Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I certainly thank him for his own hard work and strong support on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in support of H.R. 1124, the bill that will reauthorize the District of Columbia Access Act of 1999 and extend the District of Columbia Tuition Assistance Grant program, which it authorizes, for an additional 5 years, and, of course, to thank the House for a bill that has afforded higher education to many students who would otherwise have not received it. I especially thank Chairman Henry Waxman and Chairman Danny Davis for facilitating early consideration of this noncontroversial bill on suspension. A very special thanks is particularly due to committee ranking member and co- author Tom Davis for his strong and indispensable leadership on this legislation when he was Chair of the full committee and for his continued strong support of DCTAG.

This legislation is already returning unusually large dividends for the Federal investment. DCTAG has increased college attendance of D.C. students by an astonishing 60 percent over 5 years. For the 2005-2006 school year, almost 5,000 students received funding from DCTAG to enroll in 646 universities and colleges in 47 States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Most of these students are the first in their families to attend college. These documented results represent the city's most important progress toward developing a workforce that can meet the increasing education requirements for employment at average wages in the region. Importantly, this legislation has been instrumental in reversing the steady flight of taxpayers from the District of Columbia, many of whom left the District in order to gain access to lower cost State colleges and universities in the region.

DCTAG acts as a proxy and a substitute for a State university system for the District, which has an open admissions State university, the University of the District of Columbia, but, unlike every State, has no unified system of several colleges and universities. UDC, supported entirely by the city and tuitions of students, is the university of choice for students who must get their education in the District and is itself indispensable to the city, and so much so that I used the opportunity provided by this bill to achieve funded historically black college status for the UDC that the city has long sought for its State university because the University of the District of Columbia is one of the oldest Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States. As a result, UDC has received an attractive annual HBCU payment since 1999. However, this bill provides higher education access to young people here equivalent to opportunities available in all the States, rather than only one university, and increases the number of choices necessary to meet today's D.C. student population. Maryland and Virginia, for example, each provide more than 30 different college options to residents. DCTAG provides up to $10,000 annually, which covers State college tuition at most public colleges, or provides up to $2,500 annually to attend private institutions in the city and region.

DCTAG has enjoyed strong bipartisan support since it was created in 1999. The President has shown his confidence in the program by including $35 million for DCTAG in his fiscal year 2008 budget request. The D.C. State Education Office deserves special credit for working diligently and successfully since the bill was enacted to maintain a very solid administration of the program. The District has even moved ahead of the curve to foreclose any future funding shortfalls by engaging in careful planning and calculations, measuring expected demand and costs and has made adjustments in offerings accordingly.

We are particularly grateful to business leaders in the region, led by Donald Graham, chairman of The Washington Post, who was instrumental in helping to convince Congress of the necessity for the bill. Mr. Graham and the business leaders did not stop there, however. They established the College Access Program, which we call CAP, to provide additional financial support.

More important, CAP provides essential guidance and encouragement to students as they reach the critical time decision for college. We are also grateful to CAP for supplying a support network that has helped the District's TAG program receive excellent, excellent retention rates. For example, of the 1,091 DCTAG freshmen in 2001-2002, 72 percent returned as sophomores; of that, 79 percent returned as juniors; 82 percent as seniors, and 77 percent of the seniors graduated. This, I am sure Members recognize, is very enviable retention in college graduate rates compared with others around the country.

CAP's 100 percent private funding by business leaders, most from the region, not from the city, is nothing less than a vote of confidence in DCTAG that I believe is warranted by the legislation's documented results.

It is difficult to think of congressional legislation that has brought such immediate and positive results, or that is more appreciated by D.C. residents. To be sure, our D.C. homebuyer and business tax credits, unique to the District and reauthorized again last year, have had similar measurable and documented effects on increasing homeownership and keeping taxpaying residents and businesses in a city without a State tax base that instead must itself carry many State costs. However, if there are to be homeowners and taxpayers in the District of Columbia in the 21st century, many more of them must have college training.

The economy of this Federal city will always be tied to Federal jobs and jobs related to Federal jobs at the high end. The stability of the Federal sector here has been indispensable to many aspects of the city's economy, but too few of the public and private sector jobs go to District residents. For example, the District continues to be a virtual job machine for the region. The District created 8,500 jobs in the last 12 months, but its unemployment rate remains almost twice the rate in this region. This disparity represents an education and training mismatch that must be eliminated to assume a decent future for the city's young residents.

H.R. 1124 is one of the District's top priorities this year because of the program's proven benefits to the economy of the city and region, and especially to the city's residents and families. Families have been willing to make the necessary sacrifices to meet the costs of large annual increases in State tuition nationwide, even though the amount they receive from TAG has not increased at all and remains a maximum $10,000 annually, and this despite the modest family incomes of most of our students.

This immensely successful and popular higher education program has proven itself over and over again. It would be difficult, indeed, to think of a program that has returned so much to the city and the Federal Government for the modest amount of Federal funding. Of any measure that I will bring before the House this year, H.R. 1124 certainly ranks near the top in deserving continuing support.

I appreciate the strong bipartisan support and the support of the President of the United States that this vital Federal educational assistance program has received, and I ask for the continued support of the House. I believe the results fostered by the program have earned the support.

I strongly urge approval of 1124.

I thank the chairman for yielding. I could take a minute to thank him for his masterful handling of this bill in a bipartisan fashion before this committee.

I want to strongly thank the chairman for the way in which the committee has insisted on endorsing a headquarters for this department, because one of the continuing and most sustained criticisms of the department has been its management. But how can we expect the department to be managed when they are in 60 different places, 80 different leases?

The inefficiencies, Mr. Chairman, associated with the dispersal of this largest department are incalculable. The great cuts and deficiencies we have seen in the Homeland budget pale beside what we see in the way in which it is positioned: multiple and redundant mailrooms and screening facilities and parking and child care facilities and fitness centers; and, above all, shuttles just so that one part of the department can get to meet face to face with another part. Worst of all, one part that I know will be vacated is the Massachusetts Avenue headquarters, and yet they're having to spend $18 million just to make that livable. They are forced to live by short- term leases, rollover leases, wasting money.

We have an opportunity, because to the President's credit, he has put money in the appropriation to begin to build a headquarters for this department. It was in there last session. It did not get passed. It's up to the appropriators, the new appropriators, to make sure we have a real department and real headquarters.

Mr. Speaker, may I offer my thanks to the chairman of the subcommittee, particularly for the very expeditious way in which he has moved my request for early consideration of the matter before us now.

I rise to request passage of H.R. 2080, a bill to amend the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in keeping with District public school charter revisions proposed by Mayor Adrian Fenty and passed by the Council of the District of Columbia.

I very much appreciate that Chairman Henry Waxman and Chairman Danny Davis considered this bill expeditiously, and the leadership has kindly granted our request for early consideration of the bill on the House floor on the suspension calendar in light of the fact that the matter before the House is not controversial.

The bill supports the District in moving on its own to correct problems in its local school system.

In fact, H.R. 2080 is before the Congress only because the current Home Rule Act now in the process of being revised requires that certain changes to the District's charter be made by Federal legislation. I stress that the underlying school reorganization involves no Federal funds and is entirely a local school issue.

However, H.R. 2080 is of major importance to the District of Columbia. And if it were possible, the city would have made these revisions effective immediately. Therefore, I am grateful to the Federal Workforce chair, Mr. Danny Davis, and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman for moving this bill as soon as possible in committee, and the subsequent movement to the House floor the very next week, the week in which we now find ourselves.

The school structure change in particular puts a heavy and unprecedented burden on the administration of a new mayor, Mayor Adrian Fenty. Many in the Congress have over the years urged changes in the D.C. public schools; and therefore, I know that the last thing Congress wants to do is get in the way or slow a difficult local school reform process.

The extra congressional level of procedure for a local school restructuring is not within the expertise of a national legislative body whose agenda is packed with urgent national concerns.

The necessity for a Member of Congress to introduce a bill for a self-governing city is an anachronism neither the Congress nor the District deserves or can afford today. I promise the Congress I will try to make this the last time the House or the Senate is requested to pass a charter bill of no concern and of little interest to the Congress of the United States.

I strongly ask that all Members support the swift passage of this bill today.

Madam Speaker, I introduce the Dedicated Dental Service for HIV/AIDS (DDS for HIV/AIDS) Act of 2007, to establish a loan repayment program for dental school graduates in exchange for their agreement to remedy a critical shortage of dentists for the poor, particularly in areas with a high incidence of HIV and AIDS, by agreeing to serve such patients. This bill is similar to legislation Congress has previously enacted to encourage other health professionals, such as physicians, nurses, optometrists and pharmacists to provide vital services in underserved areas. This bill is being introduced in conjunction with a series of HIV/AIDS town hall meetings that I am hosting in the District of Columbia.

I am introducing the bill on the same day when I am hosting a Men's Town Meeting on HIV/AIDS. This public meeting is one of a series of town meetings I am holding to increase awareness and individual responsibility at a time when 50 percent of AIDS cases today are African American. Howard University professors of dentistry inform us that the first indicators of HIV/AIDS infection are often oral health problems. Oral health problems often not only constitute an important early signal of HIV/AIDS symptoms; they also serve as benchmarks for disease progression. One of the most serious problems with the spread of HIV/AIDS is the reluctance of people to be tested for such a disease, especially in the African-American community and other big city and rural areas. Access to dental care, therefore, is critically important from the earliest onset, especially in high impact areas. Access, of course, minimizes long-term oral health complications for patients, but it also provides important linkages to good overall medical care to combat the disease in the community.

A recent RAND health study on HIV costs and services found that the vast majority of patients received care at their local AIDS clinic, not a primary dentist. Moreover, these disfavored patients must look for service within the context of a nationwide drop in dental school applicants and graduates, and a projected 60 percent loss of active dentists due to retirement. As a result, the average American, especially those with HIV/AIDS, will, or already are, having difficulty in obtaining dental care.

The crisis is palpable for HlV/AIDS patients. They have even more difficulty than other Americans finding dentists who will accept Medicaid or treat patients at reduced cost.

Some dentists are reluctant to provide care. Although only one case of transmission between dentist and patient has been documented, problems of access are acute. Many patients must travel long distances to find care. Many states do not include dental care as part of their Medicaid coverage. Patients often must search for providers such as schools of dentistry or local community clinics which receive some funds from the Dental Reimbursement Program (DRP), administered through the Ryan White CARE Act.

My bill would create a loan forgiveness program for dental school graduates who agree to serve HIV/AIDS populations in areas where there is a high incidence of such cases, as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services. This program is drawn from the nurse loan forgiveness program passed by Congress in 1998. The crisis for the dental profession, especially in the distribution of dentists in underserved areas, is even greater than for physicians. Dental school graduates incur an average loan debt of $100,000. Under the guidelines of the program, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is authorized to pay 60 percent of the principal and interest on the loans in exchange for service for a period of no less than two years. If a dentist agrees to participate in a third year of service, another 25 percent of the principal and interest on his loans will be paid. Loan forgiveness programs bring important added value because many recipients remain in practice in the area to which they are assigned. The Secretary of HHS is to submit to the Congress a report on the program, with information including the number of dentists enrolled, the number and amount of loan repayments, the placement location of loan repayment recipients, and the evaluation of the overall costs and benefits of the program.

With more than one million Americans with HIV/AIDS, and over 16,000 in the District of Columbia, and its impact among people of color, these health providers need greater attention. We are proud of the overworked and under-funded services that are available in the District of Columbia. The Howard School of Dentistry has a long history of providing dental services to the poor here, and the HU CARES program provides care for nearly 1,200 patients a year. The vital Whitman- Walker Clinic, the largest provider of comprehensive HIV/AIDS services in the District and the region serves over 1,500 dental patients a year.

I urge my colleagues to join with me in establishing this dental loan repayment program that will meet an immediate and pressing need in communities across the country, as we have for other professions.

Madam Speaker, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman and I re-introduce the ``Lead-Free Drinking Water Act of 2007''. This bill today was virtually summoned by the District's lead water crisis in 2004. The national attention our crisis generated for the likely presence of lead in the water supply drew many jurisdictions to do their own investigations, uncovering similar problems. When former Senator James Jeffords, Representative Waxman, and I looked at the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and the Lead and Copper Rule, it was clear that even the revision of the Rule in 1991 did not meet standards that should have been adopted at that time. Our bill incorporates what we learned from hearings on the D.C. water crisis and from the state of the current science.

This bill is necessary because at a recent hearing for the Subcommittee on Water Resources, Benjamin H Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water in the EPA, promised that new rules on lead and copper in water would be promulgated at the level mandated in this legislation. However, details of the rule have not been shared with the subcommittee, and the rule is not scheduled to be released until the fall of this year. We have heard this same excuse since 2004, illustrating the continuing need for Congress to act. In 2006, as confidence was slowly being restored in our drinking water, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority was cited for violations of SDWA consent order due to a failure in testing procedures. Most especially, recent reports have documented elevated levels of lead in drinking water in five District of Columbia public school water fountains, even though the children are most vulnerable to lead, thus the important reasons for this legislation remain strong after three years. This bill directly addresses the concerns that also vulnerable are pregnant and nursing women and District of Columbia parents have with lead in the water at schools and would lay to rest well-placed anxiety about lead in the drinking water here and nationwide.

The District of Columbia provided us with a virtual case study in why SWDA must be revised again in 2007. Here are some of the most important provisions taken from the D.C. experience:

(1) Valid Testing. This bill eliminates the giant loophole

that allowed the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) to

continue testing once it exceeded the 15 parts per billion

(Ppb) action level, in order to dilute its findings, reduce

the percentage of homes to less than 10%, and thus relieve

WASA of the requirement to replace lead service lines.

Instead, 10% of lead pipes must be replaced until all are

eliminated.

(2) Total Lead Service Line Replacement. Instead of

replacing only publicly owned lead service lines, this bill

requires total replacement, including the portion owned by

the homeowner. Our hearings showed that partial replacement

can actually increase the amount of lead in drinking water,

because the new metal, such as brass or copper, can interact

with the remaining lead pipe and accelerate lead leaching

into the drinking water.

(3) Individual Notice From Detection to Correction. Instead

of allowing public notices to be delayed or buried, using

generic language deep in a brochure or water bill, as WASA

did, our bill requires notice to all customers, individually

within 30 days of lead exceedence, stating the scope of

testing, results and corrective actions.

(4) Alternative Water Supply. Where excessive lead is

found, the bill requires that certified water filters be

provided to each residence, school and day care facility, a

measure that was delayed in the District despite the danger

to pregnant women and children under six.

(5) Testing Water Treatment Chemicals. The Army Corp of

Engineers switched chemicals at the Washington Aqueduct from

chlorine to chloramines without conducting a corrosion

control test. The evidence is that the new chemical was the

likely cause of the spike in lead levels here, but only now

are phosphates being tested to counter lead corrosion in the

water supply. This bill requires water systems to have

corrosion control plans within one year of switching chemical

treatment or a finding of excessive lead in the water.

(6) Lead Free Plumbing. ``Lead free'' in this bill is

defined as 0.2%, the standard already used in Los Angeles,

down from the current 8%. We heard testimony at our hearings

that most brass and copper plumbing contains 8% lead.

(7) Lead Testing In Schools. This bill requires the repair

or replacement of school water coolers found to have

excessive lead. Annual testing of water coolers in schools is

also required.

The District of Columbia experience has opened the nation's eyes to lead in the water that millions of Americans may be drinking. Our bill will reduce the well-earned fears of residents here and across the country.

Madam Speaker, the 1963 Equal Pay Act (EPA), the first of the great civil rights statutes of the 1960s, was highly successful for close to 20 years, but it is too creaky with age to be useful today. It is long past the time to amend the EPA to meet the changed economy, where women work almost as much as men. Every year, my House colleague Rosa DeLauro and I, and scores of other Members, introduce the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill to amend the EPA to make its basic procedures equal to those used in other antidiscrimination statutes. However, the Fair Pay Act (FPA), which Senator Tom Harkin and I have also introduced, not only amends the EPA, but it picks up where the EPA leaves off to bring the EPA into the 21st century by taking on sex segregated jobs where gender influenced wages leaves average women workers without any remedy too long. Congresswoman DeLauro and I have long pressed for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act and both of us will testify at its first hearing today before the Committee on Education and Labor about what is at bottom a procedural update that should have occurred 25 years ago. I will be testifying from my own experience as the first woman chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), when President Jimmy Carter moved the EPA and other civil rights statutes to the EEOC as parts of a historic organization when I became chair.

Along with my indispensable Senate partner, Tom Harkin, I again introduce the Fair Pay Act to reach the average woman worker, who is often first steered to and then locked into jobs with wages that are deeply influenced by the gender of those who have traditionally held those jobs. Women are greatly underused today because of employer steering, and because of deeply rooted wage stereotypes that result in pay according to gender and not according to the skills, efforts, responsibilities and working conditions necessary to do the job. I introduce the Fair Pay Act because the pay problems of most women today stem mainly from this sex segregation between the jobs that women and men traditionally do. Two-thirds of white women, and three quarters of African American women, work in just three areas: sales and clerical, service, and factory jobs. Only a combination of more aggressive strategies can break through the ancient societal habits present throughout human time the world over, as well as the employer steering of women into women's jobs that is as old as paid employment itself.

The FPA recognizes that if men and women are doing comparable work, they should be paid a comparable wage. If a woman is an emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, for example, she should be paid no less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one sex. If a woman is a social worker, a traditionally female occupation, she should earn no less than a probation officer, a traditionally male job, simply because of the gender associated with each of these jobs.

The FPA, like the EPA, will not tamper with the market system. As with the EPA, the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove discrimination. She must show that the reason for the disparity is sex discrimination, not legitimate market factors. Corrections to achieve comparable pay for men and women are not radical or unprecedented. State employees in almost half the State governments, in red and blue States alike, have already demonstrated that you can eliminate the part of the pay gap tht is due to discrimination. Twenty States have adjusted wages for women State employees, raising pay for teachers, nurses, clerical workers, librarians, and other female-dominated jobs that paid less than men with comparable jobs. Minnesota, for example, implemented a pay equity plan when they found that similarly skilled female jobs paid 20 percent less than male jobs. There often will be some portion of the gap that is traceable to market conditions, but 20 States have shown that you can tackle the discrimination gap without interfering with the free market system. The States generally have closed the discrimination gap over a period of 4 or 5 years at a one- time cost no more than 3 to 4 percent of payroll.

In addition, routinely, many women workers achieve pay equity through collective bargaining, and countless employers on their own, as they see women shifting out of vital female-dominated occupations, the resulting effects of the shortage of workers, and the unfairness to women, and are raising women's wages with pay equity adjustments. Unequal pay has been built into the way women have been treated since Adam and Eve. To dislodge such deep seated and pervasive treatment, we must go to the source, the female occupations where pay now identifies with gender and always has.

Recently, I thought we were seeing progress when the census reported last year that Black, college-educated women actually earned more than white, college-educated women, although the overall wage gap for Black women, at 65 percent, remains considerably larger than the gap for white women. No explanation was offered for the progress for Black women, but other data and information suggest that even when women seem to catch up it may not be what we had in mind. I suspect that African American women are represented disproportionately among the 50 percent of all multiple job holders who are women. I am certain that this progress for African American women also tells a tragic story. The decline in marriageable Black men, eaten alive by ghetto life, also means that many college-educated Black women are likely to be single with no need for even the short time-out for children that many white women often take that may affect their wages as compared with Black women.

The best case for a strong and updated EPA with at least the Paycheck Fairness Act occurred here in the Congress in 2003, when women custodians in the House and Senate won an EPA case after showing that women workers were paid a dollar less for doing the same and similar work as men. Had they not been represented by their union, they would have had an almost impossible task using the rules for bringing and sustaining an EPA class action suit. The FPA simply modernizes the EPA to bring it in line with later passed civil rights statutes. From my tenure as EEOC chair, I know all too well the several ways that this historic legislation needs a 21st century make-over.

We cosponsored both these two bills every year to say let's at least start with the Paycheck Fairness Act so we can be prepared to go further with the Fair Pay Act. Start where you like, but Congress should be ashamed to let another year go by while working families lose more than $200 billion annually--more than $4,000 per family--because even considering education, age, hours works and location, women are paid less than they are worth. Let's start this year to make pay worthy of the American women we have asked to go to work.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the gentleman for his strong advocacy for the rights of all Americans.

I must begin by saying when you hear people come to the floor and invoke the word ``fairness'' in a debate where they oppose the basic right to vote, they drain that word of all of its meaning.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the rule proper. I would like to offer some thanks during this rule period. And I would like to say a word about Utah, our very strong partner about whom we hear little because they are so far away.

The other side, after the last vote on this bill, clucked that they had actually stopped our people in the Nation's Capital from getting a vote. Imagine how that was received all around the world. Now they come to the floor with the nerve to object to the procedure.

Mind you, the substance is really what they are after. If in fact the District of Columbia was a largely Republican city, these Members would be on the floor arguing for voting rights for the District of Columbia just as the radical Republican abolitionists gave us the vote, which was then taken from us, and gave us home rule.

I will not yield, sir. The District of Columbia has spent 206 years yielding to people who would deny them the vote. I yield you no ground, not during my time. You have had your say, and your say has been that you think that the people who live in your capital are not entitled to a vote in their House. Shame on you.

Then they want an open rule. They want an open rule so they can deny the vote. The American people will have nothing but praise for the Democratic leadership because the Democratic leaders have found a way to observe two cardinal principles, the principle most basic of all, the right to vote, yes, the principle of fiscal responsibility.

Now, the Democrats could never have thrown the foul ball that was used to delay this bill, and the reason is, of course, that the other side spent 12 years building a deficit and didn't observe the PAYGO rule, and so there would have been no germaneness issue. I don't think that was so smart.

The bill was open to an outrageous attempt to repeal our gun laws. We are a free people. We are entitled to have the same jurisdiction over our gun laws they have, and we are going to insist on it. And the Democratic leaders did not bow to that trick. Instead, they went back and found a way to keep to the principle of finally paying for what we do, as you should have done for more than 10 years.

I would be glad to do it. If the Member doesn't want to face me face to face, I will address the Speaker, you will get the point.

Mr. Speaker, for more than 4 years, thousands of Americans and others around the world have sought this bill and contributed ideas, time and effort, beginning with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who added to her long and unequivocal push for full rights for District citizens, her personal attention and intervention when it counted most to move this bill forward. And majority leader Steny Hoyer, whose outspoken dedication to our rights overcame procedural malevolence to bring today's bill forward. However, the idea originally came from the Republican side. When I was in the minority, moved by his personal sense of right and wrong, Congressman Tom Davis smartly and doggedly started us down the bipartisan path to equal votes for the District and for Utah.

Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, since his election in 1964, has robustly argued that rights for D.C. residents must match their burdens. Henry Waxman, first as ranking member, now as Chair, began leading a principled effort for equal rights for D.C. citizens long before I was elected to Congress.

Utah Governor John Huntsman, and the Utah delegation, Representatives Bishop, Cannon and Matheson, forged a unique partnership on their understanding that Utah and D.C. residents felt the same sense of loss and should obtain these precious rights together.

The local and national civil rights organizations formed themselves into a formidable D.C. voting rights coalition, led by D.C. Vote, which gave the effort, organizational know-how and boundless dedication, and the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, which has carried D.C. voting rights as a major civil rights cause for decades.

The official international human rights entities abroad have gone on record to ask the United States of America to conform with international law by granting voting rights to the citizens of its capital. My own colleagues of both parties, who passed this bill in committees by overwhelming votes, 29-4, 24-5 and 21-13, especially my Republican colleagues, have joined this effort for the District of Columbia and for Utah out of principle.

The District of Columbia's four home rule mayors and city councils, particularly current Mayor Adrian Fenty and City Council Chair Vincent Gray, and, most especially, the residents of this city, living and dead, have fought for equal citizenship over the ages.

Today, we will get the vote I predict, at least in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I give great praise to a State which is the most Republican State in the Union for having unabashedly and continuously joined with us out of a deep sense of grievance of its own, that its missionaries, temporarily abroad in the service of their church, were not counted in the last census, and, thus, the State was deprived of a seat that they believed they were entitled to.

I would like to quote Governor John Huntsman, the Governor of the State, who came and said, ``I have not extensively studied the constitutionality of the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, but I am impressed and persuaded by the scholarship represented. The people of Utah have expressed outrage over the loss of one congressional seat for the last 6 years. I share their outrage. I can't imagine what it must be like for American citizens to have no representation for over 200 years.''

We will pass this bill today. We will put it in the hands of two Republican Senators from Utah, Senators Hatch and Bennett, and there I believe it will fare well, because the people of Utah want this vote, their vote, as much as we want our vote.

I ask, in testament to that, that two editorials from the Salt Lake Tribune be included for the Record.

[From the Salt Lake Tribune, Mar. 13, 2007]

Utah's 4th Seat: One Quibble Aside, New Bill Would Do the Right Thing

It's back. A bill before Congress would give the District

of Columbia its first voting member of the House of

Representatives and Utah its fourth seat in that body. We

favor it because Utah's rapidly growing population is

entitled to a fourth seat. There are things about the bill

that could be better, but the overriding principles are

right. The 600,000 people of the District of Columbia have a

delegate in the House but she cannot vote on the floor,

That's a cruel irony in a nation that fancies itself a beacon

of republican democracy.

That situation is an accident of constitutional history.

The founders fashioned D.C. so that no state would have the

advantage of being the seat of the federal government. But it

is the states, under the Constitution's language, that elect

U.S. representatives and senators. For more than 200 years,

that circumstance has denied the people of D.C. votes in

Congress.

This bill would rectify that by treating D.C. as a

congressional district for purposes of representation in the

House. At the same time, it would increase the membership of

the House from 435 to 437. One seat would go to D.C. The

second would go to the next state in line for another seat

because of population growth, i.e., Utah. The reason for this

second provision is to preserve the existing partisan balance

in the House. D.C. presumably will elect a Democrat. Utah

presumably will elect a Republican.

Our major quibble with the bill, H.R. 1433, is that it

would have Utah elect its new member-at-large, that is,

statewide, rather than by congressional district, until after

the 2010 census and reapportionment. We believe that is a

mistake because it would allow every Utah voter to vote for

two members of the House while every other voter in the U.S.

could vote for only one.

Besides, the Utah Legislature last year created four equal

congressional districts in anticipation of an earlier version

of this bill which failed in the last Congress.

The at-large proposal would spare Utah's sitting members of

the House from running in special elections to fill the four

new seats. While that is a real hardship in terms of

fundraising, it would be worthwhile to preserve the principle

of equal representation.

The quibble: The bill would have Utah elect its new member

at large, that is, state-wide, rather than by congressional

district, until after the 2010 census and reapportionment.

Mr. Speaker will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I respect the gentleman, who indeed has, as always, given me and the city respect, and I know he understands what it must be like to be in the Congress for 17 years and come to the floor and see people debating your budget and your laws and you can't even vote on them.

I appreciate that the gentleman came to the floor on procedural matters. If the differences between the gentleman and me are on procedure, would not the better side of valor be to allow people on both sides to understand that you favor voting rights; and if your problem is constitutionality, I am sure the gentleman will understand that there is a third branch of government who can decide this matter for us both, particularly since he concedes that opinion on the constitutional question is divided.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman argues about an unprecedented procedure. What about the unprecedented procedure that the other side used to delay this bill, sending the message around the world to delay this bill when it was delayed the last time?

This procedure is legal. Therefore, if you want to use procedure to stop the bill, you should say so. The fact is you have raised a constitutional point. You are not a constitutional scholar, and no Member of this House is, even I, who was a constitutional lawyer.

Therefore, when in doubt about something as precious as the right to vote, when the people we are talking about have paid taxes and have gone to war since the birth of the Republic, surely we should err on the side of encouraging everybody to vote for the bill, send it to the Senate, and let the one institution that can decide constitutional questions, the Supreme Court, make that decision.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Reclaiming my time, it is certainly true that the vote was delayed and it was legal to delay it. By delaying the vote, do you know what the leaders of this House did? They saved the reputation of this House throughout the world. No one knows what would have happened. But no vote on guns occurred.

You don't know what would have happened.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

I can understand why the Members on that side don't want to be spoken to directly.

Nobody knows what would have been the result of that vote. The least of all who know is the other side.

One thing we do know is that it was a perversion. It would have been a perversion to even allow a vote about guns, a vote about guns that would have deprived the District of its own right to decide the issue in order to decide whether it should have a vote.

The decision therefore to pull the bill was legal and the delay saved the principle that we should be voting on one basic right, the basic right that is before us today in the House Voting Rights Act.

I will support that, if the gentleman will support this bill by voting for it on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Has he agreed therefore to support the bill when in fact the vote is taken?

When the Constitution was written, first of all, Senators weren't popularly elected; they were appointed, not elected, number one. Number two, when the Constitution was written there was a 10-year period during which the District essentially had all the same rights it had always had because the Framers guaranteed to Maryland and Virginia they would not lose those rights. So when the seat moved over and it became the jurisdiction of the Congress, only the Congress could fulfill the mandate now that the city was under its jurisdiction to grant the city the right to vote.

We are asking for the right to vote only in the House. And the Senate, somebody would have had to appoint Senators at the time. So that could not have been done.

It has been remarkable, in a debate where Republicans invoke democracy, to hear Republican after Republican come to the House floor and say that they want the District of Columbia ceded to Maryland, without indicating that the Maryland delegation has given permission to accept the District of Columbia. If you believe in democracy, I suggest you ask the State of Maryland before you cede back anything to that State.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding and for his ceaseless fight for the District's rights. During the rule, I thanked the many others who are responsible for this historic day.

Today's vote will allow the House to erase many deep historic wrongs from the Nation's conscience. As the House votes, District's residents are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in a shooting war, as they have in every war, including the war that established our Republic.

Andy Shallal, a District resident, said it best: ``People like me of Iraqi ancestry and even my son, who was born in the United States, are entitled to vote in Iraq elections due in large part to the service of the citizens of the District of Columbia and other Americans who have fought and died in Iraq.''

And today's vote will erase the slander that the Founders of our country who staged the revolution for representation would then deny it to the residents of their own capital.

Professor Viet Dinh, President Bush's former point man on constitutional matters, has wiped away the major argument that because the District is not a State its American citizens cannot vote in the people's House, by detailing the many ways in which ``since 1805 the Supreme Court has recognized that Congress has the authority to treat the District as a State, and Congress has repeatedly exercised that authority.'' My favorite is the sixteenth amendment, which requires only that citizens of States pay Federal income taxes. Why then have District residents continuously been taxed without representation?

And today's vote will relieve the House of the shameful racial burden that has been at the core of the denial of the rights of D.C. citizens. Congress required the same racial segregation here as in the Southern States, in schools and in public accommodations, until the 1954 Brown decision. As one Southern Senator put it: ``The Negroes flocked in, and there was only one way out, and that was to deny suffrage entirely to every human being in the district.''

Former Republican Senator Edward Brooke, a native Washingtonian and the Nation's first popularly elected black Senator, wrote: ``The experience of living in a segregated city and of serving in our segregated Army perhaps explains why my party's work on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization last year and on the pending D.C. House Voting Rights Act has been so important to me personally. The irony, of course, is that I had to leave my hometown to get representation in Congress and to become a Member.''

Today, I ask the House to abolish that irony and the tragedy for the many who have come to the Nation's Capital seeking freedom for 206 years, among them my great grandfather, Richard Holmes, a slave who ran away from a Virginia plantation in the 1850s and settled our family here. I appeal to your conscience and ask for your vote so that finally there also will be a vote for your fellow Americans here who have paid for this precious right many times over in blood and in treasure.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for leading this debate. Truly, you are the man to lead this debate on this great civil rights bill that the House is about to give after 206 years. I thank you for coming forward to do so.

I want to praise and offer my gratitude to Democratic leaders for reconciling the important principle of fiscal responsibility, PAYGO as we call it, with the basic principle of voting rights, forsaking neither. H.R. 1906 is particularly appropriate, especially when you consider that D.C. residents have always paid taxes, notwithstanding that the 16th amendment says that only States shall pay taxes.

Mayor Adrian Fenty and Council Chair Vincent Gray yesterday led a march in the wind and the rain on Emancipation Day because 145 years ago Lincoln freed the slaves in the District of Columbia 9 months ahead of the slaves elsewhere. My grandfather, Richard Holmes, was one of those slaves. His son, Richard, entered the D.C. Fire Department in 1902. And his son, Coleman, my father, like his forefathers and like me, have never had a vote in this city.

I am particularly grateful, and I wanted this time especially to thank the 22 Republicans who voted for the bill today, preserving the great tradition of the party of Lincoln for equal rights.

The Constitution was written by men who risked everything for the principle of representation. We should be especially mindful today, perhaps, to dedicate this bill to other men who have risked everything in times of war. 80-year-old retired Wesley Brown, the first black graduate of the Naval Academy and a resident of the District of Columbia, who went to the same high school that I attended, served in three wars, and retired from the Navy as lieutenant commander, but never has had the right to vote. His remarkable life story is chronicled in the book ``Breaking the Color Barrier: The U.S. Naval Academy's First Black Midshipman and the Struggle for Racial Equality.''

Bringing the matter forward, some young men in the District of Columbia are returning from Iraq, and I leave you with a few of their words. I quote Marcus Gray, who spent a year in Iraq in the 299th Engineering Company, who said, ``My father served in the 104th Airborne in Vietnam, and I am proud to follow him by serving my country in the same manner. I could be called again this year, but being called to active duty is what every soldier in the Reserves should expect to happen.

``We also expect equal treatment, and the Army tries hard to see that all soldiers are treated equally. However, I want equal treatment at home as well. I want the same voting representation as other soldiers, and as the Iraqi people have now because of our service.''

Emory Kosh, who works in my office in the House: ``I was proud to serve my country as a volunteer soldier. However, I am not prepared to sit as an employee of the House of Representatives while every Member answers the bell except my Congresswoman.''

Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to give D.C. residents on the battlefield and in the city itself the vote they have earned over and over again. Most of those who have paid the dearest price will never see the benefit. Those in the Vietnam War, the District had more casualties than 10 States; in the Korean War, more casualties than eight States; in World War II, more casualties than four States; and in World War I, more casualties than three States.

In their name, and in good conscience, I ask that the House today finally give the residents of the District of Columbia the vote they have fought for now for 206 years.

Madam Speaker, today, I am again introducing the Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act (NDECA), as I have done since 1994, after working with the residents who were responsible for a ballot initiative passed by D.C. voters in 1993. NDECA will require the United States to disable and dismantle its nuclear weapons when all other nations possessing nuclear weapons enact laws to do the same. NDECA further provides that when U.S. nuclear weapons are dismantled, the resources for supporting nuclear weapon programs would be used for our growing human and infrastructure needs, such as housing, health care, Social Security and the environment.

Tragically, instead of nuclear disarmament, nations around the world have increased in efforts to seek or acquire nuclear capability. Last week, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1737 (2006) under Article 41 of the Charter's Chapter VIII, imposing sanctions on Iran for failure to halt uranium enrichment and mandating that Iran cease all sensitive nuclear activities. China's acquisition of nuclear weapons particularly underscores the dangerous spread of these weapons as a potent destabilizing force in world affairs. North Korea, at least in part in response to early aggressive talk by this administration responded in a dangerously paranoid fashion by announcing that it is expanding its nuclear capabilities, and today few doubt that North Korea has acquired a nuclear device. The North Korean threat has become so serious that the Administration recently reversed course and agreed to freeze North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. India and Pakistan have moved back from the precipice of several years ago but each remains poised with nuclear weapons.

The invasion of Iraq and the resistance of the Administration to end the war have cost the United States much of its leadership on the nuclear proliferation and other urgent international issues. This country would be non-credible in dissuading other nations who aspire to become or remain nuclear powers if we ourselves took greater initiative in dismantling our own nuclear weapons program. We moved in the right direction when the Senate ratified the Moscow Treaty in 2003, which provides that by 2012 both the U.S. and Russia will reduce their long- range warheads two-thirds from approximately 6,000 warheads each to 2,200. However, the Administration has failed to build on this effort. According to a recent study, Securing The Bomb: An Agenda for Action (May, 2004; prepared by the Belfer Center, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government): Total nuclear-threat-reduction spending remains less than one quarter of one percent of the U.S. military budget. Indeed, on average, the Bush administration requests for nuclear- threat-reduction spending over FY 2002--2005 have been less, in real terms, than the last Clinton administration request, made long before the 9/11 attacks ever occurred. Instead, the Administration has moved to increase the country's nuclear capacity.

However, the problem today even more complicated than nuclear disarmament by nation states. The greatest threat today is from inadequately defended and guarded sites in many countries where there is enough material to make nuclear weapons and many opportunities for terrorists or nations without weapons to secure nuclear materials. Astonishingly, because of the absence of presidential leadership, less nuclear material was seized in the two years following the 9/11 attacks than in the 2 years immediately preceding the attacks (Securing The Bomb: An Agenda for Action, May 2004).

In my work on the Homeland Security Committee, I know that threats from nuclear proliferation and available nuclear material are more dangerous in the post 9/11 era than in 1994, when I first introduced the Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act. It is more urgent than ever to begin closing down nuclear capability here and around the world.

Today our country has 45 million people still without health insurance, a long list of other urgent domestic needs put on the back burner following the invasion of Iraq and large tax cuts to wealthy people and corporations, an economy burdened with a dangerous deficit, and millions of Americans pushed back into poverty during the last four years. As the only nation that has used nuclear weapons in war and still possesses the largest arsenal, the U.S. has an obligation to begin the arduous process of leading the world in the transfer of nuclear weapons funds to urgent domestic needs.

Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Thompson and the ranking member, Mr. Oberstar, and his ranking member as well for this very important legislation that has come forward today.

Perhaps you, too, can hear the collective sighs of the American people now that we are doing something about rail and mass transit. They have wondered, and how could they not, whether the bombs that were planted in Madrid and in London would somehow find their way into their own subways or whether the Hazmat accidents could be more than that here in this country.

I was moved by these vulnerabilities to be the lead sponsor first of the Safe TRAINS Act, then the Secure TRAINS Act. After all, 800,000 Federal workers use our Metro daily. That did not inspire the Federal Government to move forward. Finally, we have a bipartisan bill to relieve the national anxiety of the average American about the forms of transportation she uses most.

They watched as we poured billions into air travel security. We had to do it, it was after the fact. But we left huge vulnerabilities.

Union Station, for example, the hub of the entire region, you have beneath it the trains running underneath a hall where Members every other day come to celebrate in the evening one or the other kind of event. The District of Columbia was driven by the vacuum to actually pass its own rerouting legislation that has not even been dismissed ever yet. That shows you how vulnerable we are.

The bill finally instructs the Department of Homeland Security to exercise leadership, to use its expertise so that transit systems are not working on security on a case-by-case basis. We can't protect the country by shoring up one mode of transportation alone--a virtual invitation to then move elsewhere.

I think there is an important lesson here. I am on the Aviation Subcommittee, so I have wanted to shore up air travel. But by shoring up one mode of transportation, we may be offering a virtual invitation for terrorists to go to the next most vulnerable target. That turns out to be rail and mass transit, where we could least afford terrorist events. That is where the American people are. I thank both sides of the aisle for coming together on this bill to go precisely where they are to protect the public at last.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, Mr. Speaker. And I really had not intended to come forward since I will be managing in a few minutes but I must say that I have been virtually driven to the floor by the abstractions of the discussion. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia.

Would the gentleman from Virginia engage in a colloquy with me?

I will have more to say about the specific legal and constitutional issues, but I do want to say something to those who are such literalists that they would deny us of the right to vote citing the Framers and the Constitution. Is it not true that the State of Virginia and perhaps as many as half the Colonies were not States, but Commonwealths? And is ``Commonwealth'' mentioned anywhere in the Constitution?

I yield to the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman. And the gentleman has clarified something further concerning the right to vote in the people's House.

The reason I come is not, frankly, to engage early in the discussion we will be having on the bill itself; but because the discussion has been such an abstraction. I have come because that discussion has been as if the Framers set up a place, not a city with real people. It is as if you can discuss these rights without referring to whom these rights would belong.

Members have come to the floor with the hubris to believe that the Framers intended their constituents to have full rights under the Constitution, but not my constituents because we happen to live in the Capital of the United States created by the Framers.

I do want to let you know who you are talking about so that this discussion will not be all about constitutional and legal abstractions that can only be settled by the courts of the United States. You are talking about Kathryn Ray, who lives here and is a mom and a librarian and a PTA president. You are talking about Larry Chapman, who is a D.C. firefighter, putting his life on the line for emergency response here and throughout the city. You are talking about Liz Allen, an attorney who has had her first child and has decided to raise this son here in the District of Columbia even though her family is denied a vote.

You are talking about Wade Henderson, like me a native Washingtonian, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, who has fought every day for civil rights around the world but has never had a vote in Congress. Like me, he is an African American who grew up in this city when it was a segregated city. Like me, he understood that the composition of this city then and for centuries has had much to do with the denial of voting rights in this city. And so, like me, he has argued in these Halls that all citizens of the District of Columbia, of every background, finally have the rights that all other Americans now take for granted.

This bill is about Evelyn Curtis, a nurse at one of our hospitals, who would love to have a say on health care issues. She can talk to me, but I can't talk to you about what she believes by voting.

This bill is ultimately about 650,000 American citizens. When you are asked to vote on this bill in the middle of a war, when our citizens are among the troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, remember that you will be voting not for my vote but for the votes of the people who live in the District of Columbia and especially for the votes of those Washingtonians who as I speak are serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world in service to the United States of America.

I just want to say, I will not object. I will not object, out of the sense of fairness that I hope that every Member will bring with them to the floor when the time comes to vote on this bill. I will not object, because Mr. Rohrabacher, who may disagree with my bill, has at least understood that the Republic will not go on as long as the residents of the Nation's capital are denied a vote in the Congress and has himself introduced his own version of a voting rights bill.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me his time.

Madam Speaker, this bill is covered with the full handprints of scores of Members, beginning on the other side of the aisle with Congressman Tom Davis, who planted and tirelessly cultivated the seed; and Utah Members Cannon and Bishop, joined by Mr. Matheson, the State's only Democratic Member.

However, it was leadership that got us to this historic day, especially Speaker Pelosi's personal insistence, Majority Leader Hoyer's outspoken energy, Chairman Conyers' decades of persistence and Chairman Waxman's indispensable guidance.

I am inspired daily by the citizens of this city, personified by Emory Kosh, a staff assistant in my office here in the House whose second child was born while he was serving in Iraq. Emory's military service follows in the tradition of D.C. residents, who first fought in the Revolutionary War to establish ``the Republic for which we stand,'' have fought and died for their country in every war since, and, like other Americans, have always been obliged to pay Federal income taxes, today ranking second among the 50 States and the District of Columbia in taxes paid to support the Government of the United States. Today, I come forward in their name.

Our forefathers in this city were the three Virginians who signed the Constitution and the three signers from Maryland. Yet some seriously argue that the Virginians, the Marylanders and the other Framers fresh from the Revolutionary War, waged specifically to obtain representation, contributed land where thousands of their own residents resided, some of them veterans of the Revolutionary War, and then signed away their rights in the new Constitution.

However you vote on the District's voting rights, do not slander the Framers. For two centuries, the fault has been right here in the Congress, not the flawed vision of the Framers.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the chairman of the Oversight Committee without whose leadership we could not have come to this day, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

(Mr. WAXMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the Chair of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, has the gentleman yielded back his time?

Madam Speaker, I want to end this debate by finally letting genuine constitutional scholars speak to this bill.

To guarantee the Framers' promise to the citizens of Maryland and Virginia, who contributed their land to form this Capital City, the very first Congress enforced the District clause of the Constitution by law, guaranteeing the status quo during the 10-

year transition period, and they said, by law thereafter, as memorialized in the Constitution itself.

The Framers had left Congress fully armed with ``exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatsoever,'' which former Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth Starr, who testified in favor of the bill, said, left Congress with power ``majestic in scope.''

Professor Viet Dinh, President Bush's former Attorney General for Legal Policy, his point man on the Constitution in the Ashcroft Justice Department, testified in two separate committees that the bill is constitutional. He said that since the birth of the Republic, the courts and the Congress itself have treated the District as a State in treaties and in statutes and in applying the Constitution to the city. Members who reject the views even of conservative scholars and of the Supreme Court and the Federal courts supporting their views should be confident to send this bill to a conservative Supreme Court.

Members are elected officials who can neither run nor hide behind their personal and inexpert views on the Constitution. Another branch will be held fully accountable for that weighty decision. Our decision, in just a few minutes, is just as weighty, today when the world sees us at war, we say, to spread democracy and wants to know whether we practice democracy or merely preach it. Our decision comes down to whether this House wants to be remembered for granting the vote or denying it, and whether this place will be the people's House or the House for some of the people.

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

I ask my colleagues not to be fooled. The House will give you plenty of times to vote on guns in the District of Columbia. This is not a motion to recommit, it is a motion to shoot the bill dead.

Most of the time you can vote for the motion to recommit and still save the bill. Not true here. If you vote for the motion to recommit, you will kill this bill. Please do not do it.

This matter is in the courts. No matter what we do here, it is a nullity because it is now in the Federal courts, and it is in the Federal courts, on a constitutional question, and that will rule the day.

These people are trying to kill voting rights for the District of Columbia.

They have prevailed on guns here before, they will do it again. Those of you who are for guns and for voting rights for the District of Columbia, vote against the motion to recommit or else you are voting against voting rights for the residents of the District of Columbia.

Madam Speaker, today, I introduce the District of Columbia Hatch Act Reform Act of 2007 to eliminate discriminatory treatment of the District of Columbia which still falls under the federal Hatch Act, as it did before the Congress made the District an independent jurisdiction that today enacts its own local laws. This bill would retain federal Hatch Act authority concerning prohibited partisan and political activity that applies to every state upon receipt of federal funds or functions, and importantly, would require the District to enact its own local version of the Hatch Act barring similar local violations, to become effective. This bill, of course, would automatically be held over for congressional review as required by the Home Rule Act. In any case, local Hatch Act violations in the District are rare, but the District needs its own Hatch Act to fully account and be responsible for local violations, with which only a local, objective body would be most familiar.

This bill will leave in place the federal Hatch Act restrictions that apply to other jurisdictions on the use of official authority, specifically as it relates to elections; the solicitation, acceptance, or receiving of political campaign contributions; the prohibitions on running for public office in partisan elections; and the use of on-duty time and resources to engage in partisan campaign activity where federal funds or responsibilities are involved. My bill would remove only the federal Hatch Act jurisdiction that applies solely to the District of Columbia and would require the District to have its own local Hatch Act, like every other jurisdiction, instead of requiring the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and its Special Counsel to devote staff time and other resources on investigation, fact-finding and judgment of unfamiliar local matters.

Indeed, the OPM has asked for the federal guidance my bill offers. In recent cases, OPM cited an ANC commissioner (Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner) for violations of the Hatch Act when he ran for higher office, even though ANC commissioners are ``elected officials'' under local laws. The application of the Hatch Act to ANC commissioners has been selectively enforced by OPM. For example, recently OPM filed cases charging Hatch Act violations against an ANC commissioner running for the D.C. Council but did not file when several members of the current City Council ran for the Council from positions as ANC commissioners. The present law results in possible violation of the federal Hatch Act while leaving OPM with local responsibility that does not implicate its federal jurisdiction.

The House recognized that the present federal Hatch Act jurisdiction over the District was inappropriate and obsolete by removing this federal responsibility several years ago, but the Senate failed to act. The District should bear this local responsibility. My bill will eliminate the double indignity of placing a local burden on the federal government and depriving the District of a responsibility, which only local jurisdictions familiar with local laws can be expected to handle responsibly.

The Hatch Reform Act is the third in the ``Free and Equal D.C.'' series of bills that I have introduced to eliminate anti-Home Rule or redundant bills that deprive the city of equal treatment and recognition as an independent self-governing jurisdiction.

Madam Speaker, the bipartisan bill we introduce today is a culmination of four years of during which Democrats and Republicans have worked together to accomplish a common goal for Utah and the District of Columbia. This effort has been worth every minute, as we are poised to clear the high hurdle to equal citizenship in the People's House--the House of Representatives. Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) and I have worked together on many tough bills and have gotten a fair number passed. Still, the bill we introduce today has surely been the toughest, has required the most work for us both, and has taken the most time. I am most grateful to Representative Davis who found the balance that makes this bill possible, modeled most recently on Alaska and Hawaii, both admitted to the Union in 1959 after Congress assured itself that their entry would benefit both parties. Tom Davis did not stop with his good idea but has worked relentlessly to reach this milestone. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has long fought for the rights of D.C. residents. It was she who personally insisted that this legislation go forward without delay as a bill of historic importance. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, my regional friend for years, has been an especially outspoken champion of this bill. Throughout this process Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been a central figure, making every possible effort to ensure we would reach this day. From the very beginning, Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) as a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and a member of the Judiciary Committee has fought for our full rights throughout his years in Congress, pressing all along until as chair he will now preside over the committee that will send this bill to the floor. Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. and the entire Utah delegation have been steadfast and determined throughout.

Tom and I have understood that the essential metric required bringing both parties with us, not only bipartisanship in the usual sense but equivalence, that is no partisan gain and no partisan disadvantage. We have gone through many variations, beginning with Tom's original proposal, where the D.C. House seat would have included some Maryland residents. Tom then accepted our notion that a D.C. stand-alone seat would be best and less controversial all around, and the talks and proposals proceeded. We since have tried several scenarios for moving the bill. I continued to keep my bill, the No Taxation Without Representation Act for the full representation that will never abandon until a bill agreeable to all could be fashioned.

The District of Columbia has waited 200 years to gain the equal citizenship rights they deserve and seek. The framers were clear that American citizens are entitled to equal representation in the House. Our status as second in the United States in federal income taxes that support our government argues indisputably for equivalent rights. However, in this time of war with residents serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, our bill for congressional voting rights for D.C. residents must and I believe will not be denied.

Finally, I hope I can be forgiven a personal moment. Throughout this process, I have never referred to the District's vote as my vote or what the vote would mean to me personally because it will not belong to me. I have never mentioned the special reason I personally wanted to be the first to cast that vote because this bill is for D.C. residents now and in the future, not for me. However, my 16 years in Congress has been defined by the search for some way to get full representation for the city where my family has lived since before the Civil War. That search has included the two-day debate followed by a vote on statehood more than 10 years ago, and the vote I won in the Committee of the Whole. The struggle has been driven by its own terms, by the here and now. Yet, I cannot deny the personal side of this quest, epitomized by my family of native Washingtonians, my father Coleman Holmes, my grandfather, Richard Holmes, who entered the D.C. Fire Department in 1902 and whose picture hangs in my office, a gift from the D.C. Fire Department, but especially my great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, a slave who walked off a Virginia plantation in the 1850s, made it to Washington, and settled our family here. By definition, subliminal motivation is unknown and unfelt. However, when Tom and I knew that we had reached the best agreement we could, I thought openly of my family. I thought especially of the man I never knew. I thought of Richard Holmes, a slave in the District until Lincoln freed the slaves here nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation. I thought of my great grandfather who came here in a furtive search for freedom itself, not the vote on the House floor. I thought of what a man who lived as a slave in the District, and others like him would think if his great- granddaughter becomes the first to cast the first full vote for the District of Columbia on the House floor. I hope to have the special honor of casting the vote I have sought for 16 years. I want to cast that vote for the residents of this city whom I have had the great privilege of representing and who have fought and have waited for so long. Yes, and I want to cast that vote in memory of my great- grandfather, Richard Holmes.