D.C. Appropriations Bill Delayed, Obama Reiterates Support for D.C. Voting Rights and Home Rule

Press Release

The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced today that the Fiscal Year 2012 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which contains the D.C. Appropriations bill, is unlikely to go to the House floor this month, as had been expected, apparently because of a jurisdictional dispute between two committees over federal tax policy. The bill will now go to the floor with the President's strong words in defense of D.C. home rule last night during a one-on-one interview with Jim Vance on News4. The Congresswoman has spoken on the House floor each of the last four days to warn Members of Congress that an expanded national coalition of 100 organizations, with millions of members, is working in every district and state to protect D.C. home rule, and that Members' constituents will hold them accountable if they interfere in the District's local affairs. The Fiscal Year 2012 D.C. Appropriations bill was introduced with a rider already in it that would prohibit the District from spending its local funds on abortions for low-income women, but protest actions by D.C. residents and officials, and the work of the coalition, helped to prevent any new riders from being added by the Appropriations Committee.

"D.C. residents and officials, together with a strong, expanded coalition, already have had a positive effect following the 2011 anti-home-rule budget deal," Norton said. "But, there is no substitute for the President's increasingly vocal support for D.C. home rule." She also cited the Statement of Administration Policy on the appropriations bill, which said that the D.C. abortion rider "undermines the principle of states' rights and of D.C. home rule." Yesterday, the President, in the interview with NBC4, said, "I'm fully supportive of voting rights for D.C. citizens. I'm fully supportive of home rule. I'm fully supportive of making sure that the Washington, D.C. government has its own budget authority. I'm supportive of folks in D.C. being treated like people everywhere else in the country -- in Maryland or Virginia. We have not gotten a lot of support from the other side on that issue. But I will continue to stand by those in D.C. who believe that they should not be paying taxes like everybody else and serving in the military like everybody else and doing everything that is expected of citizens, and yet not have the same voting rights as everybody else in America."

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