Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished chair and our ranking member for this bipartisan bill, and I am pleased to speak today in support of the Postal Service Reform Act. Amongst other good policy, this bill would finally get rid of the prefunding of retirement health benefits that has unnecessarily marked the U.S. Postal Service's finances in a way that other Federal agencies are not treated, nor the private sector.

Under current law, the Postal Service is required to prefund retiree health benefits for all current and retired employees for 75 years in the future. This is a unique requirement, and I am pleased that this bill that enjoys widespread support would fix this. The bill amends the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act to correct this accounting problem, allowing the Postal Service to save an astonishing $27 billion over the course of 10 years. The accounting problem led to U.S. Postal Service showing losses annually of $5.2 billion since 2007 when the U.S. Postal Service, from 2013 to 2018, instead would have shown a surplus of nearly $4 billion.

I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to note my strong concerns about delayed and undelivered mail in the District of Columbia. Throughout most of the pandemic, I have written to the Postal Service to repeatedly raise these concerns. These problems at the Postal

Service in the Nation's Capital and throughout the country need immediate attention.

I thank Congresswoman Maloney for her leadership on this important issue.

Madam Speaker, today, I rise to introduce the Protecting Federal Agencies and Employees from Political Interference Act, which would require an act of Congress before the headquarters for any federal entity located in the National Capital Region (NCR) on today's date may be moved out of the NCR. This bill is cosponsored by Representatives Anthony Brown, Gwen Moore, Jamie Raskin and David Trone.

The Trump administration moved the headquarters of agencies out of the NCR to the detriment of employees, their families and the work of these agencies. Employees who work in agency headquarters fulfill the indispensable role of keeping Congress and the president informed of agency activities. Congress cannot do its work to write laws and engage in vital oversight without the unvarnished facts that federal agencies provide. Two years after

the Department of Agriculture (USDA) relocated the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, they are operating with roughly 30% fewer employees, with former USDA Director of Communications Matt Herrick admitting that these agencies had ``lost some of the nation's best economists and agricultural scientists.''

Furthermore, nearly 300 employees retired or quit after the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) moved its headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. The Biden administration's return of BLM headquarters to our nation's capital is greatly appreciated and will go a long way to restore the valuable expertise that has been lost.

While I do not expect the Biden administration to move agencies out of the NCR, this bill would protect against irrational decisions of future presidents. Unless measures like this bill are taken to stop agencies from relocating, the federal government will lose more employees and agencies will be unable to perform critical tasks, including assisting Congress in vital oversight.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, today, I introduce the District of Columbia Special Elections Home Rule Act. This bill would give the District of Columbia complete authority to set the date of special elections for local offices, like other jurisdictions. This bill simply removes a D.C. Home Rule Act limitation on the District that is not only inconsistent with the self-government granted by the Home Rule Act, but is also counterproductive.

This bill follows legislation we got enacted in 2012 that gave the D.C. Board of Elections (``Board'') more flexibility to set the date of special elections for local offices to maximize voter participation. Although we sought complete authority for the District over the scheduling of special elections, the 2012 law, the District of Columbia Special Election Reform Act, did not include this home-rule principle. D.C. should have complete authority over a matter that is unrelated to any other congressional district and has no relevance to Congress.

The Home Rule Act originally required the Board to hold special elections on the first Tuesday occurring more than 114 days after a vacancy and allowed the Board to schedule special elections on the same day as the next general election if that election occurred within 60 days from when a special election would otherwise have been held. This inflexibility led to special elections being held on religious holidays and forced the District to hold a special election separate from an upcoming general election, costing the District hundreds of thousands of dollars. The 2012 law requires the Board to hold a special election on a Tuesday occurring between 70 and 174 days after a vacancy.

This bill is an important step to perfect home rule for the District. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, today, I introduce the District of Columbia Government Title Equality Act. This bill would amend the D.C. Home Rule Act to redesignate the Mayor of the District of Columbia as the Governor, the D.C. Council as the Legislative Assembly, the D.C. Councilmembers as Representatives and the Chair of the Council as the Speaker. The new titles are the ones used in the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth constitution, which the District adopted in 2016 in anticipation of passage of the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, which would make D.C. the 51st state.

I introduce this bill to highlight to the American people and Members of Congress that there would be a seamless transition to D.C. statehood because D.C. already operates as the functional equivalent of a state, providing state-, county- and city-level services, despite being denied voting representation in Congress and full local self-government.

This bill would not change any D.C. legal authorities.

This is an important step to provide greater equality for the District, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, today, I introduce a bill that would amend the District of Columbia Home Rule Act (HRA) to permit the Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia to transmit legislation to Congress in the form of the Chairman's choosing, including in electronic form. This bill seeks to modernize the method D.C. legislation is transmitted to Congress for the congressional review period.

The HRA requires that D.C. legislation be transmitted to Congress for a congressional review period before the legislation can take effect. The legislation takes effect after a review period, unless a resolution of disapproval is enacted into law during the review period. While the HRA is silent on the method that the Chairman must use to transmit the legislation, House and Senate precedent require that the legislation be physically transmitted to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. Physical transmittal imposes costs in terms of time on the Council, the House and Senate Parliamentarians, the Speaker, the President of the Senate, the House Clerk, the Senate Secretary, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. When the HRA was enacted in 1973, email did not exist.

The Council engages in a 12-step process to comply with the physical transmittal requirement:

Step 1: Write individualized cover letters.

Step 2: The Chairman physically signs the cover letters.

Step 3: Arrange a pick-up time of the legislation and cover letters from the Chairman.

Step 4: Print two copies of the bill and two copies of the committee report to deliver to the Speaker and to the President of the Senate.

Step 5: Arrange a time for delivery to the Speaker's office.

Step 6: Arrange a time for delivery to the President of the Senate's office.

Step 7: Arrange for two D.C. employees to drive to the Capitol. (Two staffers are required because parking restrictions require a driver and a delivery person.)

Step 8: Drive to the Capitol.

Step 9: Deliver the legislation to the Speaker's office and get a signed receipt.

Step 10: Deliver the legislation to the President of the Senate's office and get a signed receipt.

Step 11: Assign the congressional review period based on the receipts.

Step 12: File the signed receipts.

The aftermath of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol highlighted the burdens of physical transmittal. After temporary fencing was installed around the Capitol, staff from the D.C. Council could not enter the Capitol, delaying the transmittal of legislation until Council staff and congressional staff developed a workaround. Council staff and congressional staff met outside the fencing so the Council staff could physically transmit the legislation.

Today, when we live in the era of e-mail, there is no reason to continue to require an increasingly ancient process, when these documents could be transmitted electronically instead, saving a tremendous amount of time and effort. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill.

Madam Speaker, today, I introduce the District of Columbia National Guard Commanding General Residency Act, which would require the Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard to reside in D.C. Last year, I introduced a substantially similar version of this bill, but I am introducing this version for committee jurisdiction reasons. This bill is even more important now because my provision in the House's National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 (NDAA) that would have given the D.C. mayor control over the D.C. National Guard was removed from the enacted NDAA.

The D.C. National Guard is a federal entity, and the Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard is a federal official. The Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard is not required to reside in D.C. Congress has justifiably required that certain Federal officials reside in the jurisdiction they serve to ensure in-depth knowledge of the unique issues and challenges residents and Federal officials face. The President controls the D.C. National Guard, including the appointment of the Commanding General. In the states and territories, the governors control their National Guards, the top official in the National Guard is usually appointed by the governor and the top official can be required to live in the jurisdiction. All of these are compelling reasons why the Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard should be required to be a D.C. resident.

This bill follows in the footsteps of several other bills that I have introduced that would require certain federal officials serving D.C. exclusively to reside in D.C. My District of Columbia Federal Officials Residency Equality Act (H.R. 3786) would require the Federal district court judges, Federal circuit court judges, the U.S. Attorney and the U.S. Marshals for D.C. to reside in D.C. I have also introduced a bill (H.R. 4393) that would require the Director of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia and the Director of the District of Columbia Pretrial Services Agency to reside in D.C.

With the most recent permanent D.C. National Guard Commanding General, Major General William J. Walker, now serving as the House Sergeant at Arms, leaving a vacancy in the position of Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard, this bill is more timely than ever. Moreover, the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the events at Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, are prime examples of why this bill is so important. Residents of the District would feel more confident in the D.C. National Guard if the Commanding General were required to be a D.C. resident.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the McIntire-Stennis Act District of Columbia Equality Act, which would correct an apparent oversight in the exclusion of the District of Columbia from eligibility for funding under the McIntire-Stennis Act (Act).

The Act provides the states and certain territories with formula funding to support state-designated institutions' cooperative forestry research programs. The funding available under this Act assists the states and territories in carrying out forestry research programs at state forestry schools and colleges and developing a trained pool of forest scientists capable of conducting needed forestry research.

District of Columbia residents pay full federal taxes, and with few exceptions, the District is treated as a state under federal programs. This Act defines ``State'' to include Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam, whose residents do not pay full federal taxes. The District's absence from the Act makes it ineligible for federal funding that would support research at the District's public university, the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). The College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences at UDC, the nation's only urban land-grant university, offers programs that complement D.C.'s ongoing forestry efforts and serve individuals in my district and beyond. Rectifying the District's exclusion from this Act would ensure its equitable treatment and provide UDC a fair share of resources.

The District should be eligible under this Act just like the states and territories. This bill would allow students and researchers in the nation's capital to benefit from this important forestry program. I urge support for this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce a bill that would statutorily add the District of Columbia to the national empowerment zone program, which provides federal tax incentives for businesses to locate and invest in low-income areas. In 1993, Congress created the national empowerment zone program and left it to federal agencies to designate a certain number of low-income areas as empowerment zones. The District was not one of the areas selected. However, in 1997, working primarily with Republicans in Congress, I created federal tax incentives for investment in the District by businesses and individuals. The business incentives were similar to, but more generous than, those available under the national empowerment zone program. I got the D.C. incentives reauthorized regularly until 2011, when Congress refused to extend only the D.C. incentives. At the same time, the national empowerment zone program continued to be extended and was last extended through 2025. Under my bill, certain low-income neighborhoods, particularly in Wards 5, 7 and 8, would be treated as empowerment zones as long as the national empowerment zone program remains in effect.

The wisdom of the bipartisan, modest, targeted business tax incentives for D.C. has been amply and visibly demonstrated in the economic resurgence of parts of the nation's capital where they were utilized. Among the most visible examples are the formerly rundown area around Capital One Arena, which is now surrounded by offices, restaurants and

vibrant nightlife, and the Penn Quarter neighborhood, which had limited residential, commercial and retail spaces, and is now a popular mixed- use neighborhood.

Unfortunately, the D.C. tax incentives were allowed to expire before the poorest D.C. neighborhoods were ready to make use of them, especially in Wards 5, 7 and 8. Withdrawing the D.C. tax incentives, particularly after they had proven to be effective, has left the nation's capital with essentially half of a revival, and was tragically timed just as the lower-income parts of the District, which need the incentives most, are ready for redevelopment. The effectiveness of these incentives for the District has been demonstrated and their costs have been de minimis compared to the measurable benefits they have generated in the District.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, today, I introduce the District of Columbia Courts Home Rule Act. This bill would give the Council of the District of Columbia authority over the jurisdiction and organization of the local D.C. courts. The D.C. Home Rule Act (HRA) expressly prohibits the Council from enacting any law with respect to any provision of the D.C. Code title that relates to the local D.C. courts. Congress can correct this injustice to the District's federal taxpaying residents by amending the HRA, even before the District becomes the 51st state.

Forty-eight years after passage of the HRA, matters involving the local D.C. courts almost never come to Congress, so Congress knows virtually nothing about the District's local courts--and could not care less. Notwithstanding the importance of D.C. 's local courts to District residents, the D.C. Council, which is the repository of knowledge and experience for the District's criminal and civil justice systems and the body accountable to our residents, is irresponsibly left on the sidelines while Congress remains the sole entity that may correct flaws in the District's local courts.

Under the HRA, the Council has no authority to ``enact any act, resolution, or rule with respect to any provision of title 11 of the District of Columbia Code (relating to organization and jurisdiction of the District of Columbia courts).'' Matters in title 11 are limited primarily to the rules of criminal and civil procedure, court administration, the branches of the courts, the rules of jury service and admission to the bar. Our bill would strike this limitation on the Council's authority.

The District has never had authority over its local courts, even when it was responsible for paying for their operations. Under the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997, the federal government assumed the costs for several state-level functions, including the courts because the federal government alone has jurisdiction over the courts. This bill would not change the courts' funding. This bill also would not change the authority of the President to nominate, or the Senate to confirm, local D.C. judges, which has been within their purview since the creation of the modem local court system in 1970.

This bill is an important step to increase democratic self-government for the District. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, today, I rise to congratulate Howard University Radio (WHUR) on its 50th anniversary.

After the Washington Post donated WTOP to Howard University, the rebranded WHUR debuted on December 10, 1971, with the mission of ``Delivering Excellence In Broadcasting and Community Service.''

In January 2004, WHUR was the first radio station in the District of Columbia metropolitan area to convert to digital broadcasting. In September 2016, the station was named ``Urban Station of the Year'' by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Today, WHUR broadcasts to nearly half a million listeners across five states and the District and is one of the few commercial radio stations in the United States that is owned and operated by an institution of higher education.

I ask the House of Representatives to join me in recognizing WHUR for 50 years of providing culturally enriching content to the District of Columbia and the surrounding communities. I wish WHUR many more years of success.

Madam Speaker, this month's job report gives Americans something to cheer about. Unemployment is down a full 2 percentage points under Democratic congressional and Presidential leadership since President Biden took office. The corollary to this impressive unemployment figure is the record 6 million jobs created, a record for a new President.

With the signing of the new transportation and infrastructure bill, more jobs, for example, in my own district, the District of Columbia, are on the way--$1.1 billion for roads and bridges.

Build Back Better promises even more economic dividends. Analysts say Build Back Better is the biggest cost-cutting bill for the middle class in modern American history. With costs down, job growth will be spurred.

Democrats are creating a new economy featuring record jobs for the American people.

Madam Speaker, today, I introduce a bill that would exempt from federal government shutdowns the federal and independent civil and criminal justice system law enforcement agencies that are exclusively or primarily federally funded but have exclusive jurisdiction over District of Columbia matters. This bill is modeled on a provision I have been able to get enacted each year since the 2013 federal government shutdown to exempt the D.C. government from federal government shutdowns.

This bill would exempt the following agencies from federal government shutdowns: Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for D.C., D.C. Courts, D.C. Public Defender Service, D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure, D.C. Judicial Nomination Commission and D.C. Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. With one exception, these agencies are not under the District's control and are funded exclusively by the federal government. The D.C. Criminal Justice Coordinating Council is an independent agency within the D.C. government with federal members that is primarily, but not exclusively, funded by the federal government. These agencies provide critical local services to the District, including law enforcement, and should continue to function during a federal government shutdown.

Each of these agencies has been adversely affected by federal government shutdowns, including canceled services and furloughed employees. My bill would allow these agencies to continue to function during a federal government shutdown, in much the same way that the D.C. government itself is now exempt from shutting down during a federal government shutdown. I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the District of Columbia Transportation Funding Equality Act. This bill would make the District of Columbia eligible for two federal programs that support the development and revitalization of public transportation systems in the same manner that states are currently eligible for these programs. D.C. residents pay the same federal taxes as residents of the states, and D.C. should be treated as a state in federal programs.

First, the bill would treat D.C. as a state in the High-Density States Formula for certain grants from the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund. Currently, only states are eligible for these grants. Second, the bill would treat D.C. as a state under the Grants for Buses and Bus Facilities program. Currently, each state is authorized to receive $1.75 million annually and each of D.C. and the territories are authorized to receive $500,000 annually.

The programs in the bill fund the modernization of bus and rail fleets, the purchase of zero-emission transit vehicles, the improvement of station accessibility for all users and the extension of transit service to new communities. They especially benefit communities of color, since these households are twice as likely to use public transportation.

The House-passed surface transportation reauthorization act, the INVEST in America Act, would have made D.C. eligible for these two programs in the same manner as states. Unfortunately, the enacted surface transportation reauthorization act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which the Senate wrote, did not.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill to provide funding for effective, efficient and sustainable transportation options for D.C. in same manner as states.

Madam Speaker, I thank both of my friends for their kind remarks on my bill, the Women Who Worked on the Home Front World War II Memorial Act. As my friend has just said, this is really an unusual bill because it came to me from a fifth grader. I am particularly pleased and proud to speak in favor of her bill, the Women Who Worked on the Home Front World War II Memorial Act. This is all her idea, including getting the funds for the memorial.

This bill would authorize the establishment of a memorial on Federal land in the District of Columbia commemorating the efforts of the 18 million American women who kept the home front running during World War

Madam Speaker, Democrats in the House have much to be proud of as we approach the end of the year.

In the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, we have passed two of the most significant bills in the history of the House of Representatives-- the Transportation and Infrastructure bill and President Biden's Build Back Better bill.

I chaired the Highways and Transit Subcommittee and I was pleased to attend President Biden's signing of the bill at the White House. The bill directs $39 billion to public transportation--like D.C.'s Metro-- expands broadband, and funds replacing lead service pipes.

Our Build Back Better bill is an omnibus bill that catches up with years of needs Congress has failed to meet, from affordable childcare that will free women and men to work, to combating climate change, a clear and present danger to the planet.

It would be difficult to find more significant bills passed by the House of Representatives in a single session.