Statement of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton at Press Conference with Mayor Vincent Gray & National Organizations

Statement

"D.C. residents and elected officials are fortunate that we have not been alone in our struggle to maintain our independence as a local jurisdiction during repeated congressional attempts to override our local laws and forbid expenditures of local funds as directed by our citizens and the elected officials accountable to them. Over the years, many have come to our aid, especially those that are here today -- DC Vote, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, AIDS United, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Abortion Federation, the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, the Black Women's Health Imperative, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the Center for American Progress, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

"These allies have been a critical part of our resistance to the autocratic reversal of the local laws of the District of Columbia. They have helped us not only because of their commitment to the bedrock federalism principle that local control means freedom from federal interference in local matters, particularly local taxpayer expenditures. Instead of writing off the District as just one jurisdiction whose local laws do not affect others, they have understood that these attacks on our city take direct aim at them because the issues our allies stand for and stand up for in the public square have been strongly embraced in its laws by the District of Columbia. We thank our allies for recognizing that the District is, for our opponents, no more than a vehicle they have chosen to express their views while denying us the same rights through our local laws. By working together, we have shown our opponents that we are not mere prey for schoolyard bullies who gang up on the District, which does not even have a vote on the House floor with which to defend itself. What we have had, however, and will have again, on our side is an American majority for basic fairness, alerted by our allies.

"The representatives of the organizations who will speak here today have assisted us since we were able to remove all anti-home-rule attachments from the annual D.C. appropriations bill in the 111th Congress and to keep all of them, except one, the abortion amendment, from returning. Since then, instead of fighting to remove attachments, a coalition of 100 organizations has fought successfully to keep anti-democratic amendments from being attached in the first place. They have notified House and Senate appropriators that if anti-home-rule amendments were attached to the D.C. appropriations bill, organizations throughout the country would alert their members in the appropriators' districts that their member of Congress was spending his or her time in Washington trying to intervene in the local affairs of the District of Columbia instead of attending to the urgent needs of his or her district and the nation. In the process of successfully protecting the District, our allies have demonstrated that millions of Americans share their preference and ours on the issues of reproductive choice, gun safety, and HIV/AIDS prevention.

"The success of our allies that have taken the offensive is noteworthy. Although we still are fighting the rider that annually bars the city from using its local funds for abortions for low-income women, we have been able, with the help of our allies, to defeat even more serious incursions into our local affairs. With extraordinary help from pro-choice organizations, neither the stand-alone bill to permanently bar the city from funding reproductive choice for low-income women, going well beyond the annual abortion rider, nor the stand-alone bill to bar abortions only in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks, in defiance of Roe v. Wade, have become law. Other attacks have also been turned back -- a resolution expressing the Sense of Congress that active duty military personnel should be exempt from D.C. gun safety laws, but not those of any other jurisdiction, and in this Congress, a resolution expressing the Sense of the Senate that Congress should pass legislation banning abortions after 20 weeks in the District of Columbia, but in no other jurisdiction.

"The millions of Americans who agree with us on the issues of reproductive choice, gun safety, and HIV/AIDS prevention are well-represented here today. But, millions more who do not share our views on one or more of these issues nevertheless stand with us on the overriding principle of local control of local affairs and that local spending remains local.

"We had thought we would find allies among Republicans on the principle that in this country we revere local control more than federal power. To its credit, Congress honored this most basic principle of federalism when it applied it also to the citizens of the nation's capital in the Home Rule Act of 1973. Congress recognized that although Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution placed the District under congressional jurisdiction, basic principles of democracy and local control meant Congress must delegate local governing authority to the American citizens who live in the nation's capital. This great 20th-century reform to American democracy had special meaning because it was directly influenced by the civil rights movement at a time when the nation was intent on empowering Americans who had been exceptions to democracy for all. In the Home Rule Act, Congress laid out some exceptions to self-governance by the District of Columbia, such as a prohibition on the District taxing federal government property. No one who believes in the federalism of our democratic republic can interpret such exceptions to excuse intervention into local government because of ideological differences on matters left to local residents everywhere else in the nation.

"We have met the unprincipled targeting of our laws and taxpayer expenditures with action from citizens across the country. With the help of our allies who speak out with us today, we serve notice that every single attempt to deny the citizens of the nation's capital the full and equal rights enjoyed by other Americans will be met with fierce resistance until the citizens of the nation's capital enjoy equal treatment and equal respect."

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