Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Reclaiming my time, I don't know what the reason for that is, and thank you for educating me. I wasn't aware of it. I assume they are saying the inflation rate is higher in urban areas than it is in rural areas, which is, presumably, why they peg it to that. That might bring the inflation rate down. Would the gentleman just give me a sense of how taking it into account might affect what is today the general inflation rate? Let's assume it is inflated because it is focused on the urban areas where the cost of living is higher. Would it reduce the overall inflation rate?

Mr. RASKIN. I am sorry. By which definition?

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Chair, I just repeat my puzzlement from before. Perhaps if Mr. Cloud would yield for another question. What is the inflationary impact of debt servicing costs? Have there been any economic studies on that? Madam Chair, I yield to the gentleman for a colloquy.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Chair, I thank the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee for her leadership on refuting this legislation. After 2 years of rooting for economic failure and blaming President Biden for everything; for post-COVID global inflation, for the instability caused by supply chain breakdowns, and the phenomenal failure of Donald Trump's mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, after all that, after all the whining and crying about inflation, Republicans finally have the chance to take center stage, right now, with their proposed solution to the problem of inflation. The world has been waiting with bated breath. Would it be what Richard Nixon did, wage and price controls? Would it be what Herbert Hoover, that Republican did, total laissez-faire, whatever happens, happens? Well, the long wait is over. The GOP has now debuted their big plan for dealing with inflation in America with H.R. 347, something called the REIN IN Act, which stands for the Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act. It is a bill for a mandatory reporting requirement related to executive orders that might apply to two or three executive orders a year. You got that right: A reporting requirement related to a handful of executive orders every year is the GOP's response to inflation after barnstorming the entire country, claiming that they had some kind of solution. Now, you might think it is the most brilliant thing since the invention of Social Security, which they opposed, or Medicare, which they opposed, or you might think it is the dumbest thing since Donald Trump's last trillion-dollar corporate tax giveaway. But either away, it will have zero effect on inflation or deflation in the United States of America. Nothing. It is not going to have any effect at all. Now, our friends in the GOP are interested in this session of Congress in tortured, inscrutable, incomprehensible acronyms. So they can have the REIN IN Act, which they seem very connected to, but I want to suggest a better title that will still conform to their acronym. Let's call it the running on empty initiative based on no ideas none act. How about that? The legislation was hatched without any hearing, and it shows. It has no legislative meaning and no potential economic consequences. Even as reporting bills go, it is pathetically weak, as it doesn't even require publication of the report. They came up with a reporting requirement that didn't even require the report to be published. Look, executive orders are not the cause of inflation, and there is no economic research suggesting they are. The most conservative economists in the world will tell you that inflation is a complex, global phenomenon connected to prices, supply chains, supply and demand curves, and unemployment rate. Since 2020, inflation has risen worldwide, exacerbated by supply chain delays caused by the pandemic and then Vladimir Putin's filthy war of aggression in Ukraine, which some of our friends over there support. President Biden has created something like an economic miracle out of the chaos handed to him by Donald Trump. After signing his massive tax giveaway, Trump's failed State dysfunctional response to COVID plunged America into its most severe economic contraction since 1946. Someone dispute that. The unemployment rate rose to 14.8 percent under Donald Trump, the highest on record since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting data in 1948. In 2021, Biden and the Democrats got to work. We passed the American Rescue Plan, which fueled a strong, equitable, economic recovery with historic reductions in unemployment, in poverty, in economic hardship. Real GDP increased by 5.7 percent. The unemployment rate decreased to 4 percent, surpassing all forecasts. Wages increased by 5 percent with the highest increases going to lower economic income earners. So Democratic policies have allowed the U.S. to absorb the shock of rising inflation engulfing the globe since 2020. That is serious economic policy, what President Biden and the Democrats are engaged in, and they have a silly little symbolic messaging bill for a couple of notations they didn't even want to publish originally within the process of offering executive orders.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Chair, we have created 12 million new jobs in America. How many million jobs do they want to erase over there in their desperate, sudden pursuit of inflation? They raised the debt limit three times under Donald Trump. Now they talk about the debt limit all the time. They raised it three times, and they contributed under Donald Trump 25 percent of all the debt in the United States from George Washington to Joe Biden--25 percent of the debt under one President, Donald Trump. They did that, and now they dare come talk to us about inflation, and the bill that they advance is one to have some people pass some more paperwork around. Come on. Give me a break. Give us something better than the running on empty initiative with no new ideas at all. We recommend a ``no'' vote. What real economic action requires is precisely what President Biden is already doing.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Chair, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois for the purpose of a colloquy.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Chair, reclaiming my time. That makes great sense to me, and I am tempted to support the amendment. If the gentleman is correct, that points to a larger problem. Is the gentleman telling us that the inflation rate today that is published by our government does not incorporate spending patterns in rural areas, for example?

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Chair, actually, I have a question because it strikes me as a very sincerely and decently motivated amendment to a flawed bill. But is there a reason to think that any of the current economic analyses of inflation and the current indicators that we use don't take into account the various factors that the gentleman specifies? I yield to the gentleman for the purposes of a colloquy.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise, with Congressman Eric Swalwell, to honor the remarkable life of my constituent, Jayne Harper Plank, who passed away on February 23, 2023. Jayne dedicated her life to civic service, philanthropy, and historic preservation, and she will be greatly missed by her beloved family, her many friends, and our entire community. Jayne grew up in Washington, D.C. and graduated from George Washington University. She served on the Kensington Town Council for 7 years and in 1974 became the first woman elected mayor of Kensington, ultimately serving 4 terms. In honor of her extraordinary civic service to the town, the renovated Kensington Cabin, originally built in 1934, was renamed the Mayor Jayne H. Plank Kensington Cabin. In 1982, President Reagan appointed Jayne as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the State Department, a position she held for 5 years. Jayne served as a liaison to governors, mayors, county officials and state legislators on the administration's policies. She also worked as a cryptologic linguist for the National Security Agency. Jayne was active in historic preservation, philanthropic and civic organizations. She was the first woman elected President of the Maryland Municipal League and the first woman to serve as the State of Maryland's representative to the National League of Cities. Jayne was also appointed to the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission and served on the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, the Board of Trustees of Tudor House in Georgetown, and the Maryland Historical Society. She was active with the Women's Leadership Group of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington and the Citizen's Association of Georgetown. In 2016, Sister Cities International recognized Jayne for her work building strong international relationships. Jayne was the beloved wife of the late William H. Plank, Sr. She is survived by her loving family, including her sons William Plank, Stuart Plank, John Scott Plank, Colin Harper Plank and Kevin Audette Plank; her grandchildren, Jack, Casey, Eve, Jesse, Campbell, Talya, Aitan, James and Katherine; and sisters Peggy Defranceaux and Donna Miller. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in honoring the remarkable life and legacy of my trailblazing constituent, Jayne Harper Plank.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If you google carjacking in Kentucky, what will come up is, just a few months ago, two people were carjacked in different incidents at gunpoint in Louisville, which I think is in the State of Kentucky. Since we are talking about State laws, that is what should be relevant. Carjacking is, obviously, a problem across the country. The conceit of the other side seems to be that they care more about crime and public safety in Washington, D.C., than people who live in Washington, D.C. We just got lectures from two different Members from New York about the terrible conditions in New York. Well, if that is what their concern is, then they should run for the New York State Legislature and change the laws that are involved if they can persuade their fellow citizens that they have it right. If they can't, then maybe they should reconsider what their agenda is. In any event, if you want to micromanage the laws of Washington, D.C., and rewrite this 275-page act that was passed to revise the criminal code, which they hadn't revised in a century, with the input of Federal and local judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and the D.C. Council, then move to Washington, D.C., and run for D.C. Council. These resolutions of disapproval come to the House floor without the benefit of a single hearing in the Oversight Committee. They have not had a hearing where the Members of Congress could be heard on this, where we could have a single witness, where we could have a single fact introduced, much less have the members of the D.C. Council--who sent a letter petitioning for respect for democratic self- government in D.C.--had the right to be heard, much less if the Mayor had the right to be heard. They keep invoking the name of the Mayor of the District of Columbia who said she does not want Congress to be overturning the laws of the District of Columbia, even if she opposes those laws. Well, that is a principled position in favor of democratic self- government. I dare say, most of the Members of this body would say even if they disagreed with a law passed by their State legislature in their State and signed by the Governor that Congress should not selectively overturn that law. But that is precisely what they are proposing to do to the people of the District of Columbia. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, if we were actually to pass this resolution of disapproval against Washington, D.C., at this point, I wonder what my colleagues think we do at that point. Sitting as the super council for the District of Columbia, would we rewrite the law? In other words, would we then conduct hearings on each of the offenses that the gentlewoman has just invoked? Are we going to have hearings about involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder and carjacking and so on in the District of Columbia? They don't even want to have a hearing on their disapproval resolution, much less do we want to have a hearing on each of these bills and take over the governance of the District of Columbia. Let's respect the Home Rule Act that was adopted in 1973. Home rule operates here just like it operates in all of our States, which is local matters are decided locally. Let's leave it at that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am ready to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to correct just a few of the major distortions that we just heard from the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana. First of all, carjacking, as I understand it from this act, and I am willing to stand corrected, is not legal in the District of Columbia. On the contrary, it could be punished by up to 24 years. I think the gentleman from Louisiana misunderstood my colloquy with the chairman of the committee because it is in Kentucky where carjacking is not a statutory offense. If you were to charge the people who were committing carjackings recently in Louisville, you would have to charge them under armed robbery because there is not a carjacking statute. Washington, D.C., has one, and it has a penalty of up to 24 years, which is more than you could get in Kentucky for armed robbery. The second point is he said that crime was out of control in Washington, D.C. Well, the crime rate is higher in Bakersfield, California, which is represented by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. A major city, New Orleans, in the gentleman's home State, in this quote from FOX News ``New Orleans closes 2022 with sky-high homicide rate not seen in decades: `Horrific'.'' New Orleans was given the grim distinction of murder capital of the U.S. in September. But we don't need to have some kind of race to the bottom Olympics in terms of which State or which city has the worst crime rate. We should get together to deal with the problem of gun violence, which is why I invite our colleagues to join us and more than 90 percent of the American people who support a universal violent criminal background check, but they oppose it. They are locked in the stranglehold of the NRA, and they won't back this, despite the fact that all the police unions they cited today about D.C. support a universal violent criminal background check. Why don't they do something about semiautomatic assault weapons on the streets of our cities and towns across America? They won't do it. No, they would rather use crime simply as a political club to try to take away other people's democratic rights. Mr. Speaker, it is scandalous, the way the majority purports to stand up for local self-government and home rule when they want to trample all of the democratic rights of the people of Washington, D.C. Let's not sit as a super city council of 535 Members doing the municipal minutiae of the people of Washington. Let them govern themselves. We should be on the pathway to statehood for them, but at the very least, respect their right to home rule. Nobody cares more about public safety in D.C. than the people of D.C. Nobody cares more about the condition of their communities than the people who live in them. That is a basic precept of democratic ideals. I hope my colleagues will respect that, and I hope everyone will vote to reject this continuing series of disapproval resolutions against the people of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 26, the second episode in the new miniseries where the House majority asks the United States Congress to act as a super city council of 535 members to make decisions for the people of Washington, D.C., which is a real city with a real city council and Mayor and which some of my colleagues apparently have never visited or had any real interaction with. The people in Washington, D.C., want to make their decisions about democratic self-government for themselves. They don't want the Representatives of other Americans to come and make decisions for them. President Biden was here this week for his great State of the Union Address, and, Mr. Speaker, when you could hear him over the heckling, he talked about the great progress we are making as a nation economically with 12 million new jobs. In terms of support for Americans in their healthcare with the dramatic reduction in healthcare prescription drug costs, we have cut to $35 a month what people have to spend on their insulin shots if they have diabetes. We just passed a record investment in climate preparedness to deal with the extreme climate emergency and all of the extreme weather events that people in the United States are experiencing across the country. That is a national agenda. That is a real national agenda. Now, my friends across the aisle want to spend this week instead superintending and reviewing the bills that are being passed by the D.C. Council for 713,000 American citizens who live in Washington, D.C. Yesterday, it was about voting rights. Today, it is about criminal justice reform. I am sure down the road, just as in the past, it is going to be their gun safety laws, and it is going to be their laws allowing for Medicaid funded abortions for poor women. Then they will go after their LGBTQ laws and so on. There will be a parade of attacks on local democratic self-government in Washington, D.C. Now, I believe that the people of Washington should be treated like all other American citizens. Right now what they have asked for is admission to the Union as a State. Now, most of the Members of this body represent States that were admitted after the original 13. Thirty-seven States came in afterwards with Congress' exercise of its Article IV powers to admit new States. That was very much the design of the Constitution and the Founders' plan. Go back and read some Thomas Jefferson about that. We were not set up as a country where certain people would make decisions for other people but people, instead, would be able to govern themselves. In fact, the basis of our attack on British rule over America was our rejecting the idea of virtual representation: that some people could make decisions for other people. No. The whole premise of American democracy is that people make decisions for themselves. So the 713,000 taxpaying, draftable citizens of Washington, D.C.-- whose population has participated in every war America has ever fought from the point of the American Revolution to the Civil War and all the way up through the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--those people are asking for admission to the Union. This House of Representatives in the 117th and the 116th Congresses voted to give it to them. It didn't quite make it through the Senate, which is always slower on these things, but that is the trajectory that the people of D.C. are on. Instead of trying to join President Biden and all of the great national economic progress, infrastructure progress, and healthcare progress we are making, the House majority decides instead to usurp the role of the D.C. Council and to begin to micromanage their government and finger paint all over their laws. That is what they are doing today. Now, we don't have time to compare the laws of D.C. with the laws of each of the other States, but I just want my colleagues to be on notice that I have got the laws of the other States, and I can do those direct head-to-head comparisons. I don't think we should go down this road. I don't think it is a healthy thing for us to be doing as a Congress because we should be respecting the democratic self-government rights of the people of Washington, D.C. Nobody is more interested in public safety in Washington than the people of Washington. Nobody is more interested in the processes of democratic self- government in Washington than the people of Washington. Nobody is more interested in their healthcare policies and in their housing policies than them. I invite any of my colleagues who have actually been to a meeting of the D.C. Council or their local advisory neighborhood commission to rise and tell us about the experience. But if they haven't, then they should leave democratic self- government and local self-government of Washington to the people of Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia says he is in favor of the resolution because he cares about Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker, I now yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), someone else who cares about Washington, D.C.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have put some stuff on the floor, and I will answer it. The distinguished gentleman from Georgia invoked a couple of crimes in Washington, D.C., including one in the Metro. He didn't talk about the hundreds of crimes that were committed here at the Capitol, in Congress, in Washington, D.C., because he viewed the events of January 6 as akin to a ``normal tourist visit.'' Now he dares to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about keeping Washington, D.C., safe. He seeks to associate Washington, D.C., with crime. Indeed, he and his colleagues constantly try to link images of crime to what they call Democrat-controlled cities. I did some research last night just to clarify matters. The seven States with the highest murder rates in 2020 all were States that were majority for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The murder rate in the States that voted for Trump was higher in aggregate than the murder rate in the States that voted for Biden in each year from 2000 to 2020. I invite the gentleman not to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about crime rates because the murder rate is worse in the red States than it is in the blue States. Five of the ten cities with the highest murder rate through the first half of last year were in States that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. All those cities have higher murder rates than Washington, D.C. Among the top 10 is a city in the State represented by the sponsor of the disapproval resolution, Mr. Clyde. Now, the Speaker rose to talk about both yesterday's resolution and today's resolution. He also gave the people of Washington, D.C., a lecture about diluting the vote when he rejects their admission to the Union as a State. In other words, he is trying to squelch and nullify their statehood drive that would give them real political equality in the country, and then he says the people of Washington, D.C., are diluting the vote. Well, he is blockading the vote. He is preventing the vote for people in Washington, D.C. Then he joins the chorus denouncing crime in Washington, D.C., which is suddenly of concern to them. I had not heard them mention that before. Well, it turns out that Bakersfield, California, has one of the highest crime rates in America, recently described as one of the top 10 deadliest cities in America for its size, and its crime rate is higher than that of Washington, D.C. However, we are going to take this opportunity to kick around the people of Washington, D.C. Why? Because they are vulnerable, because they don't have voting representation in the House, and they have no voting representation or voice in the U.S. Senate. That is a scandal from the standpoint of democracy. Instead of trying to solve that problem, my colleagues, instead, want to use the people of Washington, D.C., as a whipping post, as a pinata, something to kick around. I just think that that is outrageous, and it is wrong. On January 6, when we were attacked at the Capitol and in this Chamber, there were hundreds of residents of Washington, D.C., who work for the Capitol Police, who work for the Metropolitan Police Department, who work for other police forces who came here to defend us. They came to defend the Congress that they are excluded from. You talk about patriotism, that is patriotism. These people have a real grievance, a valid grievance, not an imaginary, fake, counterfeit grievance like a Presidential election which they still claim Donald Trump won, even though their arguments were rejected in more than 60 Federal and State courts. Trump lost that election by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college. I am glad they are nodding over on that side of the aisle because these facts are indisputable, yet, still, they indulge the follies and the fantasies and the pathologies of Donald Trump. That is what they do instead. They try to kick around the people of Washington, D.C., who defended us as patriots on that day. There are veterans in Washington, D.C., and we will submit these for the Record, who have demanded their voting rights and demanded admission as a State. Yet, they dare to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about what to do with their democratic rights. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia has just made a very powerful point, which is that on a whole range of offenses under the newly revised D.C. act that they want to overthrow, the criminal law is tougher in Washington, D.C., than it is in the distinguished chairman's home State of Kentucky. On carjacking, on first degree murder, on involuntary manslaughter, the people of D.C. have chosen tougher penalties, but the gentlewoman didn't arrive to denounce Kentucky as soft on crime or weak on crime and say the whole United States Congress has to turn itself into a superlegislature for Kentucky and strike their laws down. That is up to the people of Kentucky. They don't even have a carjacking statute. You have to use armed robbery there, which gets you up to 20 years in prison. In the District of Columbia, they have a specific carjacking statute that could get you 24 years in prison. That is the beauty of the Federal system, which I thought our colleagues supported, the idea that people decide at the local level whether they want tougher laws, as in the District of Columbia, or weaker laws, as in Kentucky. That is up to the people of the States to go offense by offense. I am afraid that my friend and colleague, Ms. Norton, is taking them a bit too seriously because they are not really interested in scrutinizing the actual criminal justice policy. They just want to kick the people of Washington, D.C., around. They want to lord it over them. We have President Biden here this week inviting both parties to work together for a continued acceleration of this great economic rebound we are in with 12 million new jobs, with us finally addressing climate change, with us finally getting prescription drug benefits to the people of America. He invited us to participate in a bipartisan national renewal, and what does the majority come back with? They want 535 Members of the United States Congress to act like a super-city council lording over the people of Washington, D.C. It is unjust and unfair to the people of Washington, and it is beneath our dignity as a democratic Congress to be acting in this way. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. This legislation promises to be the first of many. I think tomorrow criminal justice reform comes up. I know that the MAGA wing of the Republican Party doesn't like Medicaid-funded abortions in Washington, D.C. They don't like the stricter gun safety laws that the people of Washington, D.C., have passed. They don't like their progressive legislation protective of the LGBTQ community and so on. We are headed now for a mini culture war between the dominant MAGA wing of the Republican Conference today and the people of the District of Columbia, who find themselves in an odd situation because they want to be admitted to the Union the way 37 States have been admitted to the Union after the original 13 were. That means, by the way, that three-quarters of the States, nearly 75 percent of the States, came in after the original 13. They appealed to Congress to use our powers under Article IV of the Constitution to admit new States. They had exercised their powers under the First Amendment, under the Ninth Amendment, and under the 10th Amendment to organize a new statehood constitution and to petition for admission to the Union. Our muscle memory is weak here because it hasn't happened since Hawaii and Alaska, but Thomas Jefferson thought that this was the destiny of communities under the United States of America. We would not be a colonial power that would continue to lord over people perpetually. On the contrary, when he talked about the Northwest Ordinance, he said as sufficient population formed and as commitment to democratic principles were realized, these new communities would be admitted as States. I think, as a matter of basic civic respect and self-respect, we owe the people of Washington our attention when they are asking for admission to the Union. These are people who pay more per capita in Federal taxes than anybody in the country, more in hard dollars, I believe, than the people of 18 or 20 States. They have served in every war that America has ever fought. They are subject to the military draft. It is just that when Eleanor Holmes Norton, the distinguished professor of constitutional law from Georgetown University, comes to this floor, she comes as a nonvoting Delegate. There is no representation and no voice over in the Senate. That is an offense to basic democratic principles that we teach children in second grade. We should be passing statehood again in the 118th Congress the way we passed it in the 117th, the way we passed it in the 116th, and we should get the Senate to focus on it. Short of that, the very last thing we should be doing is rolling back the limited rights the people of Washington have to exercise home rule powers. Mr. Speaker, I oppose this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I should say that none of those jurisdictions have been overrun with fentanyl or illegal aliens. All of those jurisdictions are functioning democratic self-governmental units, just as the jurisdictions in New York and Colorado that had the same practice were. This really isn't about noncitizen voting, Mr. Speaker. This is about democratic self-government and allowing local jurisdictions to make home rule decisions for themselves because this isn't the end of it. It is just the beginning. Tomorrow, I think we are going to be considering a resolution of disapproval for the District of Columbia's criminal justice reform that they have engaged in over the last 9 or 10 years involving Federal judges, local judges, council members, the D.C. Bar, and so on. We didn't know anything about that. We didn't have a hearing. Yet, someone is going to pick something out. What the good chairman of our committee talked about in the Rules Committee was a carjacking law where I guess the minimum sentence changed. Well, we looked up Kentucky. Kentucky doesn't even have a carjacking law. You would have to use armed robbery, which can only get you 20 years. The District of Columbia would treat carjacking with up to a 24-year sentence. These are the kinds of measurements we are going to have to go through with everybody's State and everybody's jurisdiction if we are really going to turn ourselves into the super-D.C. Council and try to get to know the people of Washington and what their concerns are and what they are into. The whole reason we went to home rule in 1973 was so that Congress could spend its time on national policy issues, the kind that President Biden was talking about last night. We just added 12 million new jobs to the American economy. We passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan to invest in the ports, airports, bridges, roads, and highways all across America, not just in the District of Columbia, no insult intended. That is a very tiny part of the jurisdiction of Congress, and they want to turn us basically into an appellate legislative division over the District of Columbia. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado boasts that her State is number one in auto thefts, number one in bank robberies, and number two in fentanyl, as I understand it. It sounds like they have got their hands full with their own problems, and I don't know that they should be spending their time dictating to the people of Washington, D.C., what their voting rights policy is going to be. Now both the gentlewoman from Colorado and the gentleman from New York invite the question of would it actually be administratively possible for a jurisdiction to have two separate voting lists for those who are eligible to vote just in local elections and those who are eligible to vote in both local and Federal elections? Well, that is a great question that you could have posed at a hearing within the Oversight Committee if we had one, but we didn't have it. I actually happen to have researched this question, and there are a number of jurisdictions around the country which permit noncitizen voting at the local level, and they have one list for that. If you are a noncitizen when you enter, your name is checked off that list, and you get one ballot which is just for your school board elections and the local elections. Then if you are a citizen, you get a complete ballot that includes local, State, and Federal elections, so there actually is an answer, and it is working in multiple jurisdictions around the country, including several in my home State of Maryland. I think the same thing used to be able to work in New York State as well; so that is something that would be easily researchable, and it is something also that we could have answered if we had followed regular order and actually had so much as one hearing on this subject before deciding to jump in like King Kong and squash the people of Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, (Ms. Norton), the distinguished nonvoting Delegate.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to respond to the gentleman before he goes, perhaps. When I said that they were returning to their worst possible instincts, that was actually a bipartisan comment because in the old days it was Democrats, racist Dixiecrats on the House District Committee who lorded over the District of Columbia and denied the people of Washington their rights. They are returning us to those days where Congress will micromanage the affairs of Washington, D.C., and not allow the people their own self-government. He said you don't need to be a Republican or a Democrat to understand the issue. It would actually help to know your Abraham Lincoln because, of course, Lincoln was a major defender of noncitizen voting to the extent you guys want to act like a super D.C. Council and get into the merits of it. In fact, when he was elected, his Southern opponents said he was elected on the strength of the noncitizen vote in New York, as a matter of fact, and in Illinois and other States where they had so-called declarant alien suffrage, which means if you are on the pathway to citizenship you are allowed to vote, which is a policy that makes a lot of sense, but different jurisdictions have different policies according to home rule and self-government. When Lincoln was here, his major legislative initiative, interestingly enough, was to abolish the slave traffic in the District of Columbia because he felt that freedom and democracy should obtain in the Nation's Capital. That is something that our colleagues should also think about in terms of defining an agenda of their party. I know they are careening from this issue to that issue, but if you are thinking about D.C., think about what Abraham Lincoln did. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining?