Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in strong opposition to this amendment interfering in the local affairs of the District of Columbia.

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, you wouldn't know it from hearing the Member on the other side speak, but in 1973, Congress passed the bipartisan District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which created a locally elected government. According to the Home Rule Act, a central purpose of the act was to ``relieve Congress of the burden of legislating upon essentially local District matters.''

In his signing statement of the Home Rule Act, President Nixon wrote, ``It will give the people of the District of Columbia the right . . . to govern themselves in local affairs. . . . `'

Yet the bill before us would either repeal or block the District of Columbia from carrying out or enacting five local laws.

I filed amendments to strike all of these undemocratic riders, but the Rules Committee has blocked me from offering any of them on the floor, even though they all complied with House rules. I have gotten some of these amendments off in the past, and I intend to do so again, because this matter has to go to the Senate as well, Mr. Chairman.

Adding insult to injury, the Rules Committee allowed this and one other undemocratic amendment to be offered.

Republicans were not satisfied with sabotaging the Affordable Care Act by, among other things, reducing the penalty for failure to comply with the individual responsibility requirement to $0 in the recently enacted GOP tax scam. The ACA remains standing and popular, nevertheless, throughout the country.

Mr. Palmer has moved to sabotage, therefore, the District of Columbia's local health insurance market, too, and deny the 700,000 Federal taxpaying Americans who live in the District of Columbia access to quality, affordable health insurance coverage.

This antidemocratic healthcare amendment is offered by Mr. Palmer of Alabama, who doesn't live in and is not responsible to the people of the District of Columbia, but answers to another district. I doubt that Representative Palmer's constituents want him taking time from their business to meddle in the business of another Member's district.

This amendment would prohibit the District from spending its own local funds, consisting solely of local taxes and fees, to carry out a local District of Columbia bill that requires individuals to maintain health coverage or to pay a penalty for failure to do so.

I remind the House that three States have adopted this same approach.

In response to Republican efforts to sabotage the ACA, the District of Columbia, like States across the country, decided to do what they could and, in our case, convened a working group that consisted of businesses, providers, consumers, and insurers on how to preserve quality, affordable coverage locally.

In February, the working group unanimously recommended creating a local individual responsibility requirement--and I thought the other side was all about localism--and the District of Columbia Health Benefit Exchange Authority Executive Board unanimously supported the recommendation.

The District of Columbia Mayor then included an individual responsibility of requirement in her budget, and the D.C. Council debated and unanimously passed the Health Insurance Requirement Amendment Act of 2018, as required by Congress. Thus, D.C. will join three States in requiring residents to maintain health insurance coverage, and more States are considering doing the very same thing.

I urge Members to vote ``no'' on this undemocratic, offensive, and harmful amendment that would reduce enrollment in the D.C. individual insurance market by 15 percent, and increase premiums. I ask the gentleman to stay out of the business of my district.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in strong opposition to yet another amendment that interferes with another Member's district, indicating that there is more than one Member in this body that does not have enough to do at home.

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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