Norton Introduces Three Amendments to the Continuing Resolution to Preserve D.C. Home Rule

Press Release

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today will introduce three amendments to remove the anti-home-rule provisions the Republicans have added to the fiscal year 2011 full-year continuing resolution (CR). The CR provisions, released Friday night, seek to prohibit the District from spending its local taxpayer-raised funds on needle exchange programs and on abortions for low-income women, as well as to re-impose the D.C. private school voucher program. Norton's amendments would remove the needle exchange and abortion prohibition, and would redirect the funds to admit new voucher students to the District's home-rule public charter schools.

Norton said that the CR's needle exchange provision "is particularly cruel," apart from the home-rule violation, because it would cost lives and spread HIV, as it did for the 10 years before she got the needle exchange prohibition removed in fiscal year 2008. The abortion funding prohibition was also incorporated into a pending anti-choice bill aimed at the nation's women and insurance companies that would federalize the District for the purpose of making permanent the ban on local funds for abortion for the city's low-income women. Last week, a House Judiciary subcommittee denied Norton's request to testify about the D.C. abortion funding ban.

Norton will offer an amendment to the CR to redirect new private school voucher funds to the District's public charter schools, the city's popular home-rule choice for parents seeking an alternative to D.C. public schools. Norton said that Republicans are seeking to override the compromise that ensures that every child currently receiving a private school voucher can remain in the program until graduation. She said that if Republicans want more children in alternative schools, "they must respect the home-rule choice of our parents." She said that, unlike private schools, D.C. public charter schools are fully accountable, and that public charter school students take the same yearly tests to measure student performance in basic subjects as D.C. public school students. Unlike the voucher students, D.C. public charter school students show significantly better test scores than D.C. public school students.

Since the start of the new Congress, the House Republican majority has also stripped D.C. residents of their Committee of the Whole vote, reintroduced a NRA-backed D.C. gun bill, and, in stand-alone bills, are seeking to re-impose private school vouchers and to prohibit the city from using local funds for abortions for low-income residents.

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