Waiving points of order against the conference report to accompany the bill (H.R. 4850) making appropriations for the government of the District of Columbia and other activities chargeable in whole or in part against the revenues of said District for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, for yielding me this time. I begin with special thanks to the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentleman from Pennsylvania, if they will allow me to call them the engineers who have wrought this miracle. For those of us in the District of Columbia, it seems nothing short of that. I call them the engineers because they drove the train straight to the station with no unnecessary stops along the way. For the residents of the District of Columbia whose appropriation is now out, that has very special meaning.

I am also grateful to the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), who I believe is term-limited and to the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), because throughout their tenure on the committee, leading the committee, they have always understood that if the D.C. appropriation had to be here at all, it ought to be up and out. I appreciate their leadership throughout.

I cannot say enough about the leadership of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah). Their leadership shines on the face of this conference report. They must be exceedingly proud that there are only two conference reports out, ready for the President's signature, and that, except for Defense, D.C. is the only one. We are very grateful that D.C. is one of those two. We are particularly grateful because these two leaders have understood that these are Federal funds that are very different from other Federal funds, that these are Federal funds for a city and not a Federal agency, and, therefore, when the funds of a city are held up, untold damage is done to the management of that city.

The Congress has been critical of the management of the District of Columbia over the years without understanding the role the Congress has played in those management difficulties.

Try running a big city when their appropriation is here 3, 4, 5 months later than in their own State or city and perhaps they will get an understanding of why, for the District, this has meant management disarray, in part its fault, no doubt, but certainly with the degree of responsibility in the Congress itself, with disarray from bills for school books that could not be paid so books would not come, or could not be delivered, to vital programs that could not be started.

This year something very important happened, and it is the second year that it has happened. The appropriators were able to allow D.C. to spend its own money on time. This is the rest of the money. This is the Federal money. This is the nontaxpayer-raised money. That D.C. was able to begin October 1 spending its own money is virtually unheard of, at least since the majority took control, and it is profoundly appreciated by the residents of the District of Columbia. Spending our own money, not at last year's levels, but at the approved levels of the Committee on Appropriations has made a world of difference already.

I must say that I think that the District deserves this treatment and respect. It deserves it with seven balanced budgets and surpluses. It deserves it because the city that 8 years ago had an investment bond rating that was below investment grade now has an A rating by all three agencies.

One of the reasons that it has not been able to get above A, as it strives to do, is because of the congressional process. The investment agencies have been very clear that the District's budget having to come here at all imports uncertainty, and that uncertainty has to be reflected in the interest that the District of Columbia taxpayers pay. Therefore, anything of the kind we have seen this year, where our appropriation gets out on time, first and foremost comes to the attention of the investment agencies. And that means that taxpayer- raised money in the District of Columbia can go for the real necessities of the District of Columbia instead of for increased interest.

We have the highest debt service. All of this is wound up in the unique structural difference between the District and other States and localities.

The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) have recognized that to the extent that they could mitigate the burden that the congressional process brings to the District budget both in time and in extra cost, that it was their choice to try to do so. And I appreciate that they have done exactly that.

Few States can say that they ran 7 straight years of surpluses and balanced budgets. These were years of some hardship for States. The District of Columbia was in the same economy and in some sense worse, because of 9/11, because our largest industry, the tourist industry, was seriously affected, and yet those surpluses have come. The reason for that is, of course, extraordinary prudence. For that prudence it seems to me we all would want to commend the Council of the District of Columbia and the Mayor of the District of Columbia. They have had the highest reserve fund, and I appreciate and they appreciate that there have been small reductions that I think take into account the prudence with which they have run the city.

This appropriation process, rounding it out, completing it, was necessary because the Federal funds for State functions particularly are in this bill. And these are State functions, prisons, courts that no city carries. The Revitalization Act, therefore, takes up the cost of those State functions, and those State functions are there, and we are very grateful for that. Other non-D.C. funds, Federal funds, are here.

I am grateful that the Public Safety Reimbursement Act, the act I introduced some years ago, is now regularly funded in the President's budget. It is fully funded here. It reimburses the District for national events, everything from President Reagan's funeral to the huge Choice March here. All that expense used to fall to the residents of the District of Columbia, making it very difficult for the city to get toward the balance and the surpluses that it now insists upon.

I am grateful for the increase in the Tuition Access Act. Not every Member understands why the Federal Government should be funding this bill. I can understand their confusion. But the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) worked so closely with us. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), who was the lead sponsor of this bill with me, worked on this bill 5 years ago because the District of Columbia has no State university system the way every other Member here does.

All this bill does is put the District in the same position that other Members are in by allowing our residents to go to State colleges, State university systems, and elsewhere. And look what

it has done. In a region where one needs a college education to get any kind of decent job, we now have a 30 percent increase in young people going to college.

Most critical and what we have tried to do, the authorizers and the appropriators, is to put the District in the same position that any other city would be in. For us it means that taxpayers do not move out of the District when the children get to be 15, 16, and 17, because they can walk across the line into a region and get a low in-State tuition.

So this bill, besides its equity function, has been critical to keeping taxpayers in the District of Columbia. The large return to the Federal dollar is unspoken, but it cannot be denied.

I am grateful to the chairman. I am grateful to the ranking member, and I am grateful to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) that there were no riders on this bill. That is one of the reasons this bill was always last out, because we have to fight those riders, and that simply elongates, stretches out the time that this bill is on the floor.

I have seen this bill on the floor 8 and 10 hours. This is the smallest bill. This bill is irrelevant to every Member except me. With their eye focused on the prize, our appropriation, let us get it up and out; the appropriators have done their job to a fare-thee-well.

I regret that there are still riders on this bill that will not be on the bills in the Members' States, the rider that forbids us to pay using our local funds for abortions for poor women. That rider is perhaps always going to be controversial.

But the Senate removed two riders: the needle exchange rider, which would allow us to fund the exchange of dirty for clean needles and reduce the HIV/AIDS rate; and the rider, the shameless rider, that keeps us from lobbying for our own rights. Those, the Senate said, also should be eliminated from this bill. The House was not able to do so.

Finally, if I could once again thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Chairman Frelinghuysen) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for the extraordinary job that they have done on this bill. Let me say that in a real sense, what they have done on this bill forecasts, is a prologue of what would happen if the budget autonomy bill that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) and I have pending before this House passes.

We think that there is a very decent chance of its passing in the session when we come back. It would automatically release our Federal funds, as my colleagues have had to do by act of the Committee on Appropriations. So they have, I think, demonstrated, by the way in which they have run the District of Columbia Subcommittee, something far larger; and that is how the House should move, to generally smooth the operation of the D.C. budget out of this House and into the hands of the people who raise the money, the people of the District of Columbia. They have my gratitude.

I know I expressed the gratitude of our elected officials in the District of Columbia and also of our residents, who have watched this bill this time pass through this House with what for us seems like lightning speed. It is the speed on the wings of the two leaders of our appropriation, and they have our thanks once again.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I thank the gentleman for his graciousness in respecting the independence of the people of the District of Columbia, citizens of the United States entitled to the same rights that all other Americans have.

I appreciate that the Committee on Rules, its chairman, its ranking member, Members who come forward today with this bill, have brought forward a conference report and a rule that enables the District of Columbia to get its own money out, and the money that is due it from the Federal Government, on time.

I think that we should be apologizing to the American people that, at a time when all but two of our appropriations are not out, as we get ready to go home, we are having to spend time on the budget of a local jurisdiction. It must be hard to make people back home understand what we are doing, working on the taxpayer-raised budget of the District of Columbia and its Federal funds, rather than on the large Federal appropriations that await conference reports and the President's signature.

At the same time, I am grateful for the timeliness of this conference report. Of the 13 appropriations bills, only two, Defense and D.C., will be signed by the President when we leave to go home at the end of this week. In a real sense, this turns on its head the practice in recent years and, certainly, since the Republican majority has been in control.

D.C., irrelevant, literally irrelevant, to Members of the House and Senate, because almost all of the money is raised by our own local residents and taxpayers, D.C., the smallest, has traditionally been the most troublesome of the appropriations; the last out, the appropriation that caused more Members to come to the floor with amendments. Amendments that had to do with the District of Columbia? Absolutely not. Amendments that were of special interest to that Member but of no relevance to the District of Columbia.

The opposite has been the case this year, and it is because of the leadership of the appropriators and of the authorizers. There are no new riders. Three were threatened, but the appropriators and the authorizers worked together so that those riders did not come forward to be voted on on this floor. It is not that these Members are omnipotent, it is that, when leaders exercise leadership and discourage extraneous material, particularly on the appropriation of a local jurisdiction, an independent jurisdiction, their leadership can and this year has proved to be critical.

At the same time, I must take strong exception to the riders that remain; not new riders, but riders that remain. They are particularly inexcusable.

First, the needle-exchange rider, which makes D.C. alone in the United States of America. Hundreds of jurisdictions use their own money to pay for the exchange of dirty needles for clean needles, in accordance with all of the scientific evidence, and, I may say, all of the great scientific organizations, official and private, that say you save lives when you do not allow dirty needles to be passed around so that you spread HIV-AIDS.

So I should thank the Congress of the United States in the name of the people of the District of Columbia that, because of the needle- exchange admonition and bar in our appropriation, we have the highest HIV-AIDS rate in the country.

The interference with needle exchange, of course, is very different from other interference, because it costs lives. It is why we have so many men, women and children who otherwise would not be anywhere close to the AIDS epidemic with AIDS today. That calamity is laid at the feet of this Congress and essentially at the feet of this House, because the Senate asked that the District be able to spend its own local money for needle exchange. It was the House that refused to let the conference report come forward if, in fact, that was included.

There are, of course, other old riders in this bill. The old rider that says all the rest of you in the United States of America can spend your money for abortions for poor women, but not the residents of the District of Columbia. They are American citizens, but we are not about to treat them as first-class citizens. Remember, they are second-class citizens. So they can't spend their own money for abortions for their own poor women.

Perhaps as a matter of ordinary democracy, the most shameful rider says that the District can't spend its own money to lobby for its own rights. This House, not the Senate, the Senate has said, we are not on that boat, let them spend their own money if they want to spend their own money to get full and equal rights in the House and in the Senate, and we think that is their right and prerogative as Americans, but the House said, ``Oh, no, that is not for the District. In my district, we better be able to spend our own money to lobby for anything we want to. Not in the Nation's Capital.''

This is a time of war, this is a time of great and urgent matters in our country. This is not the time when we ought to be considering this appropriation at all. At the same time, I am grateful that, if it had to be here, that before we went home this appropriation was out of Congress; that I am not here in November, that I am not here in December, trying to get my own money out of this Congress.

In past years, the House has been critical of the management of the District of Columbia without conceding that not allowing the District to spend its own money on time has wrapped the District in knots as it tries to balance on last year's budget while waiting for the Congress to release its own money.

The appropriators, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), our authorizer, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), have gone very far in helping us to meet this burden. I appreciate that the Committee on Rules has taken taking us to the next step and making us one of two appropriations to clear the Congress before we clear out of here.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 822, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 4850) making appropriations for the government of the District of Columbia and other activities chargeable in whole or in part against the revenues of said District for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the conference report to accompany the bill, H.R. 4850, and that I may include tabular material on the same.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I bring before you today the fiscal year 2005 District of Columbia appropriations bill. First, Mr. Speaker, let me extend my particular thanks to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for all his help and wise counsel and hard work and dedication to this city and to moving this bill forward in such an expeditious manner. He has been a pleasure to work with. May I also thank the other members of my committee on both sides of the aisle for their keen interest in this bill. I thank Chairman Young for his guidance and support, and especially the staff. No bill moves without the dedication of a truly dedicated staff: Joel Kaplan, our subcommittee clerk on the majority side; Clelia Alvarado who works with him; Kathy Rowan who works with Joel Kaplan; Nancy Fox, my chief of staff. And on the minority side Martha Foley, the minority clerk, and working with her, Michelle Anderson-Lee who is dedicated as chief of staff to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Mr. Speaker, this bill totals $8.3 billion in local funds, $7.2 billion of which are in operating funds and $1.1 billion in capital outlay funds, and $560 million for Federal payments to various District programs and projects. There is much to be proud of in this bill. I believe it reflects Congress's continuing commitment to helping our Nation's Capital. This is where we all work and many of us live.

Of the $560 million provided for Federal payments to various programs and projects in the District, $409 million is allocated for the District of Columbia courts, public defender services, and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. These are District functions that the Federal Government assumed responsibility for in the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997.

The remaining $151 million are for programs and projects that directly benefit the District. They include many city priorities sought by Mayor Williams, the city council, city residents and supported by Members of Congress and our committee.

They include $25.6 million for the very popular tuition assistance program for District college-bound students, $15 million to reimburse the District for added emergency planning and security costs related to the presence of the Federal Government in this city, $40 million for the three-prong school choice program. This is a program which helps more school children and gives more parents in this city choices about their child's education. $6 million to complete the construction of the new unified communications center, badly needed and sought by the city.

More money for the Anacostia waterfront initiative; and more dollars for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, which in fact improves the cleanliness of the Anacostia River. $6 million for a new public school library initiative. Many school libraries are lacking books and computers that work. $5 million to improve foster care in the District. More money for transportation assistance and for family literacy. And $8 million for a new bioterrorism and forensics laboratory, a long-sought facility which will expedite a lot of critical work.

These are all initiatives we can be proud to support. In particular, I want to take a minute just to highlight the continuing efforts at helping the children of the District. To help the children of the District, the bill includes $5 million for the recently established foster care improvement program; $1 million, as I said earlier, for the family literacy program; $6 million for a new library learning center initiative to be matched by the District; and $40 million for the school improvement program.

Mr. Speaker, in summary, the fiscal year 2005 District of Columbia appropriations bill is fiscally responsible, balanced and deserves bipartisan support. I am proud of our work together this year to expedite this bill so that the city can spend its own resources and better use ours.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for his support.

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Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me return the compliment to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for his dedication and knowledge of the District's needs and priorities. He has been a great coworker with me on behalf of all the members of the committee, a keen interest in bettering the lives of the citizens of this city. And both of us are so proud of the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton). We appreciate her pats on the back to us.

This is a great city. We are trying to make it better. I thank her for her strong advocacy as we go about our work trying to get this bill out and the money to the city, their money as well as Federal money, because we know it will be well spent.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) for yielding me the customary time.

Mr. Speaker, this rule is typical of that for most conference reports, and I will not oppose it.

Mr. Speaker, there is no perfect legislation and certainly not when it comes to funding matters. The underlying conference report providing appropriations for the District of Columbia in fiscal year 2005 includes a variety of provisions that are controversial and detrimental to the District's residents and, frankly, the country as a whole.

I do not have to tell my colleagues about the uniqueness of the District of Columbia as a Federal city. It is the only place in the Nation where constitutionally Congress can exercise micromanagement at the highest and lowest of levels.

Taking into consideration the fact that the District of Columbia has no voting representation in Congress, we should be mindful of this privileged duty and careful not to put our parochial agendas on the table when considering this conference report.

As the gentleman from Georgia mentioned, the report approves the expenditure of a total of $8.3 billion in local funds for the District and directly appropriates $560 million for various District programs and projects. It includes $25.6 million for a tuition assistance program for college-bound students, $3 million for improvements to the Anacostia waterfront area, $6 million for a new public school library initiative, and $5 million to improve foster care in the District.

While there are many quality programs funded by the conference report, such as the ones I just mentioned, the report also includes legislative riders that are a smorgasbord of controversy. The report prohibits the use of funds for abortions, registering same-sex couples, and for the distribution of clean needles and syringes. None of these prohibitions were sought by the District, and they represent nothing more than the ideological impositions of the majority.

Furthermore, deep down inside the conference report is what the majority has dubbed a three-pronged school choice program. This program is heralded by school voucher advocates as a way to improve academic performance while promoting school choice. The reality is, however, the approach is a direct cut in Congress' funding commitment to the District's public schools.

That, Mr. Speaker, is an embarrassment to this institution.

Our education system will never improve if we continue to divert our attention away from improving public schools, the schools that are free of cost and guaranteed to every child in America. Our public schools will never improve if we continue to underfund the No Child Left Behind Act. If the majority wants to point fingers at who is to fault for failures in our education system, then it ought to stop pointing fingers at the District of Columbia and start pointing them at all of our districts that have failing schools.

In less than 3 years after its passage, the No Child Left Behind Act has been underfunded by President Bush and Congressional Republicans by more than $27 billion. Let me repeat that. In less than 3 years after its passage, the No Child Left Behind Act has been underfunded by President Bush and Congressional Republicans by more than $27 billion.

If we want to have a real discussion about education, then let's have one. But let us be honest with the American people about what we are doing to the entire Nation's education system. Let us start telling the American people the truth and stop using the District as a petri dish of ideological shortcomings when considering the needs and lives of the residents of the Nation's Capital.

It is high time that we as lawmakers in this great body stop playing political chess games with our responsibility to this process. We should allow the people of Washington, D.C., to govern themselves, and they should have a voting privilege in the House of Representatives.

Funding for the education of the Nation's children and overall healthy well-being of its citizens should be our primary focus and goal. The D.C. appropriations bill is not the stage to act out our experimental projects that will not necessarily prove beneficial in the end.

We must be mindful of the District's citizens that we have been given charge over. They are silenced in this process by the Constitution, and we must be responsible in our actions on their behalf.

I urge my colleagues to consider this responsibility when voting on the underlying conference report.

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to yield 7 minutes to my good friend, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), the non-voting Delegate that should be voting like all of us, especially on this subject, who on behalf of this community has pursued outstanding legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to thank the majority chairman of this committee. He has done extraordinary work in bringing to the floor a bill that has, I think, almost unanimous support in this House, not because it is a perfect bill but because it has been a perfect process, that is, a process that has been inclusive and that has been driven by the determined and public-spirited leadership of the chairman.

There are initiatives like the $6 million school library initiative and other initiatives that have the personal trademark of the chairman to try to improve the life chances of young people in this District. There are others that I will refer to momentarily.

I just want to thank the chairman for his extraordinary leadership and a process that has been perfect in terms of making sure that all of the issues that are important here in the District have been listened to and responded to. There has been a complete hearing process. I would like to thank the staff both on the Democratic side and on the majority side. Joel Kaplan has led the committee's work. Martha Foley. I would like to thank, obviously, Michelle Anderson on my staff and Rob Nabors for his excellent leadership and guidance as we have moved through this on the minority appropriations staff.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia for her comments and her insight and assistance as we move through.

Let me conclude my remarks, and I will be prepared to yield back the balance of my time. But let me just state, there is a lot that I could talk about that is in this bill in terms of help and assistance and innovation and creativity, but I think that a lot has already been said about the advances in the District's fiscal health and a lot of work that has been done.

I want to highlight just the college assistance program, the resident tuition program, which I was one of the original cosponsors of with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) and the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) some 5 years ago. It is an amazing program. It has been very successful.

And I want to return to what I was saying about the chairman of this committee. He has visited schools and committees, been out in neighborhoods and at the waterfront in the District. He has been active and aggressive in terms of trying to have the insight necessary to make some of the decisions that have to be made in this process; and I want to publicly thank him for his leadership on the subcommittee. It has been a pleasure to work with him this year on this process.

And I want to thank, again, the staff.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.