Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the D.C. appropriation has just passed this House after 4 very arduous months. The concern that I have had all along relates to the financial condition of the District. As I have seen what has happened to this city, I have not been able to keep from analyzing the situation of the District to the situation that the United States of America could find itself. The District, Mr. Speaker, courted default as it was running out of money. It did not know what to do or could not do what had to be done, and so a financial authority was appointed, and that authority was necessary in order for the District to be able to borrow. As one contemplates the problems facing this body with a debt limit, one wonders what would happen if the United States of America got close to default. I can say this to you, Mr. Speaker, there would not be any higher authority to take over the United States of America. We are the ultimate authority, and so I would hope that we all try to figure out how to make sure that we do not get any closer to the threat of default. I wanted to talk about the threat of default for a moment. The District, for example, has heard in the last couple of days from the bond ratings that they still do not believe that the District will rise again, and they are considering lowering the District's bond rating yet again. What trembles and shakes that has sent through the District of Columbia. In effect, Moody's did the same thing to the United States of America this very week when it threatened to downgrade our credit, the best credit in the world for over 200 years. I want, therefore, to ask this body to consider not default but what the threat of default can do to interest rates, to confidence, how it can ripple through our country and through the world. I want, therefore, to ask this body to consider not default, but what the threat of default can do to interest rates, to confidence, and how it can ripple through our country and the world. I recognize the United States of America and the District of Columbia are different. Yet the fact is that there have been only a few large jurisdictions that have ever been threatened with default, and, for all of those, the results have been catastrophic. So I would ask this body in the next few weeks to try to consider what is at stake. History will remember us for how we handle the first threat of default in the history of the United States. The threat of default is as bad in a very real sense as default itself. Who can forget what led to the budget agreement under which we now operate? What led to that agreement, of course, was a crash on Wall Street that came one day, absolutely unexpected, that came one day without warning. It is the possibility that the credit of the United States could be affected without warning that I hope this body will take into account in deciding what to do with the debt limit. I am asking this body to respect the long record of the United States and to pass a clean debt limit bill. We must not allow the shutdown experience to be born again in the debt limit bill. The only way to respond to the experience we have had in the last couple of months with the shutdown experience is to make sure we do not repeat bad history. If we are ever to repeat that history, we certainly should not repeat it with the full faith and credit of the United States. I know what it is to lose your credit. I am from the District of Columbia, which today does not have credit. I ask my country then to look at its Capital City and to make sure that its credit in no way resembles that of its fallen city. I appreciate that there is a great difference. I hope that difference will continue to be great, and I hope that we will return to this body, not to have 4 days of haggling about what to do about the debt limit or what to attach to the debt limit, but that we will march forward together in a bipartisan way and pass, finally, one clean debt limit bill.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, as we approach the fifth month of the fiscal year, the appropriation of the District has finally come to the floor. This is the first time in more than 200 years that the D.C. appropriation has been so late. The subcommittee was prepared to move much sooner, but a disagreement on vouchers has held the bill up until now. Because of the District's dire financial condition, I hope all will agree that we must do whatever is necessary to avoid similar delay in the future. Mr. Speaker, I want to work even more closely with the gentleman from New York [Mr. Walsh], chairman, and the gentleman from California [Mr. Dixon], ranking member, on next year's appropriations to try to help prevent any similar delay. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] and the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] for the extra hours of work this bill has required of them. I thank the gentleman from New York [Mr. Walsh], the chairman, and the gentleman from California [Mr. Dixon], the ranking member, who had the major responsibility for the hard work that has been done on this bill. Very special thanks are due to Senator Jeffords, who worked hard for a compromise and is himself a volunteer in the D.C. public schools. The gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Gunderson], who is the author of the entire education reform package attached to this bill, of which vouchers is only a tiny part, deserves to be congratulated for exceptional service beyond the call of duty. The gentleman could not have spent more time or effort on the education package if his next election depended on it. Unfortunately, the gentleman from Wisconsin has decided to retire, taking with him his special talent and effectiveness for making real changes in a collegial fashion, the only way to assure that change sticks. The original package of the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Gunderson] was the result of countless hours of work with D.C. residents and officials. The gentleman's tough package of reforms and benefits demonstrates that real changes can indeed be produced on a home rule basis. The voucher provision that has held this bill up for 4 months was not in the original package designed in cooperation with District residents. Mr. Speaker, this bill puts me in an awkward position because I do not support many of its provisions. At the same time, it is impossible for me to oppose the appropriation bill for my own city 4 months into the appropriation year, after consultation with the mayor. I should note first that among the improvements in the bill are the domestic partners restriction and the abortion restriction. I do not support these provisions, but each has been improved over prior provisions that actually changed DC law. The abortion provision was especially onerous. Its restrictions were worse than were placed on other jurisdictions. I appreciate that, however unacceptable, these two provisions are at least no worse than the strictures under which the District has historically suffered. Like me, the mayor does not support the voucher provision that has been the subject of most of the contention. If I am in an awkward position, he of course is in an impossible position. Only 2-weeks ago, the District's financial position left residents, businesses and the Federal Government itself snowed in when the District could not get vendors in the midst of a blizzard. The Congress shut down the District for a full week in November. During 4 months without an appropriation, the District's financial position has deteriorated. The negotiations between the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Gunderson, and Senator Jeffords have improved the bill and left open the possibility that no tuition vouchers will occur. If the scholarship board and the council cannot agree, no voucher program can go forward. This provision, vesting authority with local authorities, is cited by Mayor Barry in indicating his support for passage, if not for the specific provisions of this bill. I am doubtful that the voucher program will go into effect at all. A court suit challenging the constitutionality of the voucher proposal is inevitable. For the first time in more than 200 years that we have been a nation, this bill would allow direct tuition payments to religious schools. The provision allowing for the vouchers to be vetoed at the city council does not cure the problem. For a court, the issue would be, is the voucher proposal allowing for the funding of religious schools unconstitutional on its face? I believe that it is. Ironically, the voucher provision respects home rule with one hand and disrespects it with the other. The DC council has to approve the plan. Indeed, the council could approve programs, such as afterschool programs in private schools that are in keeping with existing law and practices, allowing public school funds to follow children to private schools for special purposes. At the same time the scholarship board is anti-home rule. It is a Federal board with a token appointment by the mayor. The Speaker, minority leader and majority and minority leaders of the Senate are the appointing authorities for a local school entity. How is that for devaluation of power back to the localities? Ultimately, the appropriations bill is perhaps the ultimate home rule bill. I have, therefore, consulted with District officials. Both the mayor and I, I repeat, oppose the voucher provision. He believes that the way to address that provision is through the home rule council provision in the bill. The position of the District, therefore, is that the only way to bring any relief to the District, which is insolvent at this time, after months of great suffering, is to free its appropriation.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this morning to say a few words about two cosmic issues. One is the state of disrepair in which our CR's and appropriation process have left Federal agencies. The other, of course, is the weightiest of all: the debt limit of the United States, our full faith and credit twisting in the wind as we speak. Mr. Speaker, this Congress has got to face up to its responsibility to come to cloture, to settle the Government so that the Government does not dissolve into chaos waiting to see whether continuing resolutions will be for a few days, a few weeks, or until September 30. Mr. Speaker, we avoided a shutdown and took a breath, but for some Federal workers and for some agencies, what has been left is virtually the same thing. What should Federal agencies do? Some are on CR's that go to March 15, others to September 30. There are disparate amounts of money that the agencies may spend. For those on short-term CR's, shall they wait to find out what we are going to do or should they RIF now or cut back now? Of course, if they do, they may find that the layoffs were entirely unnecessary if we reach a budget agreement. What a position to leave the Government in. How much worse is the position in which we leave people who happen to work for the Federal Government? Let us take the EPA as an example. Should they now fire almost 4,000 employees? Shall they plan for unpaid furloughs that could last almost 3 weeks? Or will we do something to make all of this unnecessary? Is it, by any definition, fair to leave people wondering about this set of choices? What about the States? The States depend upon money that is holed up in these agencies that we have not let free. They will not be getting their Federal funds on which they too are relying. These are your States and my States. What about the contractors? Often contractors are out there doing the work because we said they could do it more efficiently. What about contractors? Shall they lay off people? Shall they go out on a limb and take bank loans? This is no way to run a corner store, much less a government. If we are going to cut people off, we ought to cut them off. We should not let people and agencies starve to death. Above all, we should take our full faith and credit and decide what we are going to do with it. Believe me, Mr. Speaker, I think I know what it means to lose your credit, because I come from the District of Columbia. There is no higher authority than the Government of the United States. The Congress is that higher authority. The District of Columbia avoided default, but it has lost its credit. Moody's has said that we could lose our credit. A default may be unthinkable, but even a threat of default could raise interest rates on ordinary Americans. Almost nobody would be immune from the effect. Those who would feel it most immediately would be those with adjustable rate mortgages, which millions of Americans have, and pensioners whose pensions depend upon interest payments from annuities. This week we must not go home without settling, bringing to cloture what is to happen to our Federal agencies. Of course we should not walk out that door into the street without rescuing our credit, the best credit in the world, from doubt.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, my mother always said, ``Do not let me have to tell you twice.'' We heard you, Moody's. We do not need to hear from Standard & Poor's, too. We need to respond that we are not the kamikaze Congress. The markets actually responded positively all during our tortured balanced budget negotiations. There were Dow Jones records broken. The reason, of course, is that they expected a balanced budget. A more balanced budget compromise would have the same effect, only this time the benefits would not be only to the markets, but also to jobs, to renewed confidence in our economy, and especially in much needed renewed confidence in the Congress of the United States.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, with the talk now about whether we shall have clean or, shall we say, dirty CR's or debt limit bills, I would like to offer some views that go to the intent of the Framers. We need to think through this process, for we are engaged in something that has never happened in 200 years, or more than 200 years of the Constitution, and it looks like we are headed toward some recidivism in trying to attach things to the debt limit or to the CR, when it would appear that the tolerance of the American people for this gridlock is way down. What is wrong with the strategy of dirty CR's and dirty debt-limit bills? Besides the fact that you do not want to stop the Government or put the full faith and credit of the United States in any doubt, one might begin with the fact that it is not working or it has long since stopped working. You got the President to the table with a 7-year balanced budget. If victory had been declared then we might be somewhere. But more seriously, this strategy is outside of the constitutional framework, and that is why it is stopping up this place. I teach a course at Georgetown, where I was a law professor, called Lawmaking and Statutory Interpretation. This gridlock has made me think about the course and about what we are doing in a deeper fashion. What we are doing is outside of the constitutional framework. It is not that it is unconstitutional; it is indeed an abuse of the Constitution, because it thwarts the intent of the Framers. Now, conservatives pride themselves on being what we in academic law call originalists. They insist upon going back to the Framers for everything, and it gets very awkward because very often the Framers did not even think about certain things. But here I think it is legitimate task, what did Thomas Jefferson and what did James Madison intend, what did they have in mind? We have heard the argument on the floor here that the Government is shut down or the debt limit will not rise because the President did something, the President vetoed it. My friends, the veto was not meant by the Framers to produce any counter weapon here in this House. Once there is a veto, three things are possible: A negotiated solution, let the matter stand, or overrule the veto with a supermajority. The Framers did not build a system that did not have cloture. What we are doing in this body now, 200 years after the Constitution was passed, is creating a system without cloture, where there is point- counterpoint, shutdown of the Government following a veto. The Framers were more brilliant than that. They knew that if you could not bring cloture at some point, the Government could not operate. We have, in fact, done that. What we have done is to give new meaning to the word ``gridlock.'' First, we have created the word the Framers never intended. The Framers never intended that the Government would be paralyzed. Now, the gridlock that was the slogan of the last Congress have come back in ways that no one ever dreamed of, and if you think, particularly you on the other side of the aisle, that people sent you here to make gridlock worse, I think you got a big surprise coming for you when you go home to your primaries and when you go home in November. We must not introduce gridlock into a brilliant system that has its own built-in cloture. Do not blame the President for using the veto. The Framers intended that. Show me where the Framers intended to allow you to shut down the Government? Show me where the Framers intended for you to allow a game of chicken to be played with the debt limit of the United States? The were much too brilliant, much too thoughtful to leave the system in that state. We must not try to undo their brilliant work. What we must do is what the originalists, the conservatives, have always insisted upon doing. We have lost our compass. We have lost our way. Let us open the Constitution, try to find the original meaning in the structure of checks and balances, and understand that the veto was meant to produce civilized responses, and not to take the Government out. It is too late in the game, and it is too late in the day, for us to try to upset and wreck a brilliant system of Government. History will not forget us or forgive us if we allow this to happen.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentlewoman from Texas for her kind remarks, and I thank her even more for her leadership in taking out this special order. May I say to the gentlewoman that I think that Members of this body would agree with me that even as a freshman, she is proving herself a worthy successor of Barbara Jordan. Barbara Jordan was a great American. I intend for my few minutes to be devoted to proving that proposition. Her presence was so awesome that she is likely to be remembered more for her voice and her style than for her substance. That would be just too bad. For in this world it is not how you say what you have to say, it is indeed what you have to say. And if you have nothing to say, the most resonant voice should do you no good. Why is it that when Barbara Jordan spoke, everybody listened? Was it really a matter of style? I submit that it was a matter of substance. To be sure, amplified by a very original and very forceful style. But I hope that we listened to what Barbara Jordan had to say, for here was a woman who had something to say. We are inclined to look at our leaders in surface ways, especially in the age of television and demonstrations. I think of King and Malcolm. King is remembered today, for example, as the militant leader for equality and God knows he was that and perhaps that first and foremost. But if we look deeper into his life, there are parts of his life that have fallen back, because we look at the surface, we remember the obvious. We do not remember King the intellectual, King the advocate of racial harmony, King the pacifist, King the man who was extremely modest and self-effacing. We remember the marches, we remember the speeches. It is important to remember a person's whole life. I want us to remember Barbara Jordan's whole life, not just her presence. In the same way, I chuckle at the way people remember Malcolm X. Because I think most Americans remember Malcolm X as a militant black nationalist. I believe Malcolm would want you to remember him as he was at the end of his life, when he had renounced black racism along with white racism, when he had renounced anti-Semitism, and frankly almost all of his prior life, when he went to Mecca and came back and said, ``I believe in the brotherhood''--and sisterhood, I think he would have had it. What I find awesome about Malcolm is his capacity to grow and change and learn and lead even if it meant his life. Similarly, Barbara Jordan was not some bold, big-talking black woman who brought us a message of equality. She was that and she was so much more than that. her Watergate remarks are, of course, most remembered, the famous lines ``We the people,'' ``My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.'' Those are not lines often spoken by many African-Americans. And she spoke them not just because she believed she lived in a perfect democracy. She believed just the opposite. In that very speech, she began by saying, words to the effect, ``I guess we can say We The People because now they have included me in We The People. They certainly didn't mean me when we started out.'' Then she said, ``By virtue of amendment, I too am now part of We The People.'' And in effect what she was saying was it took this Constitution a long time to get around to including me in We The People, I feel a special obligation to protect the Constitution, and I am not about to let it be subverted by the actions of even a President of the United States like Richard Nixon. Her faith in the Constitution was total, because she had seen the evolution to include people like herself, and thus she believed that the country would reach its highest ideals and devoted much of her life talking in that idealistic fashion. Of course, Barbara Jordan was an advocate for the downtrodden in the tradition of the Congressional Black Caucus. The gentleman from New York will be the first to tell you, she was there on all of those principles. But, as he said, people go at it in different ways, and she had her own special way. What I will most remember about Barbara Jordan is fearless leadership. This sense of integrity made her rise above the political moment and made her whatever the political lashes on the shores might have been, made her true to whatever were her principles. Here is a woman that deeply believed in equality across all racial lines and believed she ought to speak to her own people who were black and beyond. Now, many African-Americans do not believe they should speak beyond, because it is very hard for them to get beyond. Life has been very difficult. So then, perhaps even more now, people speak out of their own experience and do not speak to the larger American experience. Here is a woman that knew she had the capacity to do it, and felt it her obligation to do it. This capacity to lead is very important, because it means you can say difficult things. People will listen to you and they will be accepted. About the easiest thing for me to say in my district, and I think it would probably be the case in the district of the gentlewoman from Texas now and then, would be to talk about equality and to talk about the things that, frankly, I love to talk about. I love to talk about how black is beautiful and I love to talk about black pride. But there are more difficult things to talk about then and now which really relate to the lines that are being drawn so that we increasingly live in isolated worlds. Look, we can do that. We can do that. But if we do that enough, we are courting danger. When I looked at her words, I see a constant theme running through everything she said and everything she wrote. It was that here is this black woman, over and over again she said we are all one people. Do not succumb to balkanization and polarization. It is the worst, not the best in America. We have helped America find their way out of this. Do not do it. She was speaking against the grain of the time, and she continued to speak to that theme to the end of her life. On National Public Radio I heard her words most recently spoken in which she said she was astonished at racial separation, segregation, polarization. Much of it she said was self-imposed. Here was Barbara Jordan speaking at the end of her life in ways that almost no black Americans are speaking today. I pulled out her remarks from the Democratic Convention in 1992, and let me read a few sentences. Here is Barbara Jordan. Here is how she will be remembered by her country. We are one. We are Americans, and we reject any intruder who seeks to divide us by race or class. We honor cultural identity. However, separatism is not allowed. Separatism is not the American way, and we should not permit ideas like political correctness to become some fad that could reverse our hard won achievements in civil rights and human rights. The fact is Barbara Jordan had the moral authority to say that, without appearing to be any less committed to equality and to the beauty of blackness. She had the capacity to be a teacher, and she insisted upon teaching, she insisted upon leading, she would not simply go with the crowd. That is the kind of leadership we need today in a country where we see less and less of the sense of community, more and more of the sense of I have got mine, you ought to get out there and get yours, less and less of a sense that we are all one big insurance policy. An insurance policy is a vehicle where we are all in it and some of us need it sometimes and some of us never need it. If we are not that kind of community, if we are not that kind of federation, then we are not living in the tradition of Barbara Jordan. Yes, I feel a special debt to Barbara Jordan as an American black woman in political life. But her debtors are far greater. She was a political pioneer who never stopped changing our country for the better. She was never cynical about her country, and she inspired those who were to reach above the low point of Watergate that they could indeed reach to the ideals that her country had yet to reach. Her remarks at the Watergate hearings, by far her most memorable, will, I think, be remembered by history precisely because of the skillful blend of criticism and idealism. They were both in that speech. Barbara Jordan was both a pioneer and a political mentor to thousands of women. She encouraged by example to engage in politics at every level. Through her commanding presence, she taught women, especially black women, that they could take charge. Active until the end of her productive and fruitful life, Barbara Jordan never stopped leading. She never stopped serving. We will not stop remembering. I thank the gentlewoman.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, in this body not a day goes by that we do not deify the military. Yet in this bill is a provision that would leave a woman stranded, while serving her country, without medical care, if the medical care she happens to need is a legal abortion. A compromise had been reached whereby she would have to pay 100 percent of the cost. Instead, in this bill, she would be left alone to go off base, perhaps in a foreign country and not speaking the language, to find that medical care. It is always wrong, Mr. Speaker, and it is always against the American tradition, to interfere with a fundamental right to privacy. It is particularly wrong to toss a member of the military to the winds in need of medical care, particularly when she may be in a foreign country. This is a fundamental right; it is not going to be withdrawn. So the strategy to humiliate people and make it difficult for them to be able to exercise the right is the prevailing strategy of this session. The exercise of this right is understandably painful to many who oppose the right. It is painful to me to see someone exercise their first amendment free speech rights when they are speaking words that I find painful. But in this country, we do not try to extinguish constitutional rights by making them difficult or impossible to exercise. We particularly must not operate that way when dealing with women who serve their country in the U.S. military.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this morning to welcome my colleagues back from the short recess and to say they ought to be glad they were not here for the blizzard of 1996. We were snowed in, and I mean that quite literally. For 4 days the Federal Government was shut down and this time this body had nothing to do with it, I am pleased to say. The District of Columbia was shut down as well. We do not mind if it is the snow. We do mind when the majority shuts us down. I am pleased to believe, as I do, that there will not be another shutdown on Friday. I ask that the body recognize when a tool has run its course, and Federal workers I think would be grateful if we would move on with our business. I do want to remind the body that the District budget is not yet passed, the appropriation is not yet out. Yet, we budgeted $2.1 million for snow and one blizzard has used it all up, and more. We spent $3.3 million. I am grateful that the body approved a continuing resolution to last until September 30, but that allows the District only to spend its own money. We have only $327 million of the $712 million that we are due as payment in lieu of taxes. The absence of the cash money meant that the District could not plow the District of Columbia, and we had to call the Federal Government in because vendors would not contract with people who could not pay their bills. I am pleased that the appropriations subcommittees in the Senate and the House have been working to solve their disagreement on vouchers. It is a disagreement among Republicans that is keeping our budget from coming through. That disagreement, I believe, could be solved and settled given the good faith, good work that has been ensuing during this recess. I ask that the District get its full appropriation no later than Friday so that the District, 4 months late, can start its government up. I also ask that the body be at pains not to allow this to happen again. As you know, the District is on its financial knees. Everything had happened to it, it seemed, but being put out of business, and it was put out of business for a week, when the Capital of the United States was shut down. I ask this body, when the appropriation comes before it, to pass it speedily and to recognize that chief among your constitutional obligations is the obligation to let the Capital City of the United States engage in the business of running the Capital of the United States. Imagine how we look when the Congress looks as though it is not facilitating keeping the Capital of the United States in business. This would be the best way to start and end this week.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the only thing more reckless than a Government shutdown is talk of default, and I mean talk. Talk alone on this subject is playing with fire. Secretary Rubin is accused of bluffing. The real question is are we bluffing? The market opened today down 50 points. It is beginning to level off. But I do not like this game of chicken and I hope my colleagues do not. We have maligned the Secretary, but I think we should thank him for finding magic money. They language he is using this time is quite different and quite definitive and he concludes by saying I will not sell the Nation's gold, and I will not withhold taxpayers' refunds. Now we are into whether we will have a clean or dirty debt limit bill. This gets us into the mode from which we have just ascended. Please, no more ``deja vu all over again,'' not with the Nation's full faith and credit.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, it may well be that in the 20th day of this crisis we are too close to it, have been too immersed in it to think clearly our way out of it. It is actually 25 days, if you consider the 5 days of the previous shutdown. Let us look at what we say we are doing. The other side honestly admits that its purpose is to bring leverage on the President. Examining that proposition, it is clear that the other side has succeeded in bringing leverage as much as they are ever going to do. Let me explain why. The fact is that the President has now signed on to a 7-year balanced budget. He had not done that before. Having done that, it would seem to me that the majority would acknowledge that they have accomplished what they said was their greatest goal. Moreover, the leverage has gone as far as it can go, if I may say so, because, to use the words of the gentleman from Texas, Mr. DeLay, from your side, he was talking about Mr. Dole: The President can't cave, because to simply give in is to reinforce a part of his reputation that he is trying to live down. It is time for the majority to declare victory and let the Federal workers come back to work, because the leverage rationale has been spent. It is over. Declare victory. Indeed, it is worse than that. The leverage has yielded a boomerang crisis, if you will, my friends, an in-your-face crisis. In the beginning the most visible victims were Federal workers, and people shrugged. They had not felt it themselves. Now we are beginning to get great sympathy for Federal workers and no wonder. When a GS-2, to cite a specific example, opens up her paycheck, as she did this week, and finds in it $4, then of course you are going to get sympathy from all across the country. She is a hapless victim. By the way, the IRS and the Social Security did take their share. They left her $4. About half of those who do contractual work for the Federal Government are out of work. The trade-off that has now become the mantra of the other side simply does not work and is itself an outrage. Well, we may have to leave these workers at home in order to save our children. Let us not talk about trading off one group of innocent victims for another. But the boomerang crisis that we better see, my colleagues on the other side, very quickly, is a service crisis, not a worker crisis. Let me document that. On January 2, the States lost $74 million in quarterly grants that they use to confront the crisis with abused children, and there are 2.5 million of those children. By the end of the week, 11 States and 2 of the territories, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia, which of course is the District and not a territory, will run out of funds for Federal unemployment insurance. Do my colleagues think they are going to get off scot-free as their constituents confront that? Twenty-three thousand Americans per day are unable to get passports. Many of them are going abroad for business. Twenty-four thousand contract Medicare claim workers are not being paid. They will not be on the job very long. Your State is going to run out of Medicaid funds in January. Are you prepared to take the responsibility for that? One thousand workplace safety complaints per day are going unanswered. The FBI has ceased to train local law enforcement officers. Employment discrimination complaints are no longer being investigated. Twenty thousand foreign visitors per day are unable to get visas for a loss here of $60 million per day. Do my colleagues really mean to inflict this kind of pain on their constituents and mine? I think not. My colleagues have replaced the main course, the balanced budget, with a side dish, and that is the crisis my colleagues have left us with. Let us get back to the balanced budget. Let the workers come back to work.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor to thank those members on both sides of the aisle who helped and cooperated with us as we got a continuing resolution that keeps the Capital of the United States open. I recognize, particularly because I am among the Members who has a very large number of Federal employees, how frustrating a piecemeal CR has been. On the other hand, it does seem important to get to the real principle of the thing and to the real people who are behind all of our rhetoric. The CR that has just passed still has to go through the Senate, and I am informed that there is a difference in language between what they have passed and what we have passed, so we are still on tenterhooks. This will not be known as the most bipartisan Congress in more than 200 years. There will be very few matters which can be pointed to which received any bipartisanship. I must say, I would have been ashamed to have been a part of this body, however, if that posturing and partisanship prevailed against the most needy people in our society, those on welfare and against the Capital of the United States. So I am grateful to all involved that this matter passed. I appreciate the work of the Speaker, the majority leader, and the minority leader on our side. I appreciate the work of the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] and the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey]. If all had not, in fact worked together, I am not sure exactly where the District would have been left, but it certainly would have been twisting in the wind, and the hardship on people on AFDC would have been unspeakable. There is still great unfinished business as far as the District of Columbia is concerned. We are one of, I think, only a couple of appropriations that have not even passed yet. The continuing resolution lasts until January 3. Imagine what it feels like to have a continuing resolution until January 3 to spend your own money. That is the money that is locked up here in the continuing resolution, and it gives not 1 cent of Federal money to a city that is insolvent, at least technically so, and cash-strapped. It is a very small favor that the House has done, but it is a lifesaving favor. I want to use this occasion at the end of the first year of the 104th Congress to ask the Members, come back with more bipartisanship than they left. The balanced-budget-in-7-years matter, for example, is one that the parties have come very close together on, and yet the Government is being kept closed tight as if you needed a hammer to get the rest of the way. The rest of the way is very small. In negotiations, you use hammers only when you are getting nowhere. We are getting somewhere, and yet the hammer of keeping Federal employees out of work, of keeping them without a paycheck even though they have been promised their pay is still there. Imagine, if you had to be without your paycheck over the Christmas holiday. There are few of us that could afford that. So what we did here today was minimalism, but important minimalism. I hope it opens the way to a greater sense of what is really at stake here, the confidence of the country that the two parties that have essentially run this body for 200 years are capable of continuing to do it for 200 more. When you have been tested on whether or not you will keep your own Capital City open, you have allowed your own prestige to be tested. I am afraid this will not play very well around the world, but at least the headlines will not read, ``The Congress of the United States Closes Down Its Own Capital.'' I am grateful that it will not read that and hope that the last act of the year, and that is what we have probably seen today, the last act of the year, bipartisan act, keeping the District open, allowing those on welfare to get their checks, allowing veterans to get their checks, that that will be the first, the first indication that it is possible to get bipartisanship, and we start on small matters. Then surely on large matters where we are very close, like the balanced budget in 7 years, we can do what needs to be done without drawing our swords on one another. We have drawn much blood, figuratively speaking, in this Chamber. I think in so doing, we may have paved the way for a third party to come down this aisle. We have got to restore confidence in this body. I hope the last vote of the year does that.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House this morning with a special plea. In 200 years of the Nation's Capital, there has never been a crisis like this. There has never been a crisis where this capital city has been left without a budget and forced to contemplate closing down. We have seen countless violations of home rule, all on the basis that it was your constitutional responsibility. Where is your constitutional responsibility to keep the city alive now? We have seen the abandonment of that responsibility for 3 months with no budget. It is pointless to continue to fight this fight on a voucher principle. You have the votes for vouchers. Bring it to the floor on your own motion. A standoff with the Senate, a body you do not control, on the backs of the District is wrong. At the very least, Congress must not leave town without granting a CR for the District of Columbia to spend its own money. It has a responsibility to treat the 500,000 human beings I represent as a city, and not as if they were a Federal agency. It is your constitutional responsibility.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, on a bipartisan basis, I urge support of this resolution. Members have heard me on the District of Columbia. I plead also for those on welfare. I do not believe we should go home and leave these two matters outstanding. I do not believe any Member of this body wants to do so. Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed at the length and breadth of the resolution; I would be far more disappointed if we were to say all or nothing. We are trying to get to a resolution that all can agree upon. I appreciate, frankly, that we have been able to pierce the iron wall to at least reach the most needy. Mr. Speaker, this is a test our rhetoric, those of us who rise often to say we are doing what we are doing for those most in need. Those most in need at the moment happen to be an entire city, the District of Columbia, as well as those who, if they miss a welfare check, may be in very dire straits. It is a test of our rhetoric and a test of our bipartisanship. Mr. Speaker, I ask this to be handled as if it were what it really is: An emergency.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, there is no greater disappointment this session than this bill. It fails to meet the two mandates the American people gave us when we began this exercise across all race and class lines: put people on welfare to work; do no harm to children. Instead of providing the means to work, we provide an artificial percentage who must work which we know will not be met, 50 percent by the year 2002. The bill betrays the mandate of no harm to children because it removes the entitlement without replacing it with any form of safety net. Ending the entitlement and the safety net will not reduce the number of desperately needy children who need some means of support. Instead of saving children, we put their needy parents in competition with one another. The working poor and the welfare poor will compete with one another for child care because we eliminate much of what we said we would give in child care. If we believe in keeping with the priorities our own constituents set for us across race and class lines at the beginning of this exercise, we must vote down this conference report. Mr. SHAW Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith], a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening to appeal to good sense and good government and accommodation consistent with principle on my side and on the other side. Today there have been requests to the GOP leadership to consider that AFDC checks are due to go out with no one to send them out, to consider that the District of Columbia Government is up and running without the necessary authority. One of the leaders offered that in the State of California it was not clear that Medicaid bills could be paid. On the Democratic side, occasionally I have heard what the other side has become more closely identified with. That is a kind of all or nothing response. I must tell you, Mr. Speaker, my heart is with the all or nothing response, because my largest employer is the Federal Government and its Federal employees in my own district who are being penalized as they sit home waiting to be called back to work on an involuntary furlough. But at least my Federal employees have been promised by the majority that they will be paid. What promise has been made to children on AFDC that they will be paid before Christmas or that those on Medicaid will be paid before Christmas and, God help us, that the Nation's Capital will be standing before Christmas? It is time for cool and mature heads to consider what is at stake. This is a real test for my side of the aisle, I must say, for we have gotten up consistently this year to speak for the poor, to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. I do not see how it would be possible for us to go home for Christmas and tell people that we had said that, if it all does not come through, then no way AFDC will come through, no D.C. will come through, no Medicaid will come through. In that case we have adopted the tactics of the other side. Both sides need to step back. I appreciate, frankly, that the majority is willing to consider relieving those most in need of relief by some kind of special CR and have only said that this should not be the subject of great contention. This is a test for my side. Do you mean it or not, or is it only the Members of Congressional Black Caucus who mean it or the Hispanic Caucus who mean it, or the women who mean it, or do all the Democrats mean it? Do the Republicans mean it? Can we put aside as Christmas dawns our rancor to say we do not want to go home, and say to poor children on welfare, I am sorry, your check will come sometime in the future? For us, a missed check may get us over. For people on welfare, a missed check means no food and no shelter for far too many. For the District of Columbia, it is a shameful day when we have abandoned our constitutional responsibility and said to the District, well, we will reach out and get you when we can. Meanwhile, you are on your own. Eighty-five percent of the money up here that we cannot get out because no appropriation has been passed is money raised in the District of Columbia from District taxpayers. There is a moral obligation, especially on these three issues, not to say all or nothing, not to get up and make some kind of vein motion knowing it will lose and, therefore, toss us all out. There is a moral obligation on this side and this side to say, at the very least, we will call a truce when it comes to poor children on welfare who will not be fed and might be put out on the street before Christmas. We will call a truce when it comes to whether or not 600,000 people in the District of Columbia will have a government that is open and collecting trash and doing what government must do for people to keep going. We will call a truce when it comes to Medicaid. Is that what we want? It is not what we want. But if we have gotten the majority to understand that they must consider that, how can we pull back now? It is a test and we must look at each and every one of us to see whether any of us causes this test to be failed. We must take it into account. If, after all, we have had to say about children and about the poor, we are willing, we are willing to stand here and allow checks to be missed for them, it is a test. Either we mean it or we do not. Whose principles are these? Who do we speak for? Can we pass the test?

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to alert this body that the Capital of the United States is still hanging out there about to choke. The conference report that was to materialize yesterday did not because of the complications here and in the Senate. The conference report, I am told, will come forward today. That would be the ball game. That is the right way to handle this. We are already into extra innings that are killing the Capital of the United States. An agreement structured by the Speaker himself will come before us as the conference report. Vouchers will be out, not because this body wanted them out or because the Speaker wanted them out, but because of a filibuster in the Senate. It is an act of leadership for the Speaker to bring it forward, and I appreciate that. I understand he will speak for it. It would be easy for this body to sit this out, but nobody wants to shut the Capital of the United States down. We are now running on empty. Even the gentleman from New York [Mr. Walsh], who does not support this report, does not want to shut the District down. Do the responsible thing; free the District of Columbia.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask the support of this body for a continuing resolution for the District of Columbia, which will come before this body this afternoon. Members will shake their heads when they see it, for if we were to ask what is the least we could do to carry out our responsibilities to the Nation's Capital, this would be it. Allow the District to spend its own money for a little more than a week and get no part of its Federal payment. Mr. Speaker, this comes close to humiliation for the 600,000 people I represent, who are not allowed any access to their Federal payment, even though they are second per capita in Federal income taxes in this country. But a worse humiliation would be the total catastrophe of a second shutdown of the District on its own money. There have been several agreements that would have broken this impasse, but each time some person or the other simply turned over the tables. Our appropriation has been delayed for 3 months now. No city can survive this way. It has delayed reform, taken it off the table and forced the District into crisis management. Today's continuing resolution keeps the city's heart beating, but it breaks the heart of my 600,000 good residents.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, this is the last day of my countdown to shutdown. This is it. This is the day. I hope that this headline is as false as the one that said that Dewey had won the election: ``Midnight Likely to Bring New Shutdown.'' We are close enough so that a shutdown ought to be off the table, Mr. Speaker. The GOP asked for a 7-year plan. The President put a 7-year plan on the table. Americans now want us to work on the details--grunt work, not shut down of their services. It is unthinkable, of course, that there would be no Christmas CR for Federal employees and for those who depend upon their services. But a CR would leave the District of Columbia running on empty. The way to kill an ailing city is to dole out its own money on a 2-day or a weekly or a quarterly basis. We do not want to finish off DC. We want to revive the Nation's Capital. Bring our bill to the floor: Bipartisan; unanimously passed in the subcommittee and the full committee that would allow the Nation's Capital to spend its own money. Fair is fair. Help the Nation's Capital. Do not kick it while it is down.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, this is day one of the countdown to shutdown. I have been on the floor virtually every day since the last shutdown. But I speak not of the shutdown of the Federal Government. There was an unintended consequence. The city I represent was also shut down. A shutdown of a complicated big city is nothing short of a catastrophe. If there is a continuing resolution, it will be marginally better, but imagine putting handcuffs and a straitjacket on a city at the same time and then saying, ``Run your city well on a weekend CR or a weeklong CR, and keep from over-obligating, and make sure you spend enough money.'' I am here this afternoon to express my gratitude to the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and to the DC Subcommittee. Mr. Speaker, these two committees unanimously passed a bill to allow the District of Columbia to spend its own revenue instead of being shut down. I express my gratitude to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], the chairman of the committee, and to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis], the chairman of the subcommittee. I will put an op-ed piece by Mr. Davis on this very subject into the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. The op-ed piece is headlined, ``Why Shut Down the District?'' The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis] marshals all the arguments for not doing so. Why was there such bipartisanship on this bill? In the first place, it was a matter of sheer principle. The Members knew and saw that shutting down the District was not their intent. They did not mean to catch a whole city in this fight. Then of course the Members saw up close what happens when you shut down a city and the trash is not collected, and the city cannot go about its daily business, and the citizens suffer. It is not a pretty picture. It is our money and only our own money that H.R. 2661 speaks to. The Federal payment would be left here at the discretion of the Congress. What is happening in the District of Columbia as I speak? The district is preparing to shut down. What a terrible diversion for a city on the brink of insolvency, when this Congress has told it to do otherwise, to prepare for reform of its financial and management operations. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey] was just on the floor saying that there could be a weekend or a weeklong CR. There could be two such CRs. Nobody can expect the District to run well in that way, even if it were healthy, as of course we know it is not. Speaker Gingrich encouraged us to continue with the bills. He has been very helpful to the District in the past. I am asking him to bring the bill to the floor today, so that before midnight on Friday this body can guarantee that the city, where this body sits, will in fact be open for business. Only a few hours stand between us and closedown of a city we do not mean to close down. At midnight on Friday, the District of Columbia goes dark and hundreds of thousands of innocent bystanders will see their city go dark, while the Congress remains in session uninjured by any shutdown. No Member of this body desires that. No Member of this body would want to defend that. Please, help me to keep my city open. Help me to help my city recover. The city wants to do what the Congress has mandated it to do: get its house in order. This Congress has put a Control Board on the city, and now the Control Board has testified that the last thing the city needs is to be shut down and have to pay its employees for not coming to work--as would have to be the case since they would be forced onto administrative leave. That is not the way to run even a small town. I am here to say to my colleagues, we cannot run the Capital of the United States this way, and we cannot allow the word to go across the wires and around the world that some Federal agencies went back to work (and I congratulate you that some appropriations have now passed; it looks like ours will not, indeed, pass), but that the Congress of the United States allowed the Capital of the United States to close down catching 600,000 innocent people in the wake of our own special storm. I appreciate what the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger] and the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis] have done. I appreciate that the Speaker has encouraged us to keep this bill going forward. Now, a little more than 24 hours stand between us and keeping the city of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, open. Please, help us to do just that. [From the Washington Post, Dec. 14, 1995] Why Shut Down the District? (By Thomas M. Davis III) Shutting down the federal government because Congress and the president fail to agree on a budget resolution is an act that has many unintended victims and numerous unintended consequences. The damper these failures put on recruiting and maintaining the best and the brightest for our federal work force will be with us for some time. On another level, the backsliding it inflicts on our efforts to change the District of Columbia government are profound. The D.C. government is not just another federal agency. It is a front-line government providing vital health, safety and personal services to 570,000 residents and 300,000 metropolitan commuters. When federal agencies shut down, citizens in any city in the country can still get a driver's license and register their automobiles. When federal agencies shut down, the states can continue to process AFDC and Social Security applications. But when the District government shuts down, people needing services, whether medical care at a clinic or trash collection from their homes, are not served. Congress should act immediately to ensure that the District of Columbia can spend its own locally generated tax dollars during such a shutdown. We can do this before this week's expiration of the current continuing resolution Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has introduced legislation, H.R. 2661, to allow the District to spend its own revenues even if its budget has not been approved by Congress (the budget will still be subject to approval by the control board). I am a cosponsor of H.R. 2661, which yesterday was approved by the House subcommittee that oversees the District and is scheduled for full committee action today. It is imperative that Congress pass it for two important reasons. First, without passage of H.R. 2661, the District government is subject to being shut down again, as it was Nov. 14-19. That's because the District's own appropriation has not been enacted, and there may be no continuing resolution to keep the government open. The unique status of the District--the city cannot spend one penny of its budget, either local or federal revenues, without an appropriations bill being passed by Congress and signed by the president--has never before seemed important. In past federal shutdowns, the District appropriation had been enacted so that the city government could continue operations, or else the District has been put under a continuing resolution along with federal agencies that were without approved appropriations. But this time there was no District appropriation and no continuing resolution. This places on the District of Columbia a unique burden. Every other city or state in the country can continue to operate its own programs, and may even take up the slack of missing federal funds from its own revenues when the federal government is shut down. But the District is stymied. This situation is inexcusable even in normal times, but in the current financial crisis it has become extreme. The District lost more than $7 million in productivity during the recent shutdown, according to the control board, and it failed to collect up to $70 million in revenue that it was owed. Meanwhile, contractors around the metropolitan area are going bankrupt every day, and the IRS files liens for unpaid tax withholding because the District of Columbia doesn't have the cash to pay its bills. Allowing the District to fall even farther behind in its revenue collection is tantamount to negligence on the part of Congress. In addition to lost productivity and lost or delayed revenues, the very officials who have so much work ahead to rebuild and reform the city were forced to spend their time deciding what services and employees were ``essential'' in a government that is already notoriously dysfunctional. Instead of working on privatizing city services, City Administrator Michael Rogers had to write furlough notices. Instead of reviewing contracts and improving cash management, Chief Financial Officer Anthony Williams had to figure out new ways not to pay bills. Instead of pushing ahead publicly with the council on urgently needed reforms, Mayor Barry could only wonder what new disaster he would have to deal with next. And the control board, which is trying to push the District forward, could only make certain that the District complied with the provisions of the Anti-Deficiency Act and shut down everything that was not an imminent threat to health or safety. This is no way to run a city in the grips of a financial crisis. Congress and the president could keep the federal and District governments open either by reaching a budget agreement or by enacting another continuing resolution. I am hopeful that one of these two events will occur before there's another shutdown. No one can possibly expect to escape the public outcry that would come from sending hundreds of thousands of workers home 10 days before Christmas. But there is an even more compelling reason to enact H.R. 2661 immediately. While operating under a temporary continuing resolution, the D.C. government has no legal authority to obligate funds beyond the expiration of that resolution. Since continuing resolutions are emergency, stopgap measures, this forces the District government to operate on an emergency basis, signing contracts and planning spending schedules from week to week. This ad hoc operational mode is not only bad for contractors and other service providers; it runs exactly counter to what is most needed in the District government: stability and the ability to make long-range decisions. Unless H.R. 2661 is enacted and the District is allowed to obligate its own revenues, even without an appropriation bill, the District will continue to limp from crisis to crisis, lacking the ability to take concrete, long-term actions or to make the decisions that would be in everyone's best interest. Congressional oversight and ultimate control would not be threatened, because the District's federal payment is not included in H.R. 2661. This legislation would not free the District from federal oversight and would not give the city budget autonomy. It would simply allow the District to escape from the threat of shutdown and the gross inefficiencies of operating on a week- to-week basis, and to at least be able to crawl along on its own revenues during a budget impasse. I am pleased that Speaker Gingrich, President Clinton and the control board support this legislation. Congress should act now to pass it, and thus prevent further paid furloughs and a shutdown of city operations.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, this is day four of the countdown to shutdown. It no longer looks as if shutdown lies ahead for the Federal Government. A CR until January sometime is more likely. For the District of Columbia, a CR is only marginally better than a shutdown. Mr. Speaker, you cannot run a complicated city on a month-to-month basis. It makes it almost impossible to make rational management and financial decisions. Thanks to a bipartisan bill, the D.C. Fiscal Protection Act, D.C. may be spared this new atrocity; the subcommittee will mark up a bill tomorrow. The full committee has waived jurisdiction, indicating how important it is to allow the District of Columbia to spend its own money. Yes, its own money; 85 percent of the money in our appropriation is raised from District taxpayers. Community leaders representing those taxpayers met with me in a town meeting last night. They are the innocent bystanders. They say that there could be no greater waste than forcing the District to pay employees on a CR basis. Free the D.C. 85 percent.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, this is day 5 of my countdown to help avoid a shutdown of the Federal Government and the District of Columbia and, in addition, to help avoid a month-to-month congressional resolution that would apply to the District of Columbia--because on a month-to- month basis, Mr. Speaker, one cannot run a large, complicated, financially troubled city. There is very promising news carried in this morning's papers across the country that there may be $100 billion more money than expected, that the program of the administration has worked and that we are seeing the fruits come in. We are told that the President has made a phone call to the Republican leadership and may be coming together with them in the next few days. In any case, Mr. Speaker, they are very close together. There is not a lot of difference between the two. In particular, the Republican majority said to the President, give us a 7-year plan. Guess what? He did. Now the only way to arrive at an agreement is to get to the details, get the numbers and nobody, surely, would shut down the Government or put the District on a continuing resolution while you are doing the necessary work of getting to the numbers now, that you both have plans. This morning the President is quoted as saying, We ought to be able to agree on one thing: Nobody, nobody should threaten to shut down the Government right before Christmas. I cannot believe there is a single Member who would disagree with that. We in the District are not relaxed, though, because a month-long or a 6-week-long or a 2-week-long continuing resolution will not help us run the District, which is in grave financial distress. Who would want to shut down the District when the appropriation that is stuck up here is 85 percent raised from District of Columbia taxpayers? It is indefensible to do anything but release that money so that the District of Columbia can begin to systematically plan and spend for its reform. That is what this body has tried to get the District to do for years. That is why with a control board in place, we must be set free to do that. I have sponsored, with strong bipartisan support, the D.C. Fiscal Protection Act, which will be marked up on Wednesday and Thursday. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis], the chair of the D.C. Subcommittee, is strongly for this act because it would simply release the District to spend its own money. It is bad enough not to have full representation in this Congress, but to shut us down with our own money is nothing that any Member would want to defend. When the markup occurs, the bill will be brought swiftly here. We believe it could be passed swiftly in the House. Do not condemn us to the waste of a month-to-month CR. The last shutdown forced us to pay our employees, in any case, for not working, because they were forced into administrative leave by the Congress of the United States. The waste and inefficiency involved for Federal agencies is unpardonable for a city in financial distress. It simply cannot be tolerated. The waste and inefficiency involved in a month-to-month continuing resolution will set the District back in a recovery that has hardly begun. There are responsibilities that the District must take on. This body is correct to make sure that the District takes on those responsibilities. But who can deny that there is also a responsibility for this body. Only this body can pass a continuing resolution to free up the District to spend its own money. Even if our appropriation comes through, this bill must be passed, because the District must never face this possibility again. Already it has delayed our ability to go back into the market because now the market says ``You can never know when they may be shut down,'' and that has all kinds of repercussions on Wall Street. We must improve the District's standing. The only way to do that is not even through our appropriation, not even through a 1- month CR. It is through an act, the D.C. Fiscal Protection Act, which we will mark up Wednesday and Thursday, which would broadcast to the markets that no matter what happens, if the D.C. appropriation has not been signed at the end of a fiscal year, the District can spend its own money. It can pay its debts. That is the way to go at making the D.C. government more efficient. Let the example be set here in this body. Keep our feet to the fire. Let this body keep its own feet to the fire and do the right thing. Help us to start the District, finally, late in this fiscal year, with the efficiency that would obtain if we were able to spend our money to begin the systematic planning and spending that will once again make the District whole.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, at the end of the last shutdown, I began this countdown on the floor to help Members understand the special outrage of closing down the Capital City. Mr. Speaker, this is day 9 of the countdown to December 15. Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of the money in the D.C. appropriation is money raised from D.C. taxpayers. How would Members feel if the Congress used their own local money to shut down their district over a national dispute in which they were uninvolved? The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis] says that the Federal shutdown was dumb, but shutting down the District of Columbia was dumber. The District of Columbia is already on the operating table suffering an acute financial crisis so severe that the city has a control board. Even a month-to-month continuing resolution would cripple the District of Columbia. Doling out money in small amounts makes it almost impossible to run a complicated city and pay obligations on time. Mr. Speaker, that is why a bipartisan bill, the D.C. Fiscal Protection Act, is being marked up on Friday. It is the responsible and fair thing to do.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, this is day 10 of my countdown since the last shutdown of the Federal Government and, astonishingly, of the District of Columbia, not a Federal agency, you may have noticed. We face the possibility on December 15 of another closedown, or perhaps a short-term CR. For the District that would not be much better than a shutdown, because it is almost impossible to run a city on a 30- day basis without the flexibility to obligate your funds. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Tom Davis, a strong supporter and cosponsor of the D.C. Fiscal Protection Act to allow the District to spend its own funds and to continue to operate in the event of a shutdown or a failure of the President to sign an appropriation in time. The gentleman from Virginia had a hearing on this bill today, and I would like to note for the Record some of the remarks of the witnesses, because they reflect a very broad support from every sector in the District on a bipartisan basis for this legislation. The Comptroller of the United States testified for the administration that the administration believes that legislation is necessary. Dr. Brimmer, the Chair, the distinguished Chair of the Control Board, testified, ``the city's' critical fiscal condition would be aggravated by any more such actions.'' He went on to say, ``nearly 15,000 employees were furloughed, resulting in a $7.3 million loss in productivity.'' May I add, Mr. Speaker, that this is a city in the throes of fiscal insolvency. The notion that the Congress would participate in aggravating that condition is simply unacceptable, and I think unintended by this body. Dr. Brimmer goes on: ``District headquarters and agency budget analysts were nearly all deemed nonessential. This delayed critical work on the development of the District's 1996 and 1997 financial plan and budget needed to provide the city's fiscal recovery. We agree that the District should be allowed to obligate or expend an amount equal to all locally generated revenues such as local taxes and local fees.'' One might ask: What is the District's own local money doing in the Congress of the United States in the first place, Mr. Speaker? The Board of Trade testified today, and I am quoting: ``One week of delay in licensing and permitting inspections and other business- related regulatory process increases costs. These were services that are largely paid for by locally generated revenues.'' Mr. Tidings of the Board of Trade concluded: ``I understand that some Members of Congress are concerned that should the District be exempted from the larger Federal budget debate, there no longer would be a distinction between which other Federal agencies deserved the exemption and which do not. No matter how individual Members of Congress may view their constitutional oversight responsibilities for the District of Columbia, it is a unique Federal entity and one that cannot and should not be compared to any other Federal department or agency. The Greater Washington Board of Trade fully supports this subcommittee's efforts to allow the District of Columbia Government to remain open during a Federal shutdown under the spending parameters outlined in Ms. Norton's proposal. Two unions also testified, Mr. David Shrine and Mr. Hicks, Mr. Shrine of the AFGE, and Mr. Hicks of AFSCME. Every sector and bipartisan membership on the subcommittee all agree that this is the Nation's Capital for which we all must take responsibility. The notion of pushing it into greater insolvency because we allow it to shut down, or tether it to a short-term CR, making it impossible to run the city in a rational way, is not what this body should stand for. It is hard to defend adding to the waste and inefficiency for which the District has been criticized, at a time when the city is close to fiscal insolvency, it is hard to defend holding hostage the District of Columbia's own money by tethering it to a short-term CR, allowing it to operate by fits and starts, and compounding its fiscal problems. It is hard to defend putting a leash on the District, making it operate in a straitjacket that promotes terrible waste and compounds the inefficiency for which Member after Member has criticized the District of Columbia. Mr. Speaker, I ask this body to consider the bill. I ask the majority to bring forward the bill that has bipartisan support in the committee.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, we are 11 days before another possible shutdown of the Federal and the District Government and I am forced to come to the floor of the House every day trying to keep this from happening, at least in the District. I recognize now that there will probably be at least a short-term CR, so that 10 days before Christmas there is not a Federal Government shutdown, but I hope to impress upon my colleagues that a short-term CR will not help the District much because it is a city and not a Federal agency. As we saw from the starts and stops of preparing for the last shutdown, it does not help a city to give it a short-term CR. I ask my colleagues to put themselves in the position of my constituents, who have paid their taxes, who are second per capita in Federal taxes in the United States, and their money is up here in the appropriations. Eighty percent of it is their money, and there is the possibility that the Congress would shut down on their money, or put them on a CR on their money. Tomorrow, the gentleman from Virginia, Chairman Tom Davis, has agreed to a hearing on a bill that would allow the District to spend its own money in the case of government shutdowns, remembering that we are not HUD or HHS--we are a city, like the cities my colleagues represent. We are caught in the middle of someone else's fight. The District is in grave financial stress. It is important to let us out so that we can continue to rebuild this city. Mr. Speaker, this morning's Washington Times reports some distressing news, and I am quoting. ``A paralyzing dispute over school vouchers has so divided Republicans that some are concerned the District will not receive an annual spending bill for the first time since the advent of home rule.'' I say to my GOP colleagues who are in charge now, every year for 40 years that the Democrats were in charge, they got 13 appropriations out. It is now the GOP's responsibility to get 13 appropriations out, including the District's. Instead, what we have brewing is a major constitutional fight on the back of the weakest of the 13 appropriations, the smallest of the 13 appropriations--the D.C. appropriations. I ask my colleagues, is it fair to hold up our appropriation over a fight, a constitutional fight, over vouchers for private and religious schools? This is a worthy question, but it deserves a hearing. It deserves exposure, major exposure, if my colleagues mean to depart from 200 years of American history. Instead, we are told, again in the Washington Times this morning, that the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Jeffords] currently holds the votes to bury any voucher program under a filibuster. Imagine filibustering our appropriation over matters that have nothing to do with the District. This proposal on vouchers and on educational reform was meant to help us. It is hurting us now very much. Get it off our backs. If the GOP wants to do this, if they want to help us, let them do it the right way and not hold up money that the District needs desperately simply to run the city. We already have an agreement on the amount of our appropriation. It involves a cut, by the way. So everything is in order except an extraneous issue involving vouchers. There is also an abortion issue. But the issue that is really holding our money up, threatening to shut the city down, threatening to put us on short-term continuing resolutions, is not an issue affecting the 600,000 people I represent. They deserve better. They deserve a whole lot better. According to the Washington Times, Mr. Speaker, ``Longtime observers and those involved in the process say negotiating a District spending bill is often tough, but the House and the Senate have always worked out their differences in one sitting.'' We are having the third sitting today and we are nowhere near to a solution on whether or not 600,000 people, many of them the hardest working people one could ever find, will get their own money out of the Congress. Our money should not be up here in the first place. There was a whole revolution over charging people taxes without allowing them to have a say in how to spend their own money. The 80 percent I am talking about was raised in the District of Columbia from District taxpayers. Most Americans do not know that. My constituents know it. They are tired of being held up here over the fight between the executive and the Congress of the United States. They understand that to be a worthy fight that has to be fought out, but surely no one believes that we should be punished by disallowing us the flexibility to spend our own money. Mr. Speaker, there are over-obligation prospects out there because if we are given a 1-month CR, there are mandates such as AFDC. There are mandates such as payroll. We cannot guarantee we will get through those mandates. Free the District appropriation.