As House Republicans have made clear in recent days that restricting the District of Columbia's ability to use local funds for abortion-related services is part of their proposal to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, Congressman José E. Serrano today reiterated that including such a provision was both unfair and legislatively inappropriate.
"I fail to see how restricting the District from spending locally-derived revenue on abortion has anything to do with the current fight over government-wide spending levels," said Serrano. "I believe we are seeing a return to the bad old days where, in order to look strong on a particular issue, Congress would impose a restriction on DC's local funds, without doing anything similar for any other community in the nation. This is an unjust and inappropriate intrusion of the Congress into the local affairs of this City.
"We just spent four years undoing a series of these restrictions that remained from previous Congresses. During those years we reached a fragile understanding within the House and Senate that it was not our place to micromanage DC's affairs. With the new House Majority, however, it has been made abundantly clear that they no longer are willing to abide by that understanding. That is a sad statement and I believe it reflects poorly on the legislative and policy priorities of the new House Majority.
"I hope that the Senate Democrats will not allow this, or other DC-only provisions, to become part of any agreement or future bill. DC's local policies should be left to DC and not to the whims of a federal legislature. Our country has enough serious issues to worry about; let's agree to leave DC alone."