the same injuries when they occur in this country. My bill would allow individuals who do not work for the federal government, or their families, to sue the United States for negligent or wrongful acts or omissions that occur in a foreign country. We also introduce the bill because we know our government would want to deter such accidents in the future. We especially introduce this bill today for the families of those killed with Ron Brown on April 3, 1996, and I urge the Congress to pass this bill this session. The families who lost their loved ones deserve nothing less.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Senator Tom Harkin and I are introducing the Fair Pay Act of 1999, a bill that would require employers to pay equal wages to women and men performing comparable jobs 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. At 76 percent of a men's wage, women's wages and the wage gap remain totally unacceptable. The continuing disparity is especially untenable considering that a significant part of the narrowing of the gap since 1963 is because of a decline in men's wages over the decades. The Equal Pay Act (EPA) was passed in 1963, and by focusing on pay disparities where men and women were doing the same (or similar) jobs, has helped narrow the wage gap between men and women. The Fair Pay Act takes the Equal Pay Act an important step further and seeks to confront the pay disparity problem of the 1990's the way the EPA confronted the equal pay problem in the 1960's. Why has equal pay, once considered a women's issue, gone to the top of the polls for American families today? American families are becoming deeply dependent on women's wages today. Even in two-parent families, 66% of the women work, and the number of female-headed households has more than doubled since 1970. Although most American families today must rely heavily on women's wages, women continue to earn less than their male counterparts with comparable qualifications and duties. Women complete more schooling than men but still have not caught up with men in earnings. Much of what progress has been made can be traced to the earnings of a small group of professional or highly skilled women. The average woman--the woman who works in a historically underpaid traditionally female occupation--has seen little progress. Over her lifetime, a woman loses over $420,000 because of pay inequity, and collectively, women and their families lose more than $100 billion in wages each year because of wage discrimination. The FPA 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, for example, 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 earn no less than a probation officer, a traditionally male job, simply because of the gender associated with each of these jobs. The FPA, like the 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, in light of this being Women's History Month, the Congresswoman from California (Ms. Lee) will be on the floor later this evening on a special order on women of color. Because of a prior commitment, I will not be here at that time. But I would like to use a few minutes to offer a few words concerning a great woman of color of this century, Dorothy Irene Height, President and CEO Emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women. Dorothy Height has spent half a century of ground-breaking service to her country to African American women. She is one of the great civil rights and women's rights leaders of our time. And I emphasize both of those great missions in speaking about Dr. Height. Today is Dr. Dorothy Irene Height's 87th birthday. Mentored by her predecessor, the great Mary McLeod Bethune, Dorothy Height has spent a lifetime mentoring black women. Today was no leisure day for Dorothy Height. As the day began, she was here in this House protesting the majority's census proposal that knowingly undercounts children and people of color. Dorothy Height has spent a lifetime keeping on top of issues of the day like the census. There are so many landmarks in her extraordinary career, I will not attempt to list them. Let me name a few of the great ones. She is the first national female civil rights leader of the modern era. That was clear when 10 civil right leaders got together in 1963 and decided that there would be the first mass march on Washington for civil rights of the 20th century. There were 10 leaders. Only one of them was a woman. My colleagues can imagine who the others were, leaders like the heads of the NAACP and Urban League. And there was that one great woman, Dorothy Height, the President of the National Council of Negro Women. To cite another landmark, when women's rights burst on the scene, Mr. Speaker, Dorothy Height was one of the first leaders to understand that there must be no cleavage between women's rights and African American rights, between race and sex. Inevitably there was some confusion about how blacks were to see this great new movement of half of the population. It took real leadership to come forward and clear up this confusion. Dorothy Height was among the foremost who forged unity. She even helped to make good feminists out of black men, who have ever since been in the forefront of women's rights. All the while she has been carrying the great domestic issues of our time, Dorothy Height has carried an international portfolio. She indeed is recognized today as a world leader on matters of women of color. I come to the floor this evening to salute Dorothy Irene Height, who has made the National Council of Negro Women one of America's great coalitions. Black women's groups of every variety are united under the umbrella of the Council. Together they work to improve the lives of African American women. In celebrating women of color this evening, we would do well to begin with the life and times and work of Dorothy Irene Height.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member for their attention to this naming bill. How appropriate it is that the courthouse at Foley Square would be named for the man who sat there as a Second Circuit Judge and went on to the highest court, Thurgood Marshall. Of course the Foley Square courthouse is one of the preeminent courthouses in the United States in part because of some of the notorious cases that have been decided there, but also because of where it stands and what it has meant in history. So to name a preeminent courthouse after a preeminent lawyer, a preeminent litigator, a preeminent Justice seems just right. In point of fact, Justice Thurgood Marshall was preeminent in so many ways, it is difficult to know now how he will be best remembered. He spent many years on the Court. He was Solicitor General at an important high point of our history when the government was litigating cases involving race and other matters of signal importance to the constitutional development of our law. Yet, I do not believe that the Justice will be remembered preeminently as a Justice or as a lawyer. I believe those are too small to encase his memory. I believe he will be remembered for what he did for American law itself. We are at a proud point in American law because the words equality under justice means something. We did not get to that point, the law did not get to that point by itself. Equality under law was an empty phrase when Marshall began to practice law and when he and his cohorts at the NAACP, later to become the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, began to attack discrimination at its core. Despite the carnage of the Civil War, the fact is that slavery was replaced by a system of law called Jim Crow. It was that system that Thurgood Marshall set his sights upon. He embarked upon the mission of filling the empty vessel, the words ``equality under law,'' with true meaning. Marshall led a brilliant litigation strategy. Today, ``separate but equal'' is totally discredited, but it took years, gnawing at the roots of that doctrine, to finally overthrow that doctrine with Brown v. Board of Education. When President Johnson sought to appoint Thurgood Marshall to his two important positions, he faced an uphill battle, and if I may say so, from members of his own party. And yet our law and our courts are richer because that battle was fought, and because Thurgood Marshall fought his battles for our law and for African Americans; ultimately, for all Americans, who now all accept ``equality under law,'' with many more coming forward to claim that right than those who happen to be black. For lawyers like me, Thurgood Marshall was nothing less than a role model, because there were so few African American lawyers in the 1960s when I came to the bar. He has since become not only a role model for my generation but an American legend in the law. It is most appropriate that he be honored in this way.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember a friend, Robert H. Hodgson, Jr., whose mortal remains will be laid to rest in the columbarium of his home parish, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, on K Street in the District of Columbia, this Saturday. Rob was a native Washingtonian who was educated at the Campus School of Catholic University and Gonzaga College High School. Rob also earned a BA at Rice University. He died in his sleep on February 18. Rob was passionately political and politically compassionate. He thrived in the turbulent seas of D.C., Anglican, and Gay and Lesbian politics. He worked with numerous District officials, including Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp, Councilman Harold Brazil, and Councilman James Graham; he served as treasurer of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, was a vocal board member of Episcopal Caring Response to AIDS, and an active volunteer in his parish's AIDS and homeless ministries. Those who knew Rob will remember his fondness for gossip. Rob always had the ``inside scoop,'' not only on the D.C. Council and the D.C. Democratic State Committee, but on numerous vestries within the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Rob often used his skills as a raconteur to enliven a dull reception with the latest ``dish.'' Rob was not survived by his immediate family, but he had many friends, in particular, his life-long friend Mary Eva Candon and his confidant Parker Hallberg. Mr. Speaker, I ask that this House extend its sympathy and condolences to the many friends of Rob Hodgson.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I introduce the District of Columbia Legislative Autonomy Act of 1999 and the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act of 1999, continuing a series of bills that I will introduce this session to ensure a process of transition to democracy and self-government for the residents of the District of Columbia. The first provision of the first bill in my D.C. Democracy Now series, the District of Columbia Democracy 2000 Act (D.C. Democracy 2000), has already been passed and signed by the President as Public Law 106-1-- the first law of the 106th Congress. This provision repeals the Faircloth attachment and returns power to the Mayor and City Council. The Revitalization Act passed in 1997 eliminated the city's traditional, stagnant federal payment and replaced it with federal assumption of escalating state costs including prisons, courts and Medicaid, as well as federally created pension liability. Federal funding of these state costs involve the jurisdiction of other appropriations subcommittees, not the D.C. appropriations subcommittee. Yet, it is the D.C. subcommittee that must appropriate the District's own locally-raised revenue derived from its own taxpayers before that money can be used by the District government. My bill corrects an untenable position whereby a national legislature appropriates the entire budget of a local city jurisdiction. The District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act would allow the District government to pass its own budget without congressional approval. Congress has put in place two safeguards that duplicate the function of the appropriation subcommittees--the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority (Financial Authority). Today, however, the District has demonstrated that it is capable of exercising prudent authority over its own budget without help from any source except the CFO. In FY 1997, the District ran a surplus of $186 million. Last year, the District's surplus totaled $444 million, and the city government is scheduled to continue to run balanced budgets and surpluses into the future. Budget autonomy will also help the District government and the Financial Authority to reform budgetary procedures by: (1) streamlining the District's needlessly lengthy and expensive budget process in keeping with the congressional intent of the Financial Authority Act to reform and simplify D.C. government procedures, and (2) facilitating more accurate budgetary forecasting. This bill would return the city's budget process to the simple approach passed by the Senate during the 1973 consideration of the Home Rule Act. The Senate version provided a simple procedure for enacting the city's budget into law. Under this procedure, the Mayor would submit a balanced budget for review by the City Council with only the federal payment subjected to congressional approval. Under the Constitution's District clause, of course, the Congress would retain the authority to intervene at any point in the process in any case, so nothing of the prerogatives and authority of the Congress over the District would be lost ultimately. A conference compromise, however, vitiated this approach treating the D.C. government as a full agency (hence the 1996 very harmful shutdown of the D.C. government for a full week when the federal government was shut down). The Home Rule Act of 1973, as passed, requires the Mayor to submit a balanced budget for review by the City Council and then subsequently to Congress as part of the President's annual budget as if a jurisdiction of 540,000 residents were an agency of the Federal Government. The D.C. budget process takes much longer compared to six months for comparable jurisdictions. The necessity for a Financial Authority significantly extended an already uniquely lengthy budget process. Even without the addition of the Authority, the current budget process requires the city to navigate its way through a complex bureaucratic morass imposed upon it by the Congress. Under the current process, the Mayor is required to submit a financial plan and budget to the City Council and the Authority. The Authority reviews the Mayor's budget and determines whether it is approved or rejected. Following this determination, the Mayor and the City Council (which also holds hearings on the budget) each have two opportunities to gain Authority approval of the financial plan and budget. The Authority provides recommendations throughout this process. If the Authority does not approve the Council's financial plan and budget on second review, it forwards the Council's revised financial plan and budget (containing the Authority's recommendations to bring the plan and budget into compliance) to the District government and to the President. If the Authority does approve the budget, that budget is then sent to the President without recommendations. The proposed District budget is then included in the federal budget, which the President forwards to Congress for consideration. The D.C. subcommittees in both the House and Senate review the budget and present a Chairman's mark for consideration. Following markup and passage by both Houses, the D.C. appropriations bill is sent to the President for his signature. Throughout this process the bill is not only subject to considerations of fiscal soundness but individual political considerations. This procedure made a bad budgetary process much worse causing me to write a consensus budget provision in the President's Revitalization Act that allows the parties to sit at the same table and write one budget. Even so, instead of that budget becoming law then, the District remains without a budget for months, often after the beginning of the fiscal year. Under the legislation I introduce today, the District of Columbia still remains subject to the full appropriations process in the House and Senate for any federal funds. Nothing in this bill diminishes the power of the Congress to ``exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever'' over the District of Columbia under Article I, section 8, clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution should it choose to revise what the District has done concerning locally raised revenue. Nothing in this legislation prevents any Member of Congress from introducing a bill that addresses her specific concerns regarding the District. The Congress should grant the District the power to propose and enact its own budget containing its own revenue free from Congressional control now during the period when the Authority is still the monitoring mechanism providing an important incentive to help the District reach budget balance and meaningful Home Rule. The second bill I introduce today, the District of Columbia Legislative Autonomy Act of 1999, eliminates the congressional review period of 30 days and 60 days respectively, for civil and criminal acts passed by the D.C. City Council. Under the current system, all acts of the Council are subjected to this Congressional layover period. This unnecessary and undemocratic step adds yet another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to an already overburdened city government. My bill would eliminate the need for the District to engage in the byzantine process of enacting emergency and temporary legislation concurrently with permanent legislation. The Home Rule charter contemplates that if the District needs to pass legislation while Congress in out of session, it may do so if two-thirds of the Council determines that an emergency exists, a majority of the Council approves the law and the Mayor signs it. Emergency legislation, however, lasts for only 90 days, which would (in theory) force the Council to the pass permanent legislation by undergoing the usual congressional review process when Congress returns. Similarly, the Home Rule Charter contemplates that the Council may pass temporary legislation lasting 120 days without being subjected to the congressional review process, but must endure the congressional layover period for that legislation to become law. In actual practice, however, most legislation approved by the City Council is passed concurrently on an emergency, temporary and permanent basis to ensure that the large, rapidly changing city remains running. This process is cumbersome and inefficient and would be eliminated by my bill. It is important to emphasize that my bill does not prevent review of District laws by Congress. The D.C. Subcommittee would continue to scrutinize every piece of legislation passed by the City Council if it wishes and to change or strike that legislation under the plenary authority over the District that the Constitution affords to the Congress. My bill merely eliminates the automatic hold placed on local legislation and the need to pass emergency and temporary legislation to keep the District functioning. Since the adoption of the Home Rule Act in 1973, over 2000 acts have been passed by the council and signed into law by the Mayor. Only thirty-nine acts have been challenged by a congressional disapproval resolution. Only three of those resolutions have ever passed the Congress and two involved a distinct federal interest. Two bills to correct for any federal interest, rather than a hold on 2000 bills, would have served the purpose and saved considerable time and money for the District and the Congress. I ask my colleagues who are urging the District government to pursue greater efficiency and savings to do your part in giving the city the tools to cut through the bureaucratic maze the Congress itself has imposed upon the District. Congress has been clear that it wants to see the D.C. government taken apart and put back together again in an effort to eliminate redundancy and inefficiency. Congress should therefore eliminate the bureaucracy in D.C. that Congress is solely responsible for by granting the city budgetary and legislative autonomy. Only through true budgetary and legislative autonomy can the District realize meaningful self-government and Home Rule. The President and the Congress took the first step in relieving the District of costly escalating state functions in the Revitalization Act. This bill takes the next logical step by granting the District control over its own budgetary and legislative affairs. I urge my colleagues to pass this important measure.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the local Equality Begins at Home events here in the District of Columbia that will take place during the week of March 21-27, 1999. I will be at the Bipartisan Congressional Retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 21, when the District of Columbia's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) residents kick off a week of lobbying and conscience raising at Freedom Plaza. These events, with an emphasis on local needs, are taking place throughout the United States, but no jurisdiction has experienced more bigotry associated with sexual orientation than the nation's capital. This prejudice, I am happy to say, does not come from the people of the District of Columbia, or their locally elected representatives, who have enacted the most progressive and far-reaching protections in the country. Residents of every background in the District feel particular anger when, in violation of all of the principles of self-government, Congress injects itself to enact measures at odds with principles of equality and anti-discrimination that the residents of this city hold especially dear. Each year, under congressional attack, I am forced to defend the District's domestic partnership law, a very modest provision designed to afford relatives or partners who live in the same household the opportunity to qualify for health benefits at no additional expense to the District government. Last year, I spent ten hours on the House floor defending the District's appropriation from anti-democratic attachments, more of them seeking to impose sexual orientation discrimination than any other type of attachment that was proposed and passed. We must keep these and other anti-gay provisions off this year's appropriation. The right to adopt children or to qualify for health insurance has everything to do with kids in need of homes or residents in need of health care, and nothing to do with the sexual orientation of our residents. The bigoted mischief done by Congress to the District in the name of homophobia has known no bounds. The city is now in court seeking to overturn the congressional attachment that prevents the release of the November ballot results determining whether District residents who are ill can use medically prescribed marijuana for medicinal purposes. Another amendment brimming with discrimination last year all but destroyed the District's successful needle exchange program, leaving this vital, life-saving program to a totally private group with little funding. I very much appreciate the efforts of our dedicated and energetic LGBT community to educate Members concerning the injury done to individuals and the insult to self-government rendered by congressional anti-gay attachments. With Equality Begins at Home rallied to fight back, we will yet make the Congress understand that it must back off-- back off bigotry against District residents whose sexual orientation differs from the majority, and back off the annual assault on the legislative prerogatives of the City Council. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, this bigotry is not limited to anti-democratic legislation aimed at the LGBT community of the District. In the past year, this nation has been outraged at the inexplicable cruelty of the murders of two gay men in Alabama and Wyoming. These hate-inspired murders underscore the need to pass the Hate-Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) immediately. Another session of Congress must not go by without addressing both the crimes and the employment discrimination that emanate from sexual orientation. No other response is acceptable.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, it has been my habit to come to the floor occasionally in order to report to this body concerning your Nation's capital. There is a special responsibility that the House and the Senate have for the Nation's capital and it is not possible to get a real sense of what is happening in this city, even when in it, to see it in perspective, without the kind of information that I try to give periodically to this body, as we go off to Hershey, Pennsylvania, for our second bipartisan retreat. Therefore, I want to discuss this evening an issue and a place about which I am sure there is agreement that bipartisanship should always be the order of the day. It is, after all, the seat of our government, the home of more than a half million people, the place where all of us want to do all we can to make it the proudest seat of government we can. What I would ask of this body, what I think the district has a right to ask of this body, what I think the people of the District of Columbia, the mayor and the city council have a right to ask of this body, is that it look at the District with fresh eyes for, Mr. Speaker, there is a new city, if ever there was one, before your eyes. It is a city where there is a new mayor. It is a city where there is a new city council and where there is a new control board. I am most appreciative that as the 106th Congress convened, the Speaker, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), received the new mayor, Anthony Williams, and me, and we had a very good and encouraging discussion. The same was true of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young); and the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook). The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) has gone into the District over the last few weeks to see for himself the city that now comes under his appropriations subcommittee jurisdiction. I have gone as well, and the mayor, to visit the chair of the Senate District appropriations subcommittee, and the mayor has met with the chairman of the Oversight Committee for the District, Mayor George Voinovich, himself a former mayor, the mayor of Cleveland. May I say that I continue to work, and in the bipartisan manner that he and I have long ago established, with the chairman of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), and that has been a most fruitful partnership and we think it is a model for what we should be trying to achieve in the way of bipartisan cooperation when we meet beginning tomorrow in Hershey. I should indicate to Members that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) has agreed to sponsor, with me, a reception for Mayor Anthony Williams here in the House on April 13, in room 2226 Rayburn. We are doing that simply because we think Members would want to meet the new mayor of the District of Columbia, about which I am sure we have read a great deal and heard a great deal. It is seldom that a city experiences the kind of change your capital has experienced over the last few months. The city has had a control board because, like Cleveland and New York and Philadelphia, it had financial problems, although I must say that the financial problems that the District had were almost inevitable because it was carrying State functions and no city in the United States carries State functions. May I say how appreciative I am, the elected officials are and the residents are, that in its wisdom Congress removed at least some of those State functions, the most costly ones, the ones that no city could carry, medicaid or at least part of medicaid; courts; removed pension liability that was built up when the Congress was in charge of the District, enabling the District to breathe and to get control of its finances. We are most grateful for the understanding that that was a necessary obligation of the Federal Government. What we have got in place essentially is an entirely new team. The control board is new. Except for one member, the vice chair, Constance Neumann, who served so well on the last control board, all the other members are new, appointed by the President. There is, as I have said, a new mayor and there is a revitalized city council. Even the new mayor brings something very different from what mayors usually bring to the office. This mayor served as chief financial officer and, thus, is himself partly responsible for the rise of the District once again to economic strength. He, in effect, served an apprenticeship for becoming mayor doing what it is that mayors most have to do, and that is balancing a budget and getting control of your finances. The city council has some of the same members. They are members who have proven themselves to want to exercise oversight and they are joined by others who were elected precisely because the city now demands oversight and accountability, a check on the executive from its city council. So I ask this body to regard this as morning for the District. It is morning again. It is like it is outdoors today; it is spring; it is a new season with a whole new set of actors in place. All I ask of this body is it leave behind any sense of the District as it was and give these new players a chance to show what they can do. I believe that they not only will do so, I think if one reads your morning papers in the District each day one will see that they are doing so. I invite everyone to flip through the Metropolitan Section every once in awhile to see that I am, I believe, right on this. The District is clearly realigning itself, first for its own residents and then, of course, because it wants the Congress to understand that it is a new city. What I am asking of the Congress is that the Congress realign itself so that it is ready to meet a new city. I want to say a word about what I mean by a new city because I am not this evening speaking rhetorically. The city not only has a new administration, it has a new administration because it has a new political culture. The reason it has a new mayor, a new city council, is because there was a voter driven reaction to the state in which the city found itself. It was not driven by Congress. It was not driven by any outside force. It was driven by the circumstances that District residents found for themselves. Essentially, it was driven by a loud and virtually unanimous cry of enough from residents. That is why I say there is a change in the political culture, the kind of change that I think is permanent precisely because it has been driven from the bottom, precisely because of its reaction to what voters and residents felt on a daily basis about their city and they wanted it to be better. They wanted it to be better not because this body insisted so but because they had to live with it every day and because these people who were in charge were people they could either keep in charge or take from their posts, and they have selected among them, and I believe selected wisely. I am very pleased that all of the signals from Congress have been that this body, Senate and House, does understand that this is a new city and should be treated accordingly. I am very pleased with the bipartisan approach to the city's issues that we have seen thus far, and there is evidence that I will allude to shortly. I come to report today in a different spirit than I have come to the floor sometimes on the District. I do not come in complaint. I do not come to say, let the District be the District, let democracy reign in the Nation's capital the way it does every place else. I come to say that I am grateful for the way in which Congress is stepping back and letting the District do what I believe it is doing very well already. I certainly hope, and I must say based on our conversations with the leadership I do believe, that I will not experience an appropriation this year that is anything like the appropriation I experienced last year where I stood for 10 hours on this floor. Even though there was before this body a consensus budget and almost no changes were made in the budget itself, I stood on this floor for 10 hours while Members pasted one or another anti-democratic attachment on the D.C. appropriation, an appropriation that comes here with only money raised from the taxpayers of the District of Columbia and, by right, should not be here at all. I had to stand here and fight back, for the most part unsuccessfully, amendments that Members might have wished to put on to their own district, but certainly had no right to put undemocratically on to mine. This occurred even though everybody could see that the District was on the mend. The former mayor had said he was not going to run again, the budget was in order, and yet the budget became a vehicle for Members' desires having nothing to do with the wishes of the residents of the District of Columbia. I am hoping that the new cast of characters, if nothing else, will get the respect of this body so that our budget comes through, budget with our own money, without attachments, and I have no reason to believe that that will not be the case this year. I raise it because there is no reason, as I have said to the Speaker, and as I have said to our appropriators, why the District should not be the first, rather than the last, budget that comes from this House where, after all, it is not the money of the Federal Government, it is the money of District residents. The City was closed down for a week during the government shutdown. In the middle of its own financial crisis, one can imagine the bitterness that was left with District residents when, as far as they were concerned, it was their money and it should not have been up here at all. The delays in our budget cost us in interest, when we have to borrow, because of the uncertainty the market believes is there when what our council and our mayor have done has to go to yet another legislative body and one not as familiar with the City because it is not their particular budget. Some of my colleagues were not here, so I raise it so that they know what has happened in the past, and so that we can make what I hope will be a clean break with that kind of past. I believe that there is signal evidence that that kind of break has already been made. As the session opened, I introduced the first of a series of bills. The series is called Democracy Now, and the first bill was called D.C. Democracy 2000. It seeks to sunset the control board, the board that was necessary when we got into financial trouble early, because we are no longer in financial trouble, and it sought to return some powers that were taken from the mayor and the city council to the mayor and the city council. While the second part of the bill was not ripe because the new administration had no track record, the part that would sunset the control board, that is; I believe that the first part was ripe, and that there was no reason why the take-charge new mayor of the District should not have what it takes to rebuild the City. To his credit and with much appreciation from me, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), the chairman of the subcommittee, took the first part of my bill and brought it through subcommittee and then the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), through full committee, and then on to this floor where it easily passed in the House as well; and I am pleased to report this evening that my bill, or the first part of my bill, which, in fact, became a Davis-Norton bill, has become PL106-1. That ``dash 1'' means it is the first bill of the 106th Congress to be signed by the President of the United States. How appropriate that the first bill that a Democratic mayor signed was a bill that the Republican House and Senate passed to return democracy to the mayor, to the mayor and the city council. We are most appreciative. We think it bodes well for the Congress and for the District, and it is what I mean when I say the District has to realign itself and the Congress has to realign itself, and I believe that that shows that both bodies are, in good faith, trying to do exactly that. Now, I did not and have not yet pushed for the second half of D.C. Democracy 2000, as I have indicated, because I think it is only fair to ask even a new mayor who has the confidence of the House to get his own track record before our sunset or seek to have the control board to sunset a year early. My, how I would wish, however, that as the year 2000 dawns, the District of Columbia can be free of any oversight, except this Congress. That would mean that the control board would go a year early. Mr. Speaker, let me indicate why I think that should happen. It is not simply because we have a new mayor in which I believe everybody, residents of the District of Columbia and Congress alike have confidence, it is because the evidence is already on the table. The Congress, through the control board statute, indicated that the District could be rid of the control board if, at the end of four years, the City had a balanced budget. Let me tell my colleagues what the record is. The District has already had not one balanced budget, and that was three years ahead of time, but three balanced budgets plus surpluses in each of those three years. Mr. Speaker, a $185 million surplus in 1997; a $444.8 million surplus in fiscal year 1998, and the City projects a $158 million surplus for fiscal year 1999. As if that were not enough in the way of surpassing the expectations of the Congress, we had put into the revitalization package that this body passed taking over State functions in 1997 a provision that would allow the District to borrow in the fourth year if it had a balanced budget on the one hand, but we had not quite been able to get rid of, an operating deficit that it has been carrying now for years. But the District of Columbia is going to be able to eliminate its $322 million operating deficit from its own revenues without any borrowing. This is strong evidence that the District has not only met, but surpassed, congressional expectations and is no longer in an emergency or crisis status, and when one is no longer in an emergency status, one no longer needs a control board. A control board is an emergency mechanism; it is not a security blanket. No city gets it, or must have it, unless it is in an emergency. The District has pulled itself out of a financial crisis in a way no one would dare to have predicted a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, I can understand that to pass the second half of Democracy 2000, the burden is going to be on me, it always is, and therefore, I have not requested of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) even hearings, yet, on the second half of that bill that would sunset the control board. Rather, with a new administration that took office only in January, it is only fair to let the mayor get his steam up, show what he can do, and then have hearings and see whether or not this bill can pass the House and the Senate. Is the evidence on the table that this new mayor is in charge of the City and does not need any oversight from anyone except the voters of the District of Columbia? I think the evidence is very clear already. I think we need to see it continue for a few more months, but it is very clear already. Members have come up to me, came up to me after this first big snow the other day and told me that they noted the very quick and efficient way in which the streets were cleaned, and that it was in contrast to some other experiences that they had had. Let me cite the way in which the new administration gets hold of problems, because he cannot promise us that there are not huge numbers of problems left over. The real question is, is he in charge of them? Does he gain control of them? Do we have an administration that knows how to get rid of problems? Because the fact of problems are going to be there for some time. An example is an article in the Washington Post, a series, exposing problems in homes for retarded people. The District did a very good thing in taking retarded people and other disabled people out of a huge monstrosity of an institution, taking them out of institutionalized care and spreading these disabled people in homes around the City. Well, The Washington Post did what they were supposed to do. They went around and looked at these homes and these homes have been in existence now for 3 or 4 years and they are private homes all around the City run by contractors, and it found evidence that some of them are not treating retarded people very well, and that is itself, I will not say criminal, but it is pretty close to it when we consider that we are talking about people that are pretty close to helpless. There was a time when there would be exposure of problems like that and then we would wait to hear word that something had happened. Well, the articles ran a couple of days ago. This morning's paper said that the mayor has moved in already to debar two of the contractors in two of the homes, and to move the people out. That is what I mean by ``take charge.'' That is what the Congress cannot do, what the control board cannot do; that is what only a fully empowered mayor can do and what, with his powers fully intact, he is now doing. Mr. Speaker, there are many, many examples of management progress in the City. Let me just take two, the first being perhaps the institution most exposed to the public and about which the public most cares because they affect their lives so directly: Schools. This may be the institution in the District where the Congress has had the greatest concern, the public schools. To say they have done very poorly is to speak far too lightly of schools that deserve nothing but contempt for what they had done to our children. What has happened in the District now is that a new, bold, energetic, collegial superintendent named Arlene Ackerman has come to the superintendency and things began to happen immediately. Her Summer Stars program will probably be a model for the country where she took children and said, in order to eliminate social promotion, they were to go to summer school and that if one wanted to get ahead, one could also go to summer school so that the children were not stigmatized, and that there would be a ratio of 15 children to every teacher, a very low ratio. Here is the kind of summer school that no one has ever seen much of. It was over-subscribed, and in the morning, children were put to very intensive reading and math instructions, and in the evening, or afternoons, she was able to get funding from private sources to take these youngsters all around the region to cultural and fun activities that would otherwise have been unavailable to them. Even before she began with the Summer Stars program, she had so changed the regime in the schools with respect to how teachers were to confront their job that the scores in every grade had risen significantly. It can be done if we have the right people in charge. Arlene Ackerman is so good that I am sure some Members would like to steal her, and we will not let that happen. Because that kind of progress from a school system that was in the gutter, it was so bad, to so quickly see it come up in the hands of somebody who knows what she is doing is precisely what this City has needed. Let me take another agency that of course is of great, great concern; the police department. The District went out and did a nationwide search and got itself a first-class police chief. They got him from a much larger city, Chicago. They got a police chief whose reputation has been made in community policing. No approach is more popular in this body than community policing where we put the police on the ground. They get to know people. They get to deal with problems at the ground level, and we get rid of crime. Chief Ramsey has brought his community policing and his management style from Chicago to the District, and we are already seeing the kind of control and innovation that had been absent for too long. For example, the Chief, instead of having what we used to in most cities, which is the command sitting in headquarters, has moved the command into the field so that one can hold cops accountable, because the command is not somewhere downtown. The command is right there in the neighborhood. This man means it when he says community policing. That does not mean just a cop on the street. It means everybody is involved in community policing. Troubled police department. Slow to take down crime. It is finally going down significantly in the District, and it was before even this police chief came. But here is a man who knows how to keep that progress going, with a real live management style that trucks no excuses. An example, he found a police department that, according to, again, a series of articles, had excessive shootings. Again, the Washington Post, just as it did a series on how retarded people were treated in group homes, earlier did a series that showed that the police department, albeit before Chief Ramsey, came to the city a few months ago, had one of the highest excessive shooting rates in the country. High crime rate, and our cops were apparently using their guns and firing them more than they should. This flowed from a whole set of problems, including too little training. What the Chief did seems to me is an example for all of us who are public officials. He believed that, if his internal affairs unit took this evidence that was in the paper, of shootings that had occurred, allegedly, excessively over the years; and if he did his own investigation, that the public would not have the greatest confidence in a police department investigating itself concerning these accusations. So he went to the Justice Department, and he asked the Attorney General if she would assign some objective investigators to look at the problem of excessive shootings. One, had they occurred? Had they been excessive? What should be done about them? Here, you have the opposite of what people have come to expect in many cities, no cover-up, but rather a police chief pulling the covers off and saying investigate us and tell us what should be done. If that does not inspire confidence in the police department, nothing will. But, Mr. Speaker, there is wholesale confidence in the various sectors in this city. There is great and new business confidence. The First Lady was, just a few days ago, at an event in the District, attended by the great corporations and small businesses of this region, that was about efforts that they had made over the past year on their own to raise money for a real private/public partnership with the District. It was very encouraging to see how private business in the city and in the region were responding to the new District of Columbia of which I speak. One such response I must bring to your attention, Don Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and business leaders in the region and in the city came to see the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) and me about an idea that they were themselves going to match. They noted that we have only one small public open admissions university in the District. So if one does not fit that university, one has no other public university in the District the way they would if they lived in Virginia or Maryland or New York or California. They proposed that a youngster in D.C. be able to go to public universities elsewhere, such as Virginia, with the Federal Government paying the difference between in State tuition and the out-of-State cost. So that would mean, for example, at the University of Virginia where it costs $16,000 if one lives out of State, but only about $5,000 if one lives in the State, that a youngster from D.C. could go for the $5,000. Boy has this been greeted with hallelujah in the District of Columbia. There are many sacrifices that people make to live in the District of Columbia. One is that, when one's kids get to be college age, there is no public university except an open admission one, and a very important open admission one, but it certainly does not fit every student. Students have flocked to this idea. In order to make clear that this proposal was meant to take nothing from the need to build our own open admissions city university, I have achieved an agreement with the chairman that our open admissions city university would itself get a grant that would be an annual grant so that it can assist the university in its own rebuilding. So there is going to be a win-win situation here. For youngsters who remain in the District, and many of them who graduated from our schools will have to remain here and will want to remain here, there will be a University of the District of Columbia which has some added money on an annual basis. For youngsters who want to go out of the District of Columbia, the District of Columbia College Access Act, cosponsored by me, introduced by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), will provide a subsidy so that the parents, the families will have to pay only the in-State tuition cost. Meanwhile, these business leaders have not just come to us and said come up with some Federal money. They have already raised $15 million themselves to supplement youngsters who, indeed, go to college anywhere in the United States, including in the District of Columbia, whether or not they take advantage of this in State tuition subsidy. So that means that if one, for example, wants to go to the University of Virginia, somehow one's family gets the $5,000, that is, the in- State tuition rate, one still has a lot to come up with if one is going to live outside the District. This private fund will be functionally necessary for many to even take advantage of the Davis-Norton bill that would subsidize in-State tuition. The name of our act is the D.C. College Access Act. The name of the private program is the D.C. College Access Program. So they are a kind of coherent approach with a subsidy for tuition from the Federal Government and a subsidy for living expenses and for expenses that prepare these youngsters for college that makes sure that they remain there once they get there. So it is just the kind of synergy that the Congress likes to encourage. But this time, the notion of the in-State tuition, Federally subsidized, and the notion of the private subsidy have come from the business community. That is what I mean when I say there is confidence in this city. It is coming from every sector. It came first from the voters who elected a whole new set of actors or at least the many of whom were new. It comes from the Congress, which has already passed a bill to return powers to the mayor and the city council. We see that it comes also from the business community. The question of new money for the District is still on the table, because, while the Federal Government has taken over the most costly State functions, the District has lost population. Like most big cities, the difference is, if one loses population from Chicago or Baltimore, if one loses population from Atlanta or New York, there is a State to back one up. We have nobody but ourselves. We are orphans. Therefore, we do not pretend that we are permanently in the best shape. We know we are now with the good economy. We also know that we are going to have to find other revenue sources. But the mayor agrees with me that the first thing that the new mayor should do is, not come to the Congress and say give me some money; that if I believe the mayor needs to have a track record in order for the Control Board to sunset early, I also believe the mayor has to have a track record and has to devise an approach before he can come here and say he needs more money. He was the first to agree with this. He had no intention of coming to ask for more money. Even though, in order to get the State functions taken back by the Federal Government, we had to turn in our Federal payment. So we do not get any Federal payment, which means that the 25 million visitors who come to the District of Columbia every year have the services paid for essentially out of the pockets of the people I represent. They are in a city with a declining population. At some point, we have got to design an approach to make sure that the District is able to handle this as it is handling it now. The importance of the revitalization package which took the State functions cannot be underestimated. The mayor is not asking for more money at this time. I am sure that we will have conversations over the next few years with how to increase revenue in the District. Meanwhile, look at what the mayor has just done this week. He has come forward with a very bold budget that is itself a policy document that is a paradigm for what a budget ought to be. Whether one agrees with this budget or not, the fact is it is a budget unlike budgets the District of Columbia has seen for a long time, because it points to new directions and does not simply indicate where money will be spent. If that is all a budget document is, it simply plugs in dollar signs for what is already there, that is not what the District needed. Some parts of it are already very controversial, like the proposal to sell the existing campus of the University of the District of Columbia, Northwest, and move that campus to Southeast, use the money as an endowment for the University of the District of Columbia and put it beside a new technology high school and Department of Employment Service office. All of that looks like it is an interesting idea. There is great concern in the university about moving them to a part of the city which has had some crime and other problems. There is also a problem because the land is not owned by the District of Columbia. So I am not sure if this is feasible. I am sure of this, it is the counterproposal that the District of Columbia ought to be debating. It is proposals that are bold that it ought to be debating, even if it decides that is not what they ought to do. What we do not need is simply to put forward budgets like we have put forward in the last 10 years, budgets that one year look like they did before and the year before. We have got to wake up and smell the coffee and say, yeah, now that I have seen that, I like it or I do not like it. In the democratic exchange between the counsel, the mayor, and the public, this matter will be settled, and there and only there must it be settled. This body, I am sure, does not want to have anything to do with a proposal that is as complicated as that. It is not for us to say I have no idea where I stand on it. Do my colleagues know what I am waiting for, I am waiting for the hearings in the city council so I can find out whether it is feasible, whether it does make sense, in the same way that I wait for hearings in this body before I know where I stand on important breakaway issues. The mayor's budget is full of such breakaway proposals. He wants D.C. agencies to compete with private sector for city contracts. He knows he must work with city unions and city workers in order for that to work. I am sure I do not need to tell him that no one can support it unless he brings the workers in because he is an expert in management and bringing management and policy together. I am sure that the two will come together because this kind of composition, where it has worked in other cities, and, very often, if not most often, indeed, the public workers who know the job have in fact won the contract. So there is nothing to fear but fear itself if we have a level playing field and if everybody gets around the table and designs the process together. The mayor has put a priority on increasing funding for D.C. public schools and youth programs. I love the part of the mayor's program that says he wants to increase after-school programs. I cannot think of anything the mayor could do that could be more important. There we get youngsters and we capture them so they do their homework, we capture them so that they are not latchkey kids, we capture them so that they are in a safe and productive place between the hours of 3 and 6, or whatever they turn out to be, and those are the hours when youngsters get into trouble or commit crimes. So it takes care of so many things at one time, and he has put a priority there. He has a bold proposal to provide health insurance for almost 40,000 poor uninsured residents so that they do not cost the city money by going to emergency rooms, and so that, in fact, they get health care early rather than later, at much greater expense to the city. He wants to restructure the city's debt using the savings to cut taxes on small businesses. To do that, of course, would begin to reinvigorate our small business sector. The mayor has one budget request that, thus far, I believe, is being received well. I do not have a specific indication from the appropriators yet, because I am sure they want to study it, but somehow we got into our appropriation a requirement that the District have two reserve funds. Now, the District does not mind having one, but having two is a bit much. There is a provision that the District have a reserve fund of up to $250 million. A lot of money, but I think it is right to do so, so that we carry that reserve fund so that we can use it on a rainy day. Then there is something else that, probably, Congress did not mean to be in there. The two never, it seems to me, never came together. And that is a reserve fund for $150 million put away for each year. So that would just build up. The District would have $350 million the second year and so forth. I do not think the Congress really meant to have the District build up that kind of reserve. I think it meant to have the District do what every other city does, and that is to have a healthy reserve fund, the way the reserve fund of up to $250 million would be. So the mayor is saying that he would like to be relieved of the second $150 and do the first $250. I strongly support that. Because if the mayor is not able to produce something in investment to the city, if he is not able to say, I am giving some of this back to a city that has sacrificed so much during the hard fiscal crisis years, he is not going to be able to do the hard job of continuing to streamline the city and to make it a more efficient city. I do not think anybody meant to have the District simply build up reserves that grow and grow and grow while no investment or little investment is made in the city itself. And given the mayor's own proven track record for fiscal prudence, I hope that this proposal will be given every consideration. As it is now, because the mayor does not know and because of his own careful and honest budgeting, he has one budget with the $150 million in it and one budget without the $150 million. We are going to ask the Congress to relieve us of this complication; take the $150 million out, be satisfied with the $250 million, and let the mayor do his job. Mr. Speaker, I have today introduced a D.C. Budget Autonomy Act and a D.C. Legislative Autonomy Act that goes along with the mayor's budget, and I introduced it precisely because the mayor's budget came forward this week. It is a take-charge budget that I thought made the case for the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act. The legislation simply says that, particularly because there is no Federal payment any longer, when the District passes its balanced budget, especially now with the control board in place, that should be it. It should not have to come here to an appropriation committee and to the Senate to an appropriation committee, which has no appropriation for the District of Columbia. Remember, the District clause would still allow the Congress to intervene into the budgetary process in any way it saw fit. So it could still come to the floor and say, I want to change this or that, or I want to do whatever about it without the budget coming over here. Meanwhile, the District budget could go into effect when it was passed and would not hinge upon when we pass our appropriations. This would save the District money; save it an inestimable amounts of time, and I have put that in today because I believe the mayor, in good faith, has come forward with the kind of prudent, exciting budgeting that the Congress wanted to see, and I believe the Congress ought to respond in kind by saying, it is his budget, we believe in devolution, we are going to show it by letting him do his budget his way without our intervention. Remember, we are talking about a city that has run a surplus for 3 years, when this body expected to have a balance only after 4 years. The second bill is a Legislative Autonomy Bill, because I am sure most of the Congress is unaware that after a piece of legislation is passed it has to come here and sit for 30 or 60 days, depending on the kind of legislation it is. The problem with that is that these 30 or 60 days have to be legislative days, so that the District legislation cannot become final often for months, because the Congress does not sit in blocks of 30 legislative days at one time. It creates havoc in the District government. It has to go through a Byzantine process just to get its laws to go into effect when passed, and then they are not truly in effect. Unnecessary all together since, again, Congress could, whenever it wanted to, simply come to the floor, introduce a bill to overturn a piece of legislation. Republican and Democratic Congresses alike, out of over 2,000 bills only 3 have been overturned in 25 years of Home Rule. The Congress has the power. It can always use it. Congress does not need the hold in order to effectively do so. The hold creates havoc in the District. It means that the District is streamlining its process, we are not streamlining our relationship to the District. We ought to respond to what the District is doing by letting the District's bills stay with the District, letting the District's budget stay with the District, unless we decide that we want to intervene, in which case the District clause of the Constitution gives this body every opportunity to come forward. That is all we ought to need. The congressional power is still intact. I want to thank the leadership on both sides for the way in which the District, the new District, if I may be so bold, has been received. I know I speak for Mayor Anthony Williams and City Council Chair Linda Cropp when I say there is a great feeling of hope and very good feeling toward the Congress in the District. There is the very same, as we have already seen, here in the Congress, because the Congress has already passed very important legislation to return powers to the District. I would hope that Members would come for just a few minutes on April 13 to the reception that I am having for the mayor. The chairman of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), is joining me in sponsoring that reception. He is as pleased as I am with the way in which the city is proceeding, I think I can say without fear of contradiction. The reception will be held in Room 2226 Rayburn, and Members will be receiving an invitation. Expect me to come back, sometimes in 5 minutes, occasionally for a full hour, to give my colleagues some real sense of what the city, where my colleagues all meet, is doing to meet its own expectations and, by doing so, to meet my colleagues' expectations.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentlewoman for those comments and yield to yet another gentlewoman from California.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Democratic women of Congress are so concerned about the potential for harming Social Security that we will see during this hour a number of us come to the floor to alert our colleagues and the women of our country about the very high stakes for them as to what we do with Social Security. Let me emphasize that this is the highest stake game, if I may call it that, of all during the 106th Congress because we have a chance to protect and secure the most popular and one of the most important programs that our country has ever had the good sense to create. I approach this issue from the peculiar perspective of an official who served as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Carter, a post that gave me a very special concern about the gap between men and women's wages. When we are speaking of Social Security, of course, we are speaking first and foremost of women who have smaller wages than men and, of course, women who have no wages whatsoever. For that reason, we have introduced a resolution in the Congress that recognizes the unique effects that proposals to reform Social Security almost surely will have on women. Three-quarters of unmarried and widowed elderly women rely on Social Security for over half of their income. So when we deal with Social Security, when we tamper with it, who should be in our mind's eye first and foremost are women because they are so disproportionately affected. Everyone is aware of the low statistic that is used over and over again that we who are women are, according to what year you look at, in the 1990s, 70 percent, 74 percent, 72 percent of men's income. I want my colleagues to look at the 1997 figures. $24,973 for full-time, year- round wages for women, compared to $33,674 for full-time, year-round wages for men. Those figures are very important for what women can do with their disposable income today. But I want to focus us on what that means for women 20 years from now, 30 years from now, and longer. Because it translates directly into too little money to live on when they are elderly; and for that reason, it means that today, at least, those women can count on a progressively structured Social Security system that will keep them from abject poverty. And in case we believe that that is crying wolf, let us not forget that most of the credit for cutting poverty for the elderly really belongs to Social Security. As recently as 1959, 35 percent of the elderly were poor. By 1979, we had gotten it to only 15 percent. And in 1996, it was 11 percent. And when we say the elderly are poor, who we are really talking about are elderly women. I have given my colleagues the wages for full-time, year-round workers. But only 56 percent of women are in this category at all. Seventy-two percent of men are in this category. And we can see how that would translate into retirement income. In essence, we are not talking about retirement when we talk about Social Security; we are talking about a family protection system. Because not only are the main beneficiaries women who have almost no work history, but they include disabled family members and deceased family members. For all of the talk about private accounts, there is almost no talk about how to deal with people who have no accounts or people whose accounts would be very shallow because they have so little work history. We need to protect Social Security in the name of America's women, not change it. We need to shore it up, not shift it. It is structured now to help the elderly who fit the profile of the average elderly woman. That is who we have in mind. That is why it is progressive. That is why it is inflation adjusted. That is why it has lifetime benefits. That is why it has dependent benefits. The shift to personal accounts, of course, takes away the progressivity that has been critical to lifting elderly women out of poverty. And in personal accounts they get what they put in, if that, plus what the market gives them, if anything. Let us start with where women are. Women put in less as workers or of course as housewives, where they stand to lose altogether. The progressive formula now in place for Social Security means higher benefits to low earners. That translates into women. I do not think we want to say to America's women we want to have them depend on the market when we consider the fluctuations up and down in their income. If we say that to women, we in effect are saying to women they lose. And homemakers, above all, beware, because this system has you in mind even before it has working women in mind of any description, including those who work part-time. It is homemakers, women who have spent their working life caring for a family, who are the major beneficiaries of the present structure of the Social Security system. Above all, we should remember that the market has no spouses or widows benefits. Women have two characteristics that mean that they must insist that any new system retain them when any new structures are put in place. One, of course, is less earnings. And the other is living longer. Imagine, living longer can hurt you. It certainly can hurt you if you have a system that is different from our own because you could exhaust your retirement income. You can never exhaust your Social Security income. Moreover, less earnings is going to be true for the foreseeable future. We hope not forever. Women spend 15 percent of their careers out of the labor force. Finally, let me say that I am sorry to inform you that the gap in life expectancy between men and women is not likely to decrease. By the year 2030, for example, the actuaries tell us that there will be almost no decrease in that gap, which means that women are going to continue to live longer. Men may live longer as well, but this gap is going to be here and that gap translates into a need for income from somewhere. We are not going to get it from the market. We do get it now from Social Security. Any change in the Social Security system ought to, therefore, be sure to bear in mind that it is a system that involves your mothers and your grandmothers, your aunts and your female cousins. We want to protect men every bit as much, but the demographic facts of life, the actuarial facts of life, are that it is women who stand to be the biggest losers. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentlewoman from Nevada.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) for her comments, and I yield now to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, congratulations to Delaware, the first State whose design appears on the back of a quarter. This follows a bill we passed last year allowing this privilege to every State, privileges to deficit reduction. Every State gets a turn at its own design except the District of Columbia and the four territories who were somehow left out. We are American citizens every bit as much as the residents of the 50 States thanks to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), who has cosponsored a bill to allow the District of Columbia and the territories to be added. All American citizens will get to see their State, their territory or their District of Columbia design on the back of a quarter. Mr. Speaker, we welcome the help of the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus) and ask that this bill come to the floor soon so that we can cure this oversight.

Ms. NORTON

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

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) for bringing the District of Columbia Court Employees Whistleblower Protection Act of 1999 to the House floor today. May I also thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia of the Committee on Appropriations and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), the ranking member, for their work on the problems underlying this bill. I am an original cosponsor of this noncontroversial legislation, and I am pleased to have been so. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 858 amends Title XI of the District of Columbia Code to provide a new section affording whistleblower protections to D.C. court personnel. Congressional action is required because the District's Home Rule Charter allows only the Congress to amend Title XI, which relates to the Federal judiciary. As well, the Federal assumption of D.C. court costs in the District of Columbia Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997, known as the Revitalization Act, leaves Congress as the body with principal oversight over the D.C. courts. May I say that we remain very pleased and gratified that through action of the Congress, the Federal Government has taken over certain State functions that no city could carry today. While this bill addresses an important issue, I want to indicate that there are other concerns as well that are similar, and perhaps other inevitable gaps in the law affecting the public safety elements of the Revitalization Act that were transferred because, after all, we were dealing with a very large transfer in that act. I appreciate that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) has agreed that the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia of the Committee on Government Reform will hold hearings in the spring on the other outstanding issues, especially those affecting the courts and halfway houses. Meanwhile, I agree that whistleblower protection is needed now in order to allow the GAO to proceed on an investigation of certain aspects of the D.C. court system. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 858 would grant D.C. court personnel the same whistleblower protections currently enjoyed by other D.C. employees under the District's Merit Personnel Act. An employee who discloses what she reasonably believes to be a violation of law, misuse of government resources or funds, should always be protected. In addition, H.R. 858 would allow court employees to bring a civil action in either D.C. Superior Court or the United States Court for violation of whistleblower protections. District court jurisdiction is appropriate, considering that it is the Superior Court that might be the subject of litigation, and also because of the jurisdiction of the Federal Government over the district courts under the Revitalization Act. Mr. Speaker, let me emphasize that I have full confidence in Superior Court Chief Judge Eugene Hamilton who has indicated, and I am quoting him, that ``There has not been, nor will there be, any retaliation or any other adverse consequences to any employee as a result of cooperating with the audit.'' Judge Hamilton has issued his own order to this effect. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 858, applying the same whistleblower protection to court employees that other D.C. employees now rely upon, should bolster Judge Hamilton's orders to court management to fully comply with the GAO requests. I urge my colleagues to support this noncontroversial legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask the Members of the House to join me in celebrating 71 years of extraordinary food at reasonable prices by Scholl's Cafeteria. In an era when fast food dominates the field, Scholl's is a precious holdout offering service, nutritious meals, and hospitality. The tradition of family-owned restaurants like Scholl's has all but faded, and many of us in Washington are trying to make sure that Scholl's remains a cafeteria landmark in the nation's capital. It is difficult for many to understand how Scholl's has been able to keep its prices so modest and its food so good for so long. Scholl's has put quality and service above all else and it may have to pay a heavy price. If Scholl's had answered solely to profit motives, its prices might be higher and it might not face the exorbitant cost of a lease renewal beyond its means. We must not let a lease come between Washingtonians and tourists and the low cost delicious food that thousands have relied upon. We should all be grateful that Jim McGrath, one of the District's most effective civic activists, is leading ``Save Our Scholl's (SOS)'' Cafeteria Committee. I know that Members, especially those who have spent years in Washington, would want to join Jim McGrath and me in helping to save Scholl's. After almost three quarters of a century of service, Scholl's Cafeteria must be here to bring in a new century.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. What has become of us, my friends? We may well be on the brink of a peace agreement between the Serbian government and the Kosovo ethnic Albanian population. Our hearts have been broken for months now. Yet in the midst of possibility finally, a resolution on this floor to polarize our country as to what it is already doing. We have been polarized on domestic issues, but I think the American people expect more of us when it comes to our international posture. As I speak, we are erasing the rhetoric of bipartisanship that the majority has sounded. Because if we cannot be bipartisan when our country is in the midst of what looks like it can be a successful effort to stop genocide, then I do not know when we can be bipartisan. We are undermining not war but peace. There can be no debate that this is in our national interest, and I have not heard that it is not. Nor after the Bosnia precedent should there be any debate as to whether we should go forward now having gotten this far. What has happened to the Albanians is unspeakable. Milosevic began shutting down their language institutions and he has ended with genocide. We have gone, on the other side, from partisanship to isolationism. My friends, we cannot lead the world in war or in peace if every time the party on the other side of the aisle wants to move, you on that side says, ``We don't move simply because you want to move,'' and that is what this comes down to. We are assuming the posture you have historically assumed and yet now that it is our posture, because it is our President, you have simply jumped to the other side, against the national interest. I ask you to stand beside our country, postpone this vote, but, to be sure, I hope that you will not be found on the other side of a vote that would undermine our country as it wages peace, not war.