Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I particularly thank the gentleman and the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Waxman, for your time and effort that you put into Waxman-Norton, and yes, into defeating the substitute before us now. This substitute stoops very, very low to conquer. The Congress is known for its low blows against the District of Columbia, but this is the first time that in shooting the District of Columbia in the back-- which has become routine--that in over 200 years, never before, but tonight you are shooting protections for the entire Federal presence that this House is sworn to protect, beginning with the President of the United States and going to every Federal employee working in a Cabinet agency. And the House has the gall to ask for a vote to nullify the gun laws in my district, depriving my district of the right to protect itself and visitors like yourselves, while denying me a vote on this floor on passage? Have you no shame? Is no principle invalid? The sponsors of the substitute have consistently singled out two sections of the old D.C. law because otherwise this would look crazier than it already does. The section, for example, they temporarily left in place while they worked on new legislation, as the Supreme Court asked them to, new legislation which has now been signed into law, left in place the trigger lock section. But whoever would have left that in place--after all, it was one of the few issues singled out in the Supreme Court decision, and you know it. And they knew it. But they had to do the necessary investigation. They had to know what other jurisdictions did. And they knew that handguns had to be defined as semi-automatics because those are the most commonly used handguns today. But they had to have time to do it. Now they've done it. Those changes were inevitable, you knew they were inevitable. They've occurred. And here you are, a day late and a dollar short, looking very foolish. Only because of the Waxman hearings were we able to expose the high risk and danger to the Federal Government, to the Federal presence that this bill brings, the high risk in government to Members of Congress every day when they come here. Yes, you think you are endangered? Well, boy, would you have really been at risk if this bill were to get through both Houses. With the help of three police chiefs with jurisdiction in this region, all three came to show that the bill that you brokered would have allowed carrying semi-automatic handguns in this city--by children, sir, and by adults, thank you very much--well, that was even too much for the NRA, so they changed it. When the chiefs testified that in an inauguration parade we can't protect the Federal presence, one had to wonder what kind of brokering of bills you folks do. Don't you read what you broker? Don't you read what the NRA tells you to pass? The danger of the bill that we now have is almost as great. Oh, no, you can't carry a gun in public anymore, as a child could and as an adult could, but you can possess a semi-automatic AK-47, sir. You can possess a Bushmaster XM-15, which 6 years ago the sniper, the D.C. sniper used in the States of Virginia, Maryland and D.C. Semi- automatics, that's in your bill; that's still in your bill. Just back from unveiling the memorial benches at the 9/11 ceremony, just back from a ceremony after the National Capital region was targeted--and still is--7 years ago, you had just dried your tears and now you come and ask us to vote for a substitute.

Ms. NORTON. They would not have cosponsored this bill. They looked at the NRA label and signed onto this bill. Why? Because the NRA wanted to flex its muscles. They held the House up for now. What you see, though, is what you get. It's a bare bill, federalizes all D.C. gun laws, won't be able to change it no matter what the need, no regulations, introduces military-style assault weapons into the Nation's capital that children and adults can possess, allows gun running across State lines into Maryland and Virginia, just what Federal gun laws have kept us from doing for decades, allows assault weapons to be owned by juveniles and by people just released from mental institutions. That's what you get if you don't vote for Waxman-Norton, if you do, in fact, vote for the substitute, the reckless substitute that no Member should want to have anything to do with or have his name attached to in any way.

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his principled work on the bill. Tonight, just 7 years after the attack on the national capital region, not 7 days after our own tearful commemoration of that attack, the NRA has put a gun at the back of Members of this House and forced a debate, a late-night debate, on a bill that throws off of the roof of the Capitol all concern for homeland security that we have spent the last 7 years paying lip service to. Now, the NRA may know how to write a bill to repeal gun safety laws, we have stopped that four times, but they certainly don't know how to write a gun bill. They forgot the indelible link when it comes to gun safety between the District of Columbia and the Federal sector, which are joined at the hip. They are twins. You can't get up without getting yourself, and so this time you step right in it. Fortunately D.C. knows both sides because it has been in the business of protecting both for 208 years. Under the Home Rule Act, if it fails to protect the Federal sector, justifiably, its laws can be overturned. We have made in order, and I am grateful, boy am I grateful to the Chair of the full committee, Mr. Waxman, for putting his energy, the energy of his staff and his principled commitment to States' rights and to the sovereignty of all Americans, to the bill which is the Waxman- Norton bill. It requires the District to respond adequately within 180 days. That's the limits of what you are entitled to do. If they don't do it, then you are entitled to step in. The fact is the District of Columbia has been working on a bill ever since a Supreme Court decision on June 26. They started the very next day. It's the Supreme Court, the final arbiter of all of this, that has required the District to rewrite the law. A narrow bill, 5-4, say you tailor it, each and every one of you, to your convictions. That's what has been done, has been done. So all of this talk about what it used to be before the Supreme Court, is used to be. Now, what this District has done and signed, I am sure Members haven't even taken any note of. But it wasn't much influenced by the NRA threat, the way Members who support this substitute were. Sure, it permits some of the things that were always intended, some of the things in the substitute, because it does allow--I read the Supreme Court decision--it allows unlocked semiautomatic guns in the home, as the Supreme Court required. But most of what is reckless in this substitute you won't find in D.C.'s bill. Of course, the bill came down from the Supreme Court as the Council was about to recess for summer, so they had to pass a stop-gap bill just to allow registration. They did that in good faith, and what did they get for it? What they get for it is the Souder bill all over again, which he, of course, put in. That's the mirror image of this bill. He put the mirror image of this bill in in March of 2007 before the law was overturned. Now they come back with it after the law has been overturned and after D.C. has already, in fact, passed the law signed by the mayor. They fastened on to the substitute that keeps them looking like complete idiots, so they fastened on to the substitute knowing full well that it was a stop-gap measure. The bill that is before you, the substitute that you will have to consider, is not the idea of any Member, it was written by the NRA, mandated by the NRA. Most Members would not, I will say, in your behalf, have cosponsored this bill.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman. I think I should make an important announcement. The District of Columbia has just passed permanent legislation that has no gun lock provision; instead, substitutes a child access bill and allows semi- automatics and allows more than one. And they were always on their way to doing it. And the good faith was shown by the fact that they passed a stop-gap measure as they left town, which allowed immediate registration. This bill federalizes gun laws. It takes D.C. out of the gun business. It leaves a naked law with no regulations. Scalia gave us a very narrow 5-4 decision. By 5-4, it's because that's the only way he could get it through. And you know that he got it through that way because it leaves it to local jurisdictions to tailor the bill to fit their local needs. D.C. is fitting its local needs and the needs of the Federal presence. This bill, the NRA bill, throws the doors open to guns and throws away all we've done in homeland security.

Ms. NORTON. As we're speaking, the Council is voting on permanent legislation that no gun supporter could oppose. It puts no limit on the number of guns you could have in your homes. It allows unlocked semi- automatic firearms in the home, and it uses other measures to protect District residents and to protect the Federal presence, such as restrictions, for example, on the age when a child can get a gun. But Members are being asked to cast a dangerous vote on a dangerous rule, followed by a vote on a dangerous bill that not only has no public purpose, but flies in the face of the overriding public purpose of the Congress of the United States since 9/11, and of the current administration, to protect the country beginning with protecting the Nation's Capital. You didn't hear it from me. You heard it from the Capitol Police if you were at the hearing. You heard it from the Park Police which has jurisdiction throughout the region. You heard it. These are the Federal police that have enforcement authority. And you heard it from the head of the D.C. Police Department, the largest Police Department in the region, the woman who set up the Department's Homeland Security section, which put her in daily touch with the top Federal security network. I have no idea, Mr. Speaker, what will happen if this matter passes this session. I know what I will do. But even if the danger penetrates here or in the Senate, let me give you fair warning, your districts are going to hear about what you do today. This has been blown up into a national matter because you are threatening the safety of the entire Federal presence and every dignitary and every Federal employee here. No Member of Congress who regards herself or himself as responsible Members should want their name attached in the 110th Congress to this bill, not to the attached bill. I ask you to consider that before you go home and try to explain why you endangered the President of the United States and visitors to Washington like themselves.

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I very much appreciate that the Rules Committee, under the gentleman, has made the Waxman-Norton Home Rule bill in order, and particularly Chairman Waxman for affording a hearing which exposed the dangers of this bill, so much so that the NRA was driven back to the drawing board to change at least some of it. Unfortunately, they've left a very dangerous bill anyway. Our Home Rule bill says 180 days after the Heller decision, the District must respond, and, of course, within two weeks it had responded. Council was about to go out of town; could have gone out of town and waited until the Council reconvened today, but it allowed registration to occur by passing a stopgap measure. It didn't change much because there was no time for hearings. But Heller himself, Dick Heller, has registered under that bill. They are voting, ironically, as I speak, on a permanent bill that I think every Second Amendment advocate would support because it more than meets the Heller decision. Mr. Speaker, I understand the very painful dilemma that the Democratic leadership and our own caucus has been put in. 5 days after commemorating 9/11, Democrats were met in a dark alley with a ``do or die'' demand from the NRA pointing a proverbial gun at their re-election. This puts many Democrats in a terrible position. For example, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer have spent their careers protecting the Federal presence. They have spent their careers supporting home rule and voting against bills just like the substitute amendment which has been made in order. It is this substitute amendment which has dismayed and, I must tell you, even angered many in this House, because what the rule gives with one hand, it takes back with another. Some people are dismayed because they are gun safety advocates, and we haven't been able to get a new assault weapon bill passed through the House. Some people are dismayed because it is the energy bill they want to continue to talk about and other national business, and now they're talking about a local council issue. Some are dismayed because they've always supported home rule. And some are dismayed because this is a bill that threatens, in the worst way, the Federal presence. We're putting not just the District at risk. That's par for the course. We're putting the entire Federal presence, every Federal official, every dignitary, from the President of the United States to Federal employees working in cabinet agencies, every man, woman and child who works, visits or lives in the District of Columbia, is put at risk by a bill that the NRA has insisted come to the floor. We have before us, if this bill passes, one of the most permissive gun laws in the country. Post-9/11, the United States House of Representatives would be passing a bill, should this rule survive, that arms an entirely new set of people that most jurisdictions would prefer not to have guns at all, children. No age limit, for example. People just released from a mental institution, like John Hinckley, that is people who are voluntarily committed and then released, people convicted of very serious crimes, all could get a gun because of the NRA bill. Why? The Waxman-Norton bill passed 21-1 because there wasn't any reason to vote against it and because people didn't want to be seen voting against such a bill. So why the substitute? The short answer, Mr. Speaker, is because the NRA says so. It's a short answer. It's a long answer. It's the only answer. NRA has proudly announced to every reporter in town that they wrote the bill, that they told the Members what to do, and that's why the bill is coming to the floor. They have used a combination of campaign funds and, frankly, terror in the hearts of some Democrats at least about their own re- election. Who knows if the NRA will succeed, but people are afraid. The public lie that's being pandered here is that the NRA bill was necessary because the District isn't complying and won't comply. Never mind that if D.C. didn't comply Congress could overturn District law because Congress can overturn any law the Council passes. But D.C. has already begun to comply. They put in a stopgap measure. Heller is, in fact, registered. They did that as they were going out of town.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, today I am introducing the Legislative Branch Personnel Appeals Procedural Consolidation Act of 2008 to bring the GAO in line with other legislative branch agencies and to address an important issue of equal rights at Government Accountability Office, GAO, after extensive consultation with all concerned. Over the past year my office has worked closely with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to resolve serious employee wage and discrimination disputes at the GAO. African Americans, and older employees who have been disproportionately affected by these disputes and have complained that discrimination cases at GAO must be heard internally, the only grievance system where Federal employee charges of discrimination are processed and determined within a Federal agency without any independent review. This bill resolves this unique conflict of interest and due process issue that allows GAO to render the final administrative decisions on discrimination, labor and other issues against the GAO with the agency head appointing all the decisionmakers in the process and no review by any disinterested or third-party agency official. The wage disputes and complaints about the grievance system began when the GAO implemented dramatic and controversial pay-for-performance revisions to classify and pay its employees. The Comptroller General assured GAO employees that the annual COLAs that Congress votes for all federal employees would not be affected. However, many employees, including a disproportionate number of African Americans, did not receive their COLAs for FY06 and FY07, though all had ratings of ``meets expectations'' or above. Consequently, GAO employees filed formal race and age discrimination complaints against the Comptroller General with the Personnel Appeals Board, PAB, which hears all such complaints. The PAB members are appointed by the Comptroller General to decide not only discrimination cases based on race, sex, age and religion, but also cases involving violations of labor, and of civil service or merit system rights. All other Federal and legislative branch employees carry employee complaints to independent agencies. It was the excellent work of Chairman Danny K. Davis and the Federal Workforce subcommittee, whose hearings uncovered the discriminatory effects of the pay system and negotiated back-COLA payments for all GAO employees. An independent assessment by the Ivy Group, hired by GAO after the watchdog organization, Blacks In Government, recommended a study of discrimination at the GAO, showed that there are many race- based disparities in ratings, promotions and other employment practices between African American and Caucasian analysts at the GAO. For example, having a PhD has a statistically significant positive effect for Caucasian analysts, but has no effect for African American analysts, and Caucasian analysts receive a ratings benefit from being assigned to lead roles on projects, contrasted with African American analysts, who show no statistically significant effect of being assigned to such roles. This bill provides for independent review of complaints by transferring jurisdiction to the OOC, which handles such matters for all other legislative branch employees. The OOC represents the most recent bipartisan thinking and action of Congress concerning equal treatment for employees of the legislative branch. Because of the small case loads generated by legislative branch agencies, the OOC is able to handle the broadest enforcement mandate of any executive or legislative agency and currently enforces 12 different employee protection laws and is the only employee protection agency required by statute to continuously review new laws and incorporate them into its own jurisdiction. The bill does not assign responsibilities to an agency beyond its expertise and does not put additional responsibility on the congressional leadership to make appointments. The OOC has indicated the feasibility of its participation and offered evidence that the statute that established the OOC contemplates granting additional authority to the OOC of the kind we seek. I hope all my colleagues join me in assuring equal rights to GAO employees.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I thank the chairman for the priority consideration given this bill throughout, and Rosa DeLauro for her indefatigable perseverance on this bill. This bill has not been updated for 45 years, and yet we have seen the transformation of the American workforce. It needs a 21st century makeover. I wasn't there at the birth, but I was there when I chaired the EEOC and worked with President Carter to bring the Equal Pay Act to the EEOC. The whole point of doing that was to bring this, the first of the great civil rights statutes, into line with title VII, which was passed thereafter. We have never done that. This is the first time we have done that, Mr. Chairman. That makes this an historic bill. Seventy-five percent of women in the work force today have small children. Women are backsliding now. They are stuck on 76 cents for every male dollar. With the economy in the worst condition in a generation, women need every tool, and it is not too much to ask that they have the tool of equal rights.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume and I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman from New York, who is the author of the bill.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to exclude extraneous material on H.R. 6340.

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

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for his statement in support of the Judge Brieant bill. The gentlelady and my colleague covered the matter extensively. I have only to add that this was a very distinguished judge who enjoyed the respect of both sides of the aisle. I commend the gentlelady for her bill; this is very well deserved. We're very pleased in our subcommittee to be able to bring it forward. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 6340 and commend Congresswoman Lowey for her staunch support for this bill, which has broad bi-partisan support. Federal Judge Charles Brieant, Jr. born in 1923 in Ossining, New York and who recently died on July 20, 2008. He graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School. From 1943 until 1946 he served in the United States Army Air Force. He began his career practicing in White Plains, New York, while serving as Water Commissioner for the town of Ossining, New York. Judge Brieant was elected Ossining Town Justice in 1952 before serving as Village Attorney for Briarcliff Manor, New York. From 1960 through 1963 he served as Town Supervisor for Ossining. In 1970, he was elected to Westchester County legislature and one year later was nominated to serve on the District Court for the Southern District of New York by President Richard Nixon. He served as Chief Judge for the Southern District from 1986 to 1993. Judge Brieant took senior status on May 31, 2007. During his distinguished career Judge Brieant received many awards and honors including the Servant of Justice Award from the Guild of St. Ives in 1998 and the Edward Weinfeld Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Administration of Justice in 2006. It is most fitting and proper that we honor the outstanding public career of this imminent jurist.

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

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6340) to designate the Federal building and United States Courthouse located at 300 Quarropas Street in White Plains, New York, as the ``Charles L. Brieant, Jr. Federal Building and United States Courthouse,'' as amended.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No. 500, had I been present, I would have voted ``no.'' Amendment No. 6 Offered by Mr. Kirk

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I owe the chairman and the ranking member many thanks for today's bill. I appreciate that you have worked together on it, and I appreciate that you have brought forward the only available remedy for driving down $4-a-gallon gas. Sometimes, Madam Speaker, the remedy is so obvious that we can't see it. But who has made us see it are the American people because they have found that remedy, and they are leading the way. That's why this bill is on the floor today, notwithstanding the leadership of a chairman, who for a long time has wanted to pass this bill. I have great respect for our ranking member. But the fact is that wherever you stand on offshore or in Alaska, this is the only way to have an effect tomorrow. And that is what the American people are saying: Don't tell me about digging. Don't tell me about drilling. Tell me that I can get to work tomorrow. There is only one ``tomorrow'' remedy, and that is this public transportation remedy. Moreover, we know what to do. What makes me want to cry is the Federal Government has done it to a fare-thee-well with incentives right here in the national Capital area where more than half of the Federal presence is located for decades because we've been giving financial incentives to Federal employees to hop on the metro and to hop on buses to get to work instead of taking to the roads. And boy, they've done it. That's why I thank this House for last year authorizing a bill that will help us take care of the capital costs because Federal employees have hopped the metro and bus so that they've broken down our own metro. But Madam Chair, small communities and a lot of others don't have their metro, their subway. Guess what they are doing? They are hopping on buses. They are crowding on buses. They understand there is only one way to defeat gas prices tomorrow, and that is public transportation. I am very pleased that this bill leads by example because what we have done for a long time in the national Capital region in offering incentives to Federal employees will now be available to Federal employees countrywide. Everywhere in the United States Federal employees will get this incentive. When you consider that we're talking about more than a million employees, we're going to have an effect there. If you need any further proof, look at what the American people have done in leading us to this point. This is 2008. In less than a year, they have already dropped 100 million miles that they were driving before that. Where have those miles gone? The same people have taken more than 85 million more trips on public transportation. There's the proof. The proof is that people have voted in the best way to do it, crowd the trains, make it happen. Now we're going to make it possible so that they don't have to crowd, so that we're partnering with local jurisdictions, in fact, to help them to do it. We say to the American people today, we hear you, we're following you with this bill.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Madam Chairman, I like the commonsense, low-cost approach here because we obviously are not trying to duplicate what they do in the States. The random inspections will say to you, you never know if they are going to come to get you, and there are States that don't do such inspections. The fact that we are not talking about suing you, these people know how to get lawyers to sue under the appropriate circumstances. In any case, we don't want to do something after the fact. We want to be assured if we have to send our children to another jurisdiction, that all will be well to the greatest extent possible. This bill, which covers the entire country, will, I think, restore the confidence of many parents that in fact at least the Congress has done all it can. I thank the chair and the ranking member and the committee again for this important bill.

Ms. NORTON. I thank the chairman for yielding and I thank him and I thank the ranking member as well for a bill that is, I think, very important to the country. This is a matter of State regulation and will remain and should remain a matter of State regulation. But the fact is that there are many jurisdictions like my own which, because of the nature of the mental or the emotional or the behavioral problem of a particular child and the attempt to match that with the child's needs, may be required to send the child out of State. That is more likely to be the case if you are in a city, a medium-sized city like the District of Columbia which of course, does not have State facilities, but it is true of every State. We have learned of instances where I think even with the best efforts of the city, and the city has been to blame some of the time, there would have been very little that the city could have done unless there was a monitor on the spot. And understand, it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to send these children out of State. This is very expensive to do, but you do it for a young child, in the hope that you can help this child and bring this child back. We had a situation recently, Madam Chair, where the city was sued, this city, the District of Columbia was sued for a hefty amount because the city had sent a child to a clinic in Pennsylvania and the child was raped by a very trusted counselor. Now, perhaps the city should have been sued, so I am certainly not here to say whose fault it was, and I know nothing of the regulations of the State of Pennsylvania. I do know this: That if there are not minimum standards across these United States, no city or jurisdiction which sends children to another jurisdiction can be confident that every day, everything is going to happen as expected. There is a monitor of child welfare matters in the District of Columbia, and she recently reported that, for example, that some District children that were being treated in Florida like ``garbage.'' And the only way the District of Columbia knew was they read it in the newspapers. Now, what were they supposed to do, have somebody down there looking every day at what they were doing? Perhaps it was their fault. But we do not know if there were standards, such as the chairman and the committee have proposed here. We just had to take some children out of something called ``therapeutic restraint,'' Madam Chair, after we found that the children's arms had been broken as a part of this therapeutic restraint. Excuse me, spare me this therapy. In this city, at least, we send hundreds upon hundreds of children to such schools around the country. It costs the District of Columbia $210 million a year. If you are in a larger State, this child may go within the State. Even so, there are large numbers who don't go within the State. I want to thank the chairman for simply creating standards, and by the way, standards that will apply to the public sector and not only the private sector. There is no private right of action given by this bill. I particularly like the random inspections, because you never know if they are going to look at you.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am pleased to rise in support of H.R. 5001, as amended, and to ask for the support of the House, a bill to direct the General Services Administration to redevelop the Old Post Office located on Pennsylvania Avenue, right in the center of the District of Columbia. On January 16, 2008, I introduced H.R. 5001, the Old Post Office Development Act, to redevelop the nearly empty Old Post Office, a unique historic treasure which was once the post office of the Nation's capital located at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, owned by the Federal Government's GSA. For more than ten years, our Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management has expressed continuing and mounting concern about the neglect and underutilization of this invaluable government site, and has pressed the GSA to develop and use this building to its full potential. Madam Speaker, when I brought this bill to the full committee, Mr. Oberstar from whom we just heard on a prior bill and Ranking Member Mica lead what could only be called a round of hoorahs and hosannas that this bill was being brought forward. More than 20 million visitors come. This building is so strategically placed that it is almost certain that constituents of Members have ventured into this extraordinary building which looks like just the kind of building that invites people on the outside, and then they come on the inside and they can't believe what they see. So the building is well known not only by our subcommittee but by the full committee. Worse, as I shall relate, is why it has not been brought forward. The Old Post Office Building was completed in 1899. That makes it one of the oldest buildings here, and is certainly one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest, for which rehabilitation and preservation has not somehow begun or envisioned. This grand example of Romanesque revival occupies an entire city block. Because it was the main post office, it was strategically located for a purpose not as an historic building, but in the 19th century when that is how you built post offices. The building was placed on the Historic Register in 1973, and remains one of the city's most unusual, interesting, and appealing landmarks. Part of the appeal of the Old Post Office Building also is its central location in the Federal Triangle, its proximity to many Federal historic sites not the least of them the White House which is a stone's throw from the Old Post Office. Our major metro lines converge there, and a host of restaurants and other amenities surround this location's major tourist site. This bill is important for the city I represent, as well, but its importance goes far beyond any particular district. This building belonged to the United States of America before there was any home rule in the District of Columbia. When the Congress of the United States ran the District of Columbia, they saw fit to have a post office befitting the Nation's capital. You would have thought, particularly given the history of developing historic structures here, for which the GSA deserves special credit, that this building certainly, at some point in the 20th century, would have been rehabilitated. Actually, this particular struggle started in 1998. Congress passed the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1999, and in that act our committee required the GSA to submit a development plan for the Old Post Office before any Federal funds could be used to convert the space. And on February 28, 2000, GSA did in fact, pursuant to law, submit such a plan as required. Madam Speaker, no bill, and in my entire history on the committee, no bill has been necessary for this work. We don't trouble the Congress with this work. But it took a bill now 10 years ago just to get a plan. On May 16, 2001, the Committee on Transportation and the Infrastructure passed an additional resolution authorizing the development of the Old Post Office. So we come forward with bills that ordinarily are unnecessary because the GSA goes ahead and submits a prospectus that we approve, and that's it. The GSA finally in 2005 did issue what we call a request for expression of interest. That's the way we do federal development in our subcommittee. This is a priceless treasure. If you go to the inside of the building, you see it was built and looks now almost like a cavernous space, most of it is ceiling like this chamber, Madam Speaker, without the room to place for offices or the like. So in order to decide whether or not this was a property which the private sector thought could be developed, we required GSA to ask for expressions of interest. The GSA received apparently many indications of interest from the private sector. But the agency has never proceeded to the next step. For that reason--and remember we are talking about 2005 when the request for expression of interest occurred--as has been required, every step along the way, a bill is going to be necessary to move the GSA to act and that is what H.R. 5001 does, so that this structure can in fact be utilized for the benefit of Federal taxpayers, for the benefit of visitors to the city, and of course for the benefit of the city as well. The Congress may be curious as to why there would be any resistance. It is difficult to understand, Madam Speaker, considering that for three, almost four decades we have poured money into the Old Post Office because they didn't want to let it just stand there and get no revenue. So each year the Federal Government loses $6 million or $7 million more than it takes in from the tiny agencies around the rim of the cave, as it were. If you multiply that over many decades, you will understand that pouring renovations into a building that needed a complete makeover, while allowing a tiny agency here or there to occupy whatever space you could find, has resulted in the loss of billions of dollars to the Federal Government, when in fact we could have reversed that process, bringing billions of dollars of revenue for us, had we done what we did with the highly regarded Tariff Building, another one of the grand old buildings that stood here when I was a kid and where GSA has already shown it can make excellent use of otherwise antiquated and virtually useless structures. What it did was to convert the old Tariff Building into the rarified, high priced Monaco Hotel, which sits across from the Portrait Gallery. That building quickly returned revenue to the Federal Government. The redevelopment of the Tariff Building shows what can be achieved when the Federal Government works with the private sector to redevelop a site that brings a return to the government, provides a safe and necessary facility for the city and for visitors, and importantly, preserves a priceless, truly priceless historic treasure. Madam Speaker, our bill now has language that makes it impossible for the GSA to refuse to proceed, as it has done with our prior two bills. GSA is directed to proceed. We waived the prospectus. OMB is not implicated. And I should say for the record that I think the villain in the piece is OMB and not GSA. For reasons known only to itself, and some have said that they wanted to sell the building, even though there is a bipartisan ``no'' to, in fact, selling any historic structure in the United States. Whatever is the reason, it took a killing in front of the building when they had rented it out to a George Washington University student organization in order to get any movement on the bill, and now the Congress is going to have to make it impossible for OMB to keep GSA from proceeding or face contempt of Congress. We also take away the excuse that there are agencies in the building. There are a couple of tiny agencies in the building, the kind of agencies that GSA can relocate on the back of an envelope because it relocates very large agencies all the time. Congress has done its homework. It is now time for the GSA to do its work and start bringing some revenue here from this historic structure and some pleasure for the many visitors who wander inside and are distressed by what they see. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 5001.

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5001) to authorize the Administrator of General Services to provide for the redevelopment of the Old Post Office Building located in the District of Columbia, as amended.

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, so I too am prepared to yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6109) to amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to reauthorize the pre-disaster hazard mitigation program, and for other purposes, as amended.

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

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, it is a special pleasure and honor to introduce the Chair of the full committee whose knowledge and work long before this bill finally came forward in the form of an actual bill has been seminal to the act before us today, the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).