Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this afternoon because of a threat, a rare threat, because this seldom happens in the House anymore, but a threat from at least one Member of this House to try to nullify a local initiative approved by the voters of the District of Columbia.

But when it comes to the lawful initiative for District of Columbia citizens, that is a threat to democracy that means that anyone who represents this city, has to come to the floor and to indicate to Members how important it is to hold fast to your own principles.

Wherever you stand on the District of Columbia or any of the underlying issues, this is the local jurisdiction of 650,000 people who pay taxes without full representation in this House.

So I am asking Members of the House not to take advantage of an anachronism in the law which does allow Members of the House to step forward, if they are so inclined, to try to get others to join them in nullifying the local laws of a local jurisdiction. If one reads the history of our country, it is hard to find anything more un-American.

That is why, particularly, I have to thank the bipartisan group of Members who stood with me yesterday, three Members of this House--two Democrats and a Republican--who themselves come from States that have taken action on the underlying issue, one that is rapidly developing in our country where the States differ among themselves. But since each State is, as a local or State matter, a government unto itself, those matters don't come before this House.

The Members who stood with me yesterday were Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, which has approved a ballot initiative just this past election day, that legalized small amounts of marijuana; Representative Jared Polis of Colorado, his was the first State to legalize small amounts of marijuana; and Dana Rohrabacher of California, who is perhaps the recognized leader in the House of Representatives and in the country for reform of marijuana laws.

Alaska and Oregon joined two other States, Washington and Colorado, and yes, a third, the District of Columbia, approved the legalization of marijuana in small amounts. I am going to indicate to the House how that came about because it didn't come about in the usual way. There were pressing concerns that led the District to move to decriminalize and then legalize small amounts of marijuana.

In fact, the D.C. Council, upon hearing concerns about disparities in arrests and convictions based on race, had moved to decriminalize marijuana with a small fine; whereas, before, there was a penalty of up to 6 months in jail and up to a $1,000 fine. After the council passed that decriminalization law--and 18 States have decriminalized--then some residents put legalization on the November ballot.

Now the people have spoken. Two-thirds of the residents of the District of Columbia say that the council did not go far enough, and they have, I think, among them a number of reasons that I will try to indicate on the floor this afternoon why they thought they had to go further.

I indicated that there are and already were States that had legalized marijuana, and the Justice Department has taken the position and took it again at a hearing on the D.C. decriminalization law that the District will be treated like the States that have relaxed their marijuana laws--in our case, 2 ounces of marijuana for personal use.

And the position of the Justice Department--and I will indicate later why the Justice Department has taken that position--has been that, as a matter of prosecutorial priority, the Justice Department, the U.S. attorneys of the United States are not in the business of prosecuting people who smoke small amounts of marijuana.

So the District is to be treated in the same way as the States who have either decriminalized or legalized marijuana. The Justice Department is on record in a hearing saying that--and we appreciate that the District is not to be treated differently when it comes to Federal enforcement, any differently than, for example, Oregon, Colorado, and Alaska, and you don't see the Justice Department rushing forward to prosecute what will almost always be young people for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

Particularly for new Members, I want to make clear that there is an anomaly here, an anachronism, because the House does still have the authority to step forward and nullify the local laws of the District of Columbia. That goes back hundreds of years, and the fact that anybody would attempt to use that authority today flies in the face of 200 years of history and democratization in our country.

It is interesting to know that the Member who has stepped forward to stop D.C. thus far is a sophomore. I want to thank Members of Congress who recognize that they have the authority and who may disagree with the District but have not in fact moved to nullify local law. This really isn't where you stand on the law. It is whether you believe local jurisdictions should have what the Framers believed all should have throughout the United States, and that is the right to pass local laws without interference by the Federal Government.

That is the principle at stake here. That is why we rarely have Members step forward to try to nullify a law of the District of Columbia, and I am very grateful that principle for most Members is almost always observed.

Now, I want to make something very clear: I am not here this afternoon to make a case for the use of marijuana; I am here to make a case only for local control of local law.

If you were to ask my preference, and obviously, I am obligated to support the laws of my local jurisdiction here, but if you were to ask my preference, I would say to you, in all candor, that I don't believe Americans should smoke anything.

We know that millions of lives were lost needlessly because people didn't know about the deadly effects--I think I do not speak inaccurately when I say the ``deadly effects''--of cigarette smoking. Cigarette manufacturers are still paying the price with millions of dollars--billions of dollars that they have had to pay States in order to make up for essentially hiding information on the effects of cigarette smoking.

Frankly, there is much investigation still to be done about cannabis. We certainly can't say it is good for your health, except for medical marijuana.

Representative Rohrabacher yesterday spoke of a constituent whose son had come back from Iraq and had seizures and other problems emanating from his service, and no amount of medicine had done him any good. He was able to get a prescription for medical marijuana, and it controlled the problem.

Yet, by the way, although there have been bills introduced, the VA could not have prescribed medical marijuana to that veteran.

So I can't make the case for the underlying issue. In fact, there is evidence of harm to the brains of children. The bills that have passed the States are for adults only, people over 21. I am not even making the case for them. We need to know a lot more about marijuana, a substance that is breathed in deeply.

However, I tell you this much: I cannot make a case at all for a drug conviction for smoking marijuana in small amounts. That is where it seems to me that there is increasing agreement by the American people.

Just look at the latest polls. 54 percent approve legalization. I don't think they approve of legalization because they smoke cannabis; I think they approve of legalization because they don't believe people ought to be convicted of a drug offense for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

There is very good news. The reason we always speak of marijuana and young people is because, apparently, people tend to outgrow the use of marijuana. As young adults leave college and become more mature, they tend to smoke very little of anything today and no longer marijuana. You don't see lots of middle-aged people talking about marijuana either.

I wish I could say that their parents had outgrown alcohol, that people could outgrow alcohol, which is a legal substance that destroys lives, the lives of individuals, lives of entire families. Some become addicted to the substance, but if all you do is use it and

get drunk and don't hurt anybody, then of course you are not convicted of a crime.

A Member of this House, Representative Andy Harris, makes the case for nullification of the D.C. law based on harm to young people; except, of course, the law doesn't allow young people to smoke, and it is interesting to know that Representative Polis said, because it is legal in Colorado, that smoking among juveniles in Colorado has gone down. I asked why.

He said it is because Colorado is wiping out the illegal market and kids have to go to that illegal market to get marijuana--and to a very illegal market to get it because some are under 21, so young people are smoking less and less in Colorado.

I don't think you can make the case against freedom and liberty based on children here, where we are talking about a substance for adults, and not when the District of Columbia already has introduced a bill called the Marijuana Use Public Information Campaign, which Council Member Tommy Wells has put on a fast track for passage. I like the bill that Council Member Wells is taking through the council. It would include education forums for each ward of the city. There are eight wards.

It is trying to get to people where they live, educating the public on what we do know of the impact of marijuana use and abuse. The bill requires that the Mayor report to the council on the type and the frequency and the provider and school age level of public school health education programs related to substance abuse, including marijuana use, and of course alcohol and tobacco.

Again, not making the case that I cannot in honesty make, I do want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that marijuana is still classified under Schedule I, and that is the schedule for the most dangerous drugs.

Marijuana is scheduled in the same category as heroin and LSD and ecstasy, even though the science we know today tells us that the addictive qualities of cannibis are nowhere near the same; worse, marijuana is scheduled above cocaine.

Now, if you want to know a drug that has torn big cities and suburbs alike apart, it would be cocaine. So cannibis is more dangerous, according to the scheduling of drugs, than cocaine and methadon and OxyContin.

Well, young people know that is not the case. The young people who smoke and then outgrow marijuana know that is not the case, so they don't pay any attention to the law.

And as I shall indicate, the laws don't pay much attention to them because most of them do not face the possibility of conviction. They don't face conviction, and I want to emphasize this because, when you consider law enforcement, it is impossible not to recognize that State and local law enforcement officials and Federal law enforcement officials, have virtually ceased to enforce the laws that make marijuana a Schedule I drug offense--but some people do get arrested.

I have already indicated that the Justice Department has said that it will not prosecute people for possession of small amounts. U.S. attorneys in Democratic and Republican administrations for years now-- there are many who have never prosecuted anyone for small amounts of marijuana.

In effect, that means that marijuana is so widely used, has caused so little in the way of known harmful effects, that it is, today, de facto legal. That is why young people take the risk.

If that is the case, if convictions rarely occur, let's look at what happens when arrests and convictions do occur.

What led the District of Columbia to pass its law, its first law, the decriminalization law, were two studies done by outside organizations, two reputable organizations: the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the American Civil Liberties Union. They found that while Whites and Blacks use marijuana at the same rate, 9 out of 10 arrests are of African Americans. This city is half White and half Black.

The people of the District of Columbia have decided that decriminalization alone would not undo this outrageous disparity. A conviction on your record for marijuana is a conviction for a schedule 1 drug offense. And it doesn't matter; the word ``drug'' is what matters. That record can sentence, for example, a young Black man or woman or young Hispanics to a lifetime of underemployment or unemployment. Indeed, if there is enough underemployment and unemployment, a drug conviction for a small amount of marijuana can lead some further to a life where drugs become, in their view, the only way to make a living at all. So for them it can be a gateway drug precisely because the marijuana arrest or conviction has simply stopped their lives.

So when the council understood that 9 out of 10 arrests were of African Americans, it could not justify keeping that law on the books. And I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I have now had, for 10 years, a Commission on Black Men and Boys and am cochair of a Congressional Caucus on Black Men and Boys because of issues like this that affect young men of color. Such a conviction can ruin a young man's life for work. If it makes work impossible or work possible only in the underground or the illegal economy, then it ruins his life for marriage and for children and for stability in the community.

The D.C. Commission on Black Men and Boys and the Congressional Caucus on Black Men and Boys, of course, look at issues across the board, but there are serious concerns about disparities of this kind that affect men and essentially take them out of the African American community, out of the Hispanic community, and make them men apart. Marijuana use is simply one example.

And again I point out, it is not that people of color use marijuana at a greater rate than their counterparts of the same age who are White. It is who gets arrested. Whether that is in the ordinary course of law enforcement, intentional or not, those are the facts.

The interesting thing about the investigations by the independent organizations in the District, is that they find that these statistics showing hugely disparate treatment of people of color from other Americans on marijuana convictions and arrest are by no means confined to the District of Columbia. It is a nationwide phenomenon. If only a tiny minority are arrested and they turn out to be people of color, you have a classic case of racial discrimination.

I note that I have been joined on the floor by a very good friend from Nevada (Ms. Titus). I am pleased to yield to her.

Well, Ms. Titus, I must say I thank you for coming to the floor, but I particularly thank you and congratulate you for the extensive homework you have done educating yourself before you took a position on this issue. It is something to be emulated.

I do want to say, when you spoke of the need for further investigation, and particularly when you considered how many veterans with PTSD and other ailments may benefit from medical marijuana, it is worth noting that marijuana is so sharply regulated and restricted that we have not even been able to do the studies necessary to find out what is wrong with it or what is right with it. For example, medical marijuana cries out for studies. If, in fact, the anecdotal evidence is to be believed, that in itself should lead to Federal studies by the NIH and federally funded studies.

What are we afraid of? We need to know more about this substance. And on the negative side, we know that it has some harmful effects on the brain for children. We need to know more about it for adults. Why would the Federal Government not be out front, considering how widely used this substance is?

If the government had done the kind of homework you had, Ms. Titus, I think we would be much further ahead. Thank you very much for coming to the floor with all of that useful information from your own study.

I particularly appreciate your supporting the District's home rule and the right to pass its own local laws without Federal interference. I thought that was what both Democrats and Republicans believed. I thought that was the contention of Republicans that want to get the Federal Government even out of Federal matters. I thought they would be my natural allies to say, ``Big foot Federal Government, don't mess with any local jurisdiction.'' Yes, even here in the District of Columbia.

In July, the District's marijuana decriminalization bill took effect. I should note that the District passed medical marijuana earlier with one of the strictest sets of regulations in the United States. Our council has shown it knows how to handle these issues.

The threat that has been made is to use our local budget. Now, if you want to know insult on top of injury, you ask what is our local budget doing here? We are talking about $6 billion raised in the District of Columbia locally from businesses and residents. It comes here, again, because of an anomaly.

Although the District got home rule 40 years ago, there was still the obligation to bring its balanced budget here, where there is no balanced budget. Well, it has resulted in shutdowns of the District of Columbia more than once. It has been responsible for the fact that the District pays a premium on Wall Street because our budget has to be passed by another body that knows nothing about our budget. And to its credit, the Appropriations Committee doesn't even have hearings on our budget because it doesn't intend to overturn our budget. But it does allow people to come forward and use the budget as a vehicle for attachments to try to nullify our local laws. It is rarely done--and I appreciate that--because Members, in their own forbearance, have tended not to do that. But we do have a threat on this bill.

Now, the House did pass an amendment to block D.C.'s decriminalization bill. Representative Harris offered it in committee. And this amendment was not included, I am pleased to say, in the fiscal year 2015 short-term resolution or in the Senate's fiscal year 2015 D.C. appropriation bill. You see, there is a real difference here, and I hope that the House, in contempla-

tion, will understand it also should go with liberty and freedom for the local jurisdiction.

The administration has issued a statement of policy that it strongly opposes the amendment that passed the House. And it did so. And here I am quoting its words:

Because it violates principles of states' rights and of

District home rule.

Mr. Speaker, I know that the District is not even a pioneer when it comes to marijuana decriminalization or legalization. Yet it is the District that is singled out. There has been no Federal interference. No one has come to this floor who may disagree with the notion of legalization to call down the States that have legalized or decriminalized. And I think the reason is because there is simply no principled way for Members who 100 percent believe in local control to call out the States that may have taken their own route different from the other States and the District.

There is just no principled way to do anything with respect to what those States have done because those are local matters or State matters. Therefore, for the District, it is particularly painful not to be respected because the District has no vote on this floor.

When the bill containing the Andy Harris amendment was passed, everybody in the House could vote on it except the Member who represents the District of Columbia, because I have no vote even on matters affecting the District of Columbia. When the Democrats controlled the House, I would have had a vote on amendments to appropriations bills because they occur in the committee of the whole, but even that was taken away. So every Member got to vote on a matter affecting only my district except the one Member that the District sends to the Congress, and that is why I come to the floor.

We pay $12,000 per capita in Federal taxes. Keep that figure in mind because that is the highest per capita figure in Federal taxes paid by any jurisdiction. The lowest in Federal taxes happens to be Mississippi. I point out the difference because I think Mississippi pays about $4,000 per capita. The District pays $12,000 per capita.

So you can imagine if you support the Federal Government at this rate and you have no vote on the House floor and others have a vote that could take away your laws, you perhaps have every reason to be concerned.

May I ask how much time I have remaining?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When I say that there is no principled position except the American position that local jurisdictions must have complete autonomy to deal with local matters, I can offer at least one very prominent example.

Senator Rand Paul was asked what he thought about the District's marijuana legalization initiative. And I want to quote him. Senator Paul said:

I'm not for having the Federal Government get involved. I

really haven't taken a stand on the actual legalization, but

I'm against the Federal Government telling them they can't.

This is a classic principled position because Senator Paul hasn't taken a position on the underlying issue. He has only taken a position consistent with his views, and what I thought were the views of my Republican and Democratic colleagues alike, that the Federal Government shouldn't tell a local jurisdiction that it can't do what is, in this case, de facto legal, because the Federal Government does not prosecute. All I am asking Members to do is to take the same principled position that Senator Paul has taken.

Notwithstanding Senator Paul's position, Representative Harris has said that he will try to insert language into the omnibus bill to block legalization in D.C. Well, I am going to try to keep him from doing that. But isn't it interesting to note that Representative Harris couldn't keep his own State, Maryland, from decriminalizing marijuana, and so he hops over into my jurisdiction to do what he couldn't do in the State where he has authority. Well, we are not going to have it.

Representative Rohrabacher and I disagree on any number of things. That is why I was pleased to have him stand with me. But what he said is interesting because he has the longest history of fighting for marijuana reform. I want to quote him. He called on Members of his own party to ``wake up and see where the American people are.''

Representative Rohrabacher is from conservative Orange County. He says he believes that his position on marijuana reform may have helped him to gain 5 points in the last election. He says that he thinks that GOP principles about individual liberty and limited Federal Government are completely consistent with his own views on marijuana, and certainly consistent with his own philosophy. I cite Representative Rohrabacher and Senator Rand Paul because they have taken positions that I do not believe are inconsonant with the positions of their party.

People are fond of saying that this is not a partisan issue. Well, I guess it is because the parties have not come together on it. What is not a partisan issue, however, is local control of local laws.

I want to note what my good friend from Nevada referred to. Representative Rohrabacher and a Democrat, Sam Farr, succeeded in passing an amendment in this House, this very Congress, that would keep the Justice Department from intervening in States that have legalized medical marijuana. This matter passed in a Republican House.

The fact is that the Justice Department has indicated that it will not intervene--and it has not intervened--when it comes to medical marijuana or recreational use of medical marijuana when we are talking about small amounts. And yet the House came forward and indicated where it stands, and that is where I think the country is going and where the House is going.

But there is an important issue still pending--one that this House has passed and I urge the Senate to pass, along with the Rohrabacher- Farr bill--and that is a bill that is sponsored by Representative Blumenauer and Representative Rohrabacher, who were joined at a press conference by Grover Norquist, who, of course, is the antitax advocate. Their bill passed this House. It would change Federal tax law so that State-sanctioned providers can claim deductions and credits as other businesses do.

I am sorry I said that passed. This did not pass. This is pending. What did pass is an amendment that would no longer penalize financial institutions because they provide financial services to State- sanctioned marijuana operations. Now, you can imagine those operations now must deal in cash because the banks and the financial institutions are afraid to deal with them.

This amendment, which is perhaps the most urgent of the reforms, did pass the House, and I think it, again, shows growing recognition of where the country is and where the House should be headed.

It is worth noting that just hearing the names of the States that have decriminalized marijuana, I think, makes the case for where the country is headed. This is decriminalization alone. States that have done so, in alphabetical order, have red and blue running right through the list. I am talking decriminalizing marijuana for small amounts.

They are Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. They have nothing in common except they don't convict people for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

The Congress, 40 years ago, passed the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. That act says that matters of local law are for the District alone. It was a landmark law. We intend to have it respected.

There were some exceptions. They were very small, and I can guarantee you that there were no exceptions of the kind that I have spoken about today.

Legalization in the District of Columbia comes from the direct votes of two-thirds of the people in my district; therefore, it comes with a very special mandate. It comes with a mandate of freedom and liberty, and it comes with a very special mandate that the country will probably increasingly note, and that special mandate is the disparity in arrests based on race, where 9 out of 10 of the arrests are of blacks in, by the way, a progressive city.

It is very hard to justify such a law remaining on the books. That is why I think the people went all the way to legalization.

So what I am asking this afternoon is for House Members to remember your own States and the States of your colleagues that have taken action in one form or another to relax marijuana laws, and I am asking for all of the residents of the District of Columbia simply the same ordinary privilege.

I particularly ask, not only our own Members, but Members who I think would particularly want to take note in the other body because in that body are found the Senators who represent the 23 States that have passed medical marijuana laws, the 18 States that have passed marijuana decriminalization laws, and the four States that have legalized marijuana.

It is difficult for me to see how the other body, which has States which have relaxed marijuana in this way, could possibly vote not to give equal treatment to the residents of the District of Columbia.

So, Mr. Speaker, at bottom, I am asking only for equality of treatment for the residents of the District of Columbia. I come in that spirit only. I don't ask for your support for the underlying matter.

I ask for your support on the one issue in which I believe I can say Members in this body, to the last Member, are in agreement, and that is, since the very founding of our country, the principle that holds us together is federalism, that what happens in a State may not be what we would desire or do in our own, but if it is a local matter and if it is legal and constitutional, then it is for the people of that State.

Mr. Speaker, that is the essence of freedom and democracy. I ask in that spirit for the same respect for the people of the District of Columbia that I would give to the people of every State of the Union.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 49 minutes

p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, November 17, 2014, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, thank you to the two Democratic Representatives, Blumenauer and Polis, and Republican Representative Rohrabacher who stood with the District of Columbia for letting our marijuana reform bill stand today.

Although Blacks and Whites smoke pot at the same rate, the majority of those convicted of possession of small amounts in the District of Columbia and nationwide are Black. Your State may not be counted among the 58 percent of Americans who want cannabis legalized. D.C. doesn't ask you to support marijuana. D.C. asks only that the Congress respect our local marijuana initiative, which is every bit as much a local control matter as the decision made by four other States on this very same issue.

Mr. Speaker, today, I introduce a bill that would amend section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to prohibit tax-exempt status to professional sports leagues that promote or allow a member club or franchise connected to that league to promote the use of the term ``Redskins.'' Senator Maria Cantwell has introduced the same bill in the Senate.

Currently, the National Football League (NFL) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(6) ``business league'' organization that receives tax-exempt status. It is the nation's largest sports franchise, generating almost $10 billion annually. Unlike some of its counterparts--the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball, for example--it operates as a nonprofit, which allows for its profits to trickle down to its 32 teams, including the Washington football team.

Over 300 tribes and two million Native Americans, as well as religious and human rights organizations, have called on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Daniel Snyder, the Washington football team owner, to change the name of the Washington football team because the name and mascot insult native people. In addition, several media outlets around the country no longer print or use the term ``Redskins'' when referring to the Washington football team because the term is offensive.

On June 18, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, in a landmark decision (Blackhorse v. Pro Football, Inc.), found the name used by the Washington football team to be disparaging to Native Americans and not deserving of trademark protection, and cancelled federal trademark protection for the ``Redskins'' trademarks. While the ruling did not persuade Daniel Snyder or Roger Goodell to change the name, the ruling has the potential to affect the profits received from the sale of the team's merchandise.

American taxpayers have been subsidizing a multibillion dollar league that promotes what has now been officially found to be a racial slur for profitable gain. Relief from taxes should no longer be given to a league that profits from the continued use of a racial slur, which degrades some Americans. As an organization that enjoys tax-exempt benefits, the NFL also has a duty to American taxpayers to

ensure that its teams are not promoting or benefitting from a racial slur. This bill would revoke the tax-exempt status of professional sports leagues that choose to continue to use the offensive and derogatory term ``Redskins.''

Because this bill only revokes the tax-exempt status of leagues that promote the use of the term ``Redskins,'' it would not affect other leagues that fall under the same 501(c)(6) tax exemption such as the Professional Golfers Association and the National Hockey League.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this important legislation. I am pleased to join my colleagues in support of H.R. 4194, the Government Reports Elimination Act, as amended. I also want to thank my good friend, Chairman Darrell Issa, for his bipartisan approach to this bill. This bill will bring greater efficiency to the overall government of the United States.

Congress often requires reports from executive branch agencies, and these reports can be a valuable tool to scrutinize performance and assess agency goals. However, with the passage of time, reporting requirements can become outdated, unnecessary, or duplicative.

Congress and the executive branch have recognized that improved coordination across the Federal Government benefits both the taxpayer and the government. In 2010, Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act. That act requires the Office of Management and Budget to publish a list of plans or reports that are produced by the executive branch pursuant to congressional mandate. The act also requires the administration to identify potentially outdated or duplicative plans and reports, and to provide views on whether they should be eliminated.

In January 2013 the Office of Management and Budget produced a list of more than 300 plans and reports that are potentially outdated or duplicative. Majority and minority staffs of our committee worked together to review this list. During this process, the

views of all other committees of jurisdiction were also considered. A similar process occurred in the Senate.

H.R. 4194, as amended, would eliminate the statutory requirements to prepare reports that are produced by 17 different Federal agencies. Implementing H.R. 4194 would reduce the administrative costs of these agencies by reducing the number of reports that must be prepared and printed. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that implementing the bill would save about $1 million over the next 5 years. H.R. 4194 provides for greater efficiency and a more effective Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I just wanted to join the chairman in his remarks about this bill. This bill is the quintessential efficiency bill. We have been doing the same thing over and over again until the chairman got the bright idea that maybe we should start doing this. I think we are in for more efficiency as more Federal agencies go through the same process.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Dr. William Lawson for his work as the Dean of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Howard University. Dr. Lawson has published over eighty-five articles, books, and other publications involving mental illness and its relationship to psychopharmacology, substance abuse and racial and ethnic issues, and is also an outspoken advocate for access to services for the severely mentally ill.

Dr. Lawson received his bachelor's degree from Howard University, master's from the University of Virginia, Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of New Hampshire and his M.D. from the University of Chicago, completing his residency at Stanford University Medical Center.

He has been named one of ``America's Leading Black Doctors'' by Black Enterprise Magazine, was the Andrea Delgado Honoree and Lecturer for the Black Psychiatrists of America, received the Jeanne Spurlock Award, E.Y. Williams Clinical Scholar Distinction Award from the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Section of the National Medical Association, a Multicultural Workplace Award from the Veterans Administration for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of diversity and multicultural understanding, recognized as a national mentor by the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill, numerous awards for excellence in teaching, and state, federal, and foundation support for pharmacological research new and effective treatments.

Dr. Lawson is boarded in Psychiatry and Neurology with added qualifications in Drug and Alcohol Addictions. He is also a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, member of the Scientific Advisory Committee, National Depression and Manic Depressive Society, and on the boards of the DC Mental Health Association for the DC Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He is currently directing a $6.5 million contract with the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Program to research Mood and Anxiety Disorders in African Americans and other minorities.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Dr. William Lawson for his extraordinary works in the field of Psychiatry.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Diane Rehm, who this week is observing 35 years in the District of Columbia at the public radio station, WAMU, where she has provided outstanding service to listeners in the District of Columbia, the national capital region, and the nation.

For more than three decades, Diane has been among the nation's most prominent radio hosts. Her reputation for welcoming all sides of every issue has allowed her to attract some of the nation's most influential guests and made her program one of the most popular in radio.

Diane Rehm, a native Washingtonian, began her career as an assistant producer at WAMU before becoming an award-winning journalist. In 1979, Diane became the host of WAMU's local morning talk show, ``Kaleidoscope.'' She grew the show until it was inevitably renamed ``The Diane Rehm Show,'' today with nearly 2.6 million weekly listeners across the country.

Among Diane's many accomplishments are her National Humanities Medal awarded by President Obama, and her George Foster Personal Peabody Award, one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in broadcasting. Diane is also a celebrated writer, authoring three best-selling autobiographical books: Finding My Voice, Toward Commitment: A Dialogue about Marriage, and Life With Maxi.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that most Members of Congress are familiar with Diane's excellence from hearing her program here in the nation's capital or at home. Therefore, I ask my colleagues to join me in commending Diane Rehm for 35 years of extraordinary contributions to the nation with ``The Diane Rehm Show'' and to wish her many more years of broadcast history.

I thank my good friend from California. I can't say enough about how much this Congress will miss him and how indebted we are to his outstanding service.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say some closing words about this Congress. I have spent most of my time in the Congress in the minority, with my good friends on the other side in control.

I must say that this is a most unusual 113th Congress. This package of bills is a shameful way to close this Congress.

Usually, this is a time--as I have seen it under Republican Congresses--when you make room for must-pass bills, not for never-to- pass bills or sure to be vetoed bills.

Today certainly was not the time to make up for running through the 113th Congress with neither an agenda, nor legislation to show for it, perhaps to show that Congress was entitled to be paid for being here for 2 years.

Instead of some must-pass bills--and I will suggest a few--what we have heard from my good friends on the other side are some tax and other giveaway bills that add to the deficit or bills that should be stamped ``special interest.''

There was legislation before us that, with small changes in law, could have been passed. Had those bills passed, they never would have been considered bills of one side or the other.

For instance, the Paycheck Fairness Act simply updates, in quite small ways, the Equal Pay Act. That is the act that I administered when I chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It is already on the books. Nobody wants to repeal it.

All the Paycheck Fairness Act would have done was to make small changes to bring it into the 21st century, and those changes have no ideological impact.

Or take the Federal Student Loan Refinancing Act. That begged for passage, to give students faced with debt and no jobs--this cohort of students who had the bad luck to come out of school in a bad economy-- some relief. That bill surely deserved bipartisan support.

For me, however, the biggest piece of missing legislation is the reauthorized transportation bill, and I say that because that would have been the functional equivalent of the JOBS Act of 2014; instead, we are going to leave here this evening, having given nothing to the American people to assure them that there will be jobs for the 7 weeks that we are gone. That is what they most wanted. That is what we have been given least.

We are on track to beat last year's record. We are on track to become the least productive Congress in the history of our country. Closing the Congress with a bunch of never-to-pass bills that nobody envisioned would be taken up will never make up for the shameful record of the 113th Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the care that has gone into the preparation of the amendment before us.

I have perhaps more reason to be involved than most Members because my district, the Nation's Capital, is a perpetual high-level target for terrorists like ISIL.

Today I am compelled to come to the floor to convey the indignation of the residents of the District of Columbia that the Congress would even approach another period of war where participation of residents of the District of Columbia is virtually inevitable while

they have no vote whatsoever on this preeminent matter of war and peace.

District residents pay $12,000 annually, per capita, more in Federal taxes than residents of any other State, to support our government in war and peace. Regardless of what is decided on this amendment, Mr. Speaker, District residents will be there for America as they have been during every war our country has fought.

The Nation, however, should not ask D.C. residents to fight another war without consent of the governed who participate with taxes and live in the District of Columbia, the Nation's Capital.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today, because on Monday a very important hearing, the first of its kind in two decades, a hearing on statehood for the District of Columbia will take place in the Senate of the United States.

The hearing is called by Senator Carper, the Chair of the Jurisdictional Committee. This hearing takes place at a time and in a season when we have seen unusual progress for statehood for the District of Columbia.

In the Senate, the majority leader himself became a cosponsor of the bill and indeed announced it with great energy, which is very unusual because the majority leader of the Senate cosponsors very few bills. The top Democratic leaders are sponsors of the bill. The bill has more House and Senate sponsors than is has ever had. Together this is normally seen as momentum, Mr. Speaker.

Now, when I say we are having the first Senate hearing in two decades, it is not because we haven't tried to get a Senate hearing or because a Senate or House hearing on statehood was what was on the agenda for each immediate period. The District of Columbia residents have tried many ways to get their equal rights to other American citizens. There has been a House Voting Rights Act. I would have the vote on the House floor as I speak had an amendment not passed that sought to wipe away all the gun laws of the District of Columbia. There have been bills for House and Senate votes. There have been bills for budget autonomy, and we are still seeking budget autonomy.

Through all of this, we have always sought statehood for the District of Columbia because, Mr. Speaker, there is no way for the District to get the same rights that every other American has without statehood. I will go into that a little later.

The Senate hearing is entitled: ``Equality for the District of Columbia: Discussing the Implications of S. 132, the New Columbia Admissions Act.'' That is the companion bill to my bill here in the House, H.R. 292.

I want to take a moment to thank Senator Tom Carper, who is the new chair of the committee of jurisdiction, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. As you might expect, that committee has a lot on its plate, and, yet, in only his first term as chair, Senator Carper has made many strides forward and always has been very helpful to the District of Columbia, and now culminates the work that he and I have done in the Senate with a hearing. It is a hearing that we, of course, requested, but it is a hearing that he had to be willing to do and find time for on a very busy agenda. I cannot thank Senator Carper enough in the name of the people of the District of Columbia for affording us the opportunity to be heard.

We do not pretend that statehood is around the corner. We do know this: that if we do not continue to use vehicles like hearings to put the matter before the House and the Senate, and before the people of the United States, we cannot build to the point where we can achieve what we will achieve, statehood for the 650,000 people who live in the Nation's Capital.

When I say this is the first hearing, I do want to say that Senator Joe Lieberman, who was the prior chairman of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, was also a great champion for statehood. And while he didn't have a hearing, he introduced a bill for statehood that achieved the majority of committee votes. And indeed there was a hearing for statehood when my first bill, the bill when I first came to Congress in the early 1990s, came to the floor and we got the first and only vote for statehood for the District of Columbia. There was a Senate hearing. It was not a jurisdictional hearing. And that is what this hearing is, and therefore it is a landmark hearing. It is a historic hearing. And that is why I felt it merited my coming to the House floor today.

On top of the momentum that we have now seen in the Senate, I shouldn't leave the subject without mentioning the momentum that has been here in the House. We have Republican and Democratic support for budget autonomy for the District of Columbia, for example. That is a very essential element of statehood, that is, your own budget, your own local funds, and nobody gets to look at it but you, your own jurisdiction. That is not what the District has now. That is what some Republicans and most Democrats believe we should, indeed have.

There is not yet the kind of support for statehood that I expect to see in the House of Representatives, but we will be glad to work with the Senate and the House when it lives up to its own principles that every American is entitled to be treated equally in the Congress and in our country.

Quite aside from the progress we have seen in the House and the Senate on statehood and on the particular elements of statehood, we now have the formal endorsement of the President of the United States for statehood.

I would like to quote what he said when he endorsed the bill:

I have long believed that folks in D.C. pay taxes like

everybody else, they contribute to the overall well-being of

the country like everybody else, they should be represented

like everybody else. It is not as if Washington is not big

enough compared with other States. It is absolutely the right

thing to do.

I will have something to say about the population of the District of Columbia as compared with other States in a few minutes.

Now, of course, I wasn't surprised that the President of the United States supported statehood. The reason I wasn't surprised is because he has long supported and been on record as supporting all of the elements of statehood: budget autonomy, the right of the people of the District of Columbia, who raise $7 billion, to spend their own money without coming to this Chamber, which has raised not one penny of it. He has long supported that and has put budget autonomy in his own budget. Legislative autonomy so that the Congress doesn't have some say over the District of Columbia's laws, the President has put that in his own budget. And the President, going back to the time that he was in the Senate of the United States, supported voting rights for the District of Columbia.

So there you have it, voting rights, legislative autonomy, and budget autonomy, the elements of statehood. We have Members of this House and of the Senate who have long supported all of them. We want to bring it all together with support of statehood for the District of Columbia. So there will be then a historic hearing at, I believe it is 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon with witnesses who are particularly able to speak to the issues.

Professor Viet Dinh of Georgetown Law School, a professor of constitutional law, a former U.S. assistant attorney for legal policy in the Bush administration. That made him the highest legal policy official in the Bush Justice Department. He has previously testified here in the House about the constitutionality of the D.C. House

Voting Rights Act. He will testify as to the constitutionality of our statehood bill.

Alice Rivlin, who, of course, was the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board and Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and, finally, as a D.C. resident, was called upon by the President to chair the Financial Control Board of the District of Columbia, will testify at that hearing. Now, of course, Dr. Rivlin is an expert on the Nation's economy and on the finances of the District of Columbia. We are very pleased that Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights will also testify, a longtime champion of statehood and equal rights for the District of Columbia.

The elected officials of the District of Columbia will testify, of course, the mayor, the chair of the City Council and I, and also the statehood delegation.

At the same time that we have been pressing on what amounts to two tracks for statehood, we have been making the progress I have indicated on the elements of statehood, such as budget and legislative autonomy.

In this House, we have got to work on what we need to work on all at the same time. There is no sequential matter when it comes to the many rights that the residents of the District of Columbia are denied. However, with the many issues on which we have struggled for equality one at a time, sometimes two or three at a time, statehood has always been what the residents--the American citizens who live in the District of Columbia--have needed and wanted. And it is during this Congress that statehood has gotten great footing.

I do want to thank the growing statehood movement and coalition, the many residents who struggle for statehood and have helped us in so many ways, including many in the statehood coalition who went around asking for cosponsors.

I think among the reasons that statehood has gotten so much momentum this year is that the residents of the District of Columbia are fed up with paying such high Federal taxes without equal representation in the Congress of the United States. They have simply had it on second-class citizenship.

As if to dramatize what it means to be a second-class citizen, there were several violations of the rights of the people who live in the District of Columbia as American citizens this year which highlighted the need for statehood. The House actually passed two provisions that would overturn laws passed by the Council of the District of Columbia, laws that were entirely local in their nature. Imagine what would happen if the Congress tried to pass a law to overturn some law in Maryland, Virginia, Oklahoma, Utah, California, or New Hampshire. People would think the Congress had lost its mind.

Because of the anomaly of the status of the District of Columbia as a district and not a State, the Congress can meddle in--if you will forgive me--the local business of the District of Columbia. Two Members decided to and, in fact, got passed in this House bills that overturned our local laws. I am pleased to say that as of now those bills have and will not be passed in the continuing resolution that is pending in the House or the Senate.

Thus far, we have been successful despite the passage of these two bills. One of them was passed by Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican who lives in Kentucky. He lives in a county of 11,000 people, but has sought and absolutely got passed in the House--a bill that would keep the District of Columbia--which has 650,000 people-- from having any local gun laws. None. All the local gun laws would be gone. This is a big city, people. The reason big cities have gun laws of the kind that you will not find in Kentucky is because of the difference--the differences we all respect in our country. Moreover, public safety--think about it--is the quintessential local concern. You depend upon your own local officials who know you best, and whom you have elected to deal first and foremost with public safety. Nobody would try to tell somebody what to do about public safety in her own district.

Yet that is what Representative Massie tried to do. This is in spite of the fact that in 1973, though not yet for statehood, the Congress of the United States, recognizing how un-American it was to try to pass laws or to interfere with the laws of a local jurisdiction, devolved local lawmaking authority to the residents of the District of Columbia.

Until this year, most Members on both sides of the aisle had respected that. To be sure, we have had to fight them off in prior years, but we had a long run where nobody tried to interfere with the local laws of the District of Columbia.

Thus, it was surprising to us that Representative Massie, who is a Tea Party Republican, who stands first and foremost for localism, would leave those principles when it came to the District of Columbia and try to interfere with local matters in this city.

We had the same thing happen to another colleague, a Republican from Maryland, who should have known better, who has a particular distaste for the decriminalization of marijuana laws that is happening all over the United States--18 States so far, plus legalization in two States-- so he tried to get a law and passed a bill, that we now have kept from getting through the Senate, that would block the District's recently passed marijuana decriminalization law. Our law would require that it be a fine rather than a conviction for possessing marijuana.

The District didn't do this for the reason that some States, the 18 States, perhaps some of them did--although some of them may have done it for the same reason we did it. Blacks and Whites use marijuana at the same rate in the United States and in D.C.

Yet in the District, 90 percent of those who had criminal convictions for possessing small amounts of marijuana were Black. Half the population is Black; half is White. These laws have had an obvious racial effect.

I am not for smoking anything, but I must tell you I also don't believe that people ought to have a criminal conviction because they possessed marijuana any more than they ought to have a criminal conviction for possessing alcohol. In any case, whatever you think, that is not your business, it is a local matter, and the District ought to have the same right when it comes to local matters as they have.

This was Representative Andy Harris. What was ironic about his trying to block the District's marijuana decriminalization laws is that he couldn't block it in his own State of Maryland, which has decriminalized marijuana.

Perhaps what pointed most to the need for statehood this year was what the District went through this past appropriation period when it almost got shut down, not because of anything the city had done, but because this House and this Senate shut down.

The District was an innocent bystander, but because the Congress still requires that the District's local budget pass through this House and Senate--the budget was here a budget of $7 billion, raised by the people and the businesses I represent, not one dime of it Federal money, a balanced budget, the likes of which the Federal Government has not seen since the Clinton administration, $1.5 billion in reserves, and there is virtually no State in the Union that has that kind of reserves--and yet when the Federal Government shut down, the District of Columbia was in jeopardy of shutting down--this despite the fact that I have a shutdown avoidance bill, that shutdown avoidance was in the President's budget, but not passed.

The mayor did the right thing, for the first time in American history. He refused to shut down. What are you going to do to him?

What he did instead was to keep the District open, but pay for our employees and our services out of contingency funds. Those funds were almost exhausted before the Federal Government finally opened up, and the District finally didn't have to worry about spending its contingency funds and got its local budget.

If you face our citizens with that kind of challenge over time, obviously, they begin to feel that they have to find a remedy. Yes, residents have been trying to find a remedy for more than 200 years, and there are interesting historical reasons why it hasn't happened, but whatever those reasons are, the time is at hand when it is impossible to call yourself the United States of America, which stands for equality for

citizens throughout the world, and not begin to apply that same principle to the people who live in your own Nation's Capital.

We have been preparing for this hearing for some time. We took particular pains on what is called D.C. Emancipation Day. D.C. celebrates this day, April 16, every year because it is the day that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the District of Columbia before the slaves were freed in other parts of the country.

DC Emancipation Day, the District's way of saying there is an absence of freedom that still exists in your own Nation's Capital.

As Emancipation Day came--by chance, the U.N. Human Rights Committee issued a report indicating that the denial of voting rights in the House and Senate to the residents of the District of Columbia was a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty which the United States signed in 1992.

So let's be clear: by not granting equal citizenship rights to the people who live in the Nation's Capital, the United States, this Congress, is in violation of international law.

On Emancipation Day, I did not come to the floor to speak about the slaves. That was then; this is now. It has always been interesting to me because my great-grandfather was a runaway slave from Virginia and was in the District of Columbia on Emancipation Day, but Emancipation Day cannot be about nostalgia.

The residents of the District of Columbia put it to good use. I thought what I ought to do was, in preparation for what I knew Senator Carper wanted to do, to come to the floor to speak about why we should have statehood--what is it about the residents of the District of Columbia that merited statehood?

Well, first, let's start with the most elementary of qualifications, and that is the population. Yes, this is a city. Yes, it is called a district. It is the District of Columbia. Yes, we have a population equal to, but in this case, larger than the population of two States that have two Senators and, by the way, a Member, one Member, to represent the entire State, just like I represent the residents of the District of Columbia--the states are Vermont and Wyoming, one in the West and one in the East.

What does that say to you? It says the Framers believed in equality. They wanted everybody to have representation in the House and the Senate. When there was a dispute between the large and the small States, they made a compromise and gave the small States equal representation in the Senate and what amounts to per capita representation here.

There is no question that there are enough people here for statehood. I mention Vermont and Wyoming because we are larger than those States, but there are half a dozen States which have a population about equal to that of the District of Columbia. That is the first qualification.

Let's take a look at the one that will probably get the attention of more Americans than any others, and that is taxes paid. On our license plate, you will see the words ``taxation without representation.'' Let's put that in dollars and cents.

We are not just talking about paying taxes without representation. I am talking about paying more taxes per capita than any other jurisdiction without representation, almost $12,000 per resident of the District of Columbia in taxes paid to support the Federal Government, which does not reciprocate with voting representation in the House and the Senate.

I have the vote in committee. As the representative of the District of Columbia, I have the same rights to come to this floor and to do everything else that other Members do, except that which is emblematic of my citizenship and the citizenship of the people I represent, and that, of course, is the final vote on the House floor.

This poster is simply a graph to show you the vast differences in taxes per capita paid throughout the United States. It goes from $12,000 down to Mississippi, which pays--Mississippi citizens pay $4,000 per capita to the Federal Government, with the same rights that those who pay more, as should be the case, and it should also be the case that those of us who live in the Nation's Capital, who pay more and more than all others, should have the same rights as all others.

Just to dig down further into what this means, Vermont, which I indicated is a State somewhat smaller than the District, pays about half the taxes, $6,000 per resident. Wyoming pays $8,000 per resident. These are both compared to our $12,000.

California, if you look at the large States of the Union, pays $8,000 per person compared to the District of Columbia's $12,000 per person.

Perhaps of all of the qualifications for statehood, none is more worthy of mention than the sacrifices District of Columbia residents have made throughout the more than 200 years of our existence as the Nation's Capital for our country in the wars of the United States, often suffering casualties above and beyond those of States that are considerably larger in population than the District of Columbia.

So let's look at some of the major wars of the 20th century.

In World War I, there were more D.C. casualties than in three States of the Union. In World War II, there were more D.C. casualties than in four States of the Union. In the Korean war, there were more D.C. casualties than eight States of the Union. In the Vietnam war, there were more casualties than 10 States of the Union. There is a memorial for the 635 D.C. residents who died in World War I on The Mall.

It is in that sacrifice that we feel most dishonored as a jurisdiction. How could our country continue to send our residents to war without granting those who go to war, often to get rights for others, the same rights that we afford every citizen of our own country?

All of the essential elements, even the one that is hardest to endure without full equality, all of the elements of citizenship have long been made by the residents of the District of Columbia, as well as all of the elements of statehood.

So why not statehood? That is a fair question.

What was wrong with the Framers? Why didn't they make the District of Columbia a State in the first place?

Well, nothing was wrong with the Framers. The District of Columbia is a historic anomaly. It is a figment of history and an incident in history that could not happen today.

The reason the District of Columbia is not a State is an accident that must be corrected. The accident came out of the meeting of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1783. There were some angry Revolutionary War soldiers. They did what citizens do. I must say, though, that they went not only to petition the Continental Congress, but they took their guns with them. And while it is not said that a shot was fired, they did point their guns at the windows where the Continental Congress was meeting.

Well, the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia authorities didn't know what to do. They didn't want to go out after the Revolutionary War heroes, so the Continental Congress said: We better get out of here. So they fled Philadelphia.

Well, that stuck in the Framers' minds. They said: My goodness, States are not going to protect us, so I guess we must have a District that is controlled entirely by the Federal Government.

Well, when I say that it is an accident of history, do understand that that history is long gone. The way in which we protect the Nation's Capital today is the same way it would be protected in the event of statehood. The Federal Government, and the District of Columbia government--after all, it is the same area of land--get together to protect the District, whether it is from 9/11 or from any other threat.

You can't rest, then, on any notion that the Framers intended to have any residents who did not have equal rights. The existence of a jurisdiction that did not have full and equal rights was not in the capacity of the Framers to envision. Those who fought the Revolutionary War lived in the Nation's Capital, those parts of Maryland and Virginia which became the Nation's Capital.

The brilliant Framers realized that they did not have all the answers. They had every reason to think that this would be fixed. And one reason we know that they understood that things

could get fixed--shame on us that for over 200 years we haven't fixed this moral outrage--one reason we know that they understood it could be fixed is what they did to make the residents of the Nation's Capital equal in the first place.

During the 10-year transition from the territory in Maryland and Virginia to form the Nation's Capital, the Framers did not want those residents to be left without their equal rights for even one second. So while they had jurisdiction, they saw to it that during that transition period when they weren't really a part of Maryland and Virginia and weren't really a part of the new Capital, they would retain their rights.

Those people who lived in Maryland and Virginia who were on their way to becoming the Nation's Capital still voted in those two States and had every single right preserved until jurisdiction passed to the United States Congress. And that is when tyranny set in--the tyranny of not having that representation carried over under the jurisdiction of the Congress.

In 1801, when we became the Nation's Capital, the people of the District of Columbia went into the streets to demand their rights. They have been in the streets demanding their full rights ever since, as any red-blooded Americans would be.

Mr. Speaker, we have tried every route, some of it more gradual than others, to pursue and to obtain our full rights as American citizens. We have tried voting rights for the House, voting rights for the House and Senate, all other ways--budget autonomy, legislative autonomy. Even if we had gotten those, they would have been insufficient, but it says everything about the shortcomings of the Congress that even those insufficient routes to statehood are not yet a part of our law.

On September 15, there will be a full jurisdictional Senate hearing. That hearing will take place next Monday. That hearing will set an important guidepost. It will educate many in the Senate and House and many in our country about what the people of the District of Columbia, the Nation's Capital, do not now have and what they are entitled to.

There can be no doubt that no American would believe that those who pay taxes as they do should not have the same representation in the House and Senate that they do. There isn't any American who would say that the funds that are locally raised in your local jurisdiction should come to the Congress of the United States for any reason.

I do not believe that our problem lies with the people of our country. I do believe that many of them are not fully aware that their own Capital is less free than any part of our country.

So what we will hear on next Monday is not all about the moral reasons; some of them, of course, but also the reasons that go to our creed as Americans and go to practical matters such as whether the Federal government should be able to close down the District of Columbia when they have a disagreement among themselves at the Federal level. We will hear not only the moral reasons, but the practical reasons for statehood.

So, Mr. Speaker, we seek statehood in the name of the people I represent, perhaps even more so in the name of the thousands of American citizens who happened to live in the District of Columbia and went to war for their country in Germany, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq but never came home, and in the name of those who will once again protect our country now that the President has indicated that we ourselves must take on the fight against ISIS.

On this 9/11, as we remember those innocent people who died simply because they happened to be in New York and Pennsylvania, I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the Congress remember the 650,000 people who live in the Nation's Capital, who are proud of their residency in the District of Columbia, many of whom, like me, a third-generation Washingtonian, are proud of their lineage in the Nation's Capital.

In the name of all those I represent, I ask for statehood for the District of Columbia so that our residents may have equal citizenship, those same rights which led the Founders of our country to create the United States of America.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the ranking member of the full committee, for his work to try to get us a fully funded bill, that I am sure the chairman desired as well.

But I must say, Madam Speaker, we have shored up the highway trust fund four times since 2008--four patches, this would be the fifth-- until May. Everyone knows what we are doing. We are setting ourselves up for another series of short-term extensions. We don't dare leave the trust fund insolvent--not us. But we don't have the guts to help our own States get on with urgently needed projects.

Short-term funding is like no funding. Where is the dissent on this traditionally bipartisan bill, the highway bill. It is certainly not in the States. It is in the Republican Conference, where they have a crisis among some of their members who believe that spending money on anything is an original sin, even at the demand of their own constituents.

Madam Speaker, I don't have the figures from my own district, so I give you some figures from the State of Arkansas, which I chose at random, to indicate what this bill means for the States. Arkansas relies for about 70 percent of its transportation funding on this bill. However, it has put off 15 projects, even with this bill coming. I am quoting from its Highway and Transportation Department:

We don't feel comfortable going forward with these projects

because we are not sure if the highway trust fund will be

resolved in time to fully see these projects to completion.

That is the position you are leaving the States in.

An official from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association spoke about what this funding does. He said:

If you have your money coming in on an almost annual or

every other year basis, subject to being shut down by

Congress, you cannot make long-term investments and hire

people.

The tragedy of these patches is they have a human face: millions of construction workers now working on a piecework basis. The differences between the House and the Senate are easily reconcilable. The Senate passed their bill 79-18. What is wrong with this House? In the past, we would have gotten these differences resolved. There has been plenty of time since MAP-21. If 2 years has not been enough, what in the world do we think the next 8 or 9 months will mean? Time is not the problem; will is. Let's spend this time in the recess getting a long-term bill, as our States are demanding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of Representatives to join me in celebrating the Hillcrest Community Civic Association (HCCA) on its 25th anniversary, which will be celebrated in September.

Ward 7's Belva T. Simmons, was the founder and 1st president of the HCCA. The idea for the HCCA was conceived on the front lawn of Dennis and Gloria Logan, on August 8, 1989, National Night Out Against Crime. The HCCA past and current Presidents are: Belva Simmons, Paul Savage, Pastor Franklin G. Singer, HI, Vincent Spaulding, and Karen Lee Williams.

Located just east of the Anacostia River in Ward 7, Hillcrest is a beautiful and increasingly diverse neighborhood. Among its residents are D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, former Metropolitan Police Chief Isaac Fulwood, former U.S. Marshal James Palmer, and other notable public figures, as well as teachers, doctors, lawyers, government workers, civic leaders, professionals, retirees, and blue collar workers.

In the early 1900s, Hillcrest was referred to as part of East Washington Heights. The initial developer, Andrew Randle and his United States Realty Company, is responsible for establishing the Pennsylvania Avenue southeast gateway that paved the way for development of Hillcrest under the Alger Company. Both early developers had inserted into some of the residential property deeds racial covenants to preclude African Americans from renting or purchasing homes in East Washington Heights. In fact, these deplorable covenants continue to remain as burdens on the land, but cannot be enforced due to a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case known as Hurd vs. Hodge.

HCCA is a proud force joining members together in a community that stands for equality, diversity, civic pride and fellowship, while opposing crime and threats to its beloved community. HCCA has adopted Beers, Randle Highlands, and Winston Elementary schools. HCCA has partnered with the Palisades Community Civic Association. The community continues to grow and acquire new members and diversify.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the House of Representatives to join me in congratulating the Hillcrest Community Civic Association of Ward 7 on 25 years in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, today, I introduce the Restore Opportunity, Strengthen, and Improve the Economy (ROSIE) Act. Millions of workers are part of the ``federally dependent workforce'' and hold low-wage jobs with federal contractors. Seventy percent of these workers are women and 45 percent are people of color. With so many workers dependent on federal contracts, the federal government has the ability to use its purchasing power to incentivize private-sector firms to create good jobs for American workers, rebuild the middle class, address income inequality, and invigorate the economy by increasing the purchasing power of working Americans.

Under the bill, Congress finds that the disappearance of good jobs, the shrinking of the middle class, and growing income inequality are the greatest domestic challenges confronting our nation. The federal government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the nation's private-sector economy, spending over $1.5 trillion annually at firms that employ a quarter of American workers. Federal purchasing power is currently creating millions of poverty-level jobs, subsidizing labor-law-breakers, and funding ballooning executive compensation.

The bill also notes that the federal government is our nation's leading creator of low-wage jobs in the private sector, funding more than two-million jobs paying under 12 dollars per hour. The federal government awards taxpayer dollars to a substantial number of firms that violate federal labor, employment and occupational safety laws, and its purchasing subsidizes the excessive salaries of private-sector executives who do business with the American people. When federal purchasing power is used in such a manner, workers have less to spend on the necessities of life and are forced to rely on public assistance. Lack of purchasing power hurts job creation and undermines economic growth, ultimately imposing significant costs on American taxpayers.

Federal purchasing power can and should be used to create good jobs, rebuild the middle class, and curb rising income inequality. These good jobs would allow workers and their families to live in dignity without relying

on public assistance or private charity, and would pay enough to provide for subsistence, healthcare, education, housing and savings, as well as enough disposable income to allow workers to enjoy quality time off with their loved ones. Federal purchasing power can and should be used to rebuild the middle class. A strong middle class stimulates the economy by increasing consumer spending and job growth. Federal purchasing power can and should be used to narrow the growing gulf between the richest one percent of the population and ordinary working families, which is threatening the survival of our participatory democracy.

The bill directs the Secretary of Labor to promulgate regulations implementing Good Jobs Model Employer Standards. Under these standards, whenever an executive agency awards a contract for the acquisition of supplies or services, it shall not award the contract to a source that is not a Good Jobs Model Employer, unless there is no offer from a source that is a model employer. An executive agency could not provide other forms of financial or nonfinancial assistance to entities that are not model employers when there is a similarly situated Good Jobs Model Employer that could receive the assistance, unless doing so would substantially undermine the value of the assistance to the public. These provisions do not apply to direct federal statutory requirements, mandatory awards, direct awards to foreign governments or public international organizations, benefits to an individual as a personal entitlement, or federal employment.

The bill defines a Good Jobs Model Employer as an employer that meets the following standards: (1) respects employees' rights to bargain collectively with their employers without being forced to take strike action to win better wages and working conditions; (2) offers to each employee living wages, decent benefits including, health care, paid leave for sickness and caregiving, and fair work schedules that are predictable and stable; (3) affirmatively demonstrates an exemplary standard of compliance with workplace protection laws, including laws governing labor relations, wages and hours and health and safety, as well as other applicable labor laws; (4) limits executive compensation to fifty times the median salary paid to the company's workers; (5) employs a workforce not less than 35 percent of which reside within one or more Historically Underutilized Business Zones; and (6) subcontracts only with other Good Jobs Model Employers.

This bill is just one step in lifting millions of Americans out of poverty and into the middle class. These contracting requirements will incentivize, rather than penalize, employers to raise their workplace standards to retain much sought-after federal contracts. They will also provide savings to the federal government by lowering the cost of the federal safety net because fewer workers will be reliant on federal benefits. With these standards, Demos has estimated an annual benefit savings of approximately $3.3 billion for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, $3.1 billion for Medicaid, and $2.5 billion for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Ultimately, the ROSIE Act will uplift our workers and benefit our entire country.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I introduce the Department of Energy Forrestal Complex Redevelopment Act to direct the General Services Administrator (GSA) to redevelop this site using its authorities to enter into public-private partnerships in accordance with the National Capital Planning Commission's (NCPC) Southwest (SW) Ecodistrict Plan. The Department of Energy (DOE) Forrestal Complex is located at 1000 Independence Avenue SW., and has the potential to serve as a gateway to renewed development in this section of the National Mall area in downtown Washington. For many years, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management have expressed concern about excess federal property, wasteful spending, energy efficiency, and space utilization practices. This bill, which would maximize use of valuable, centrally located land for public and private uses, responds to this concern.

GSA and DOE have been assessing the needs of the DOE and any costs and benefits associated with disposing of the assets at the complex. In the last few months, GSA released a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for two of its properties in close proximity to the DOE Forrestal Complex, the Cotton Annex and the GSA Regional Office Building, which are part of the SW Ecodistrict Plan. Portions of the Forrestal Complex lie between these two parcels, and their redevelopment will aid the in the realization of the SW Ecodistrict Plan, which has been embraced by the NCPC and the District of Columbia.

Redevelopment of the Forrestal Complex will enable mixed-use development, and it would accommodate the uses agreed to in the SW Ecodistrict Plan. The plan includes a modern headquarters for DOE that combines reduced but more efficient utilization of federal government office space, more sustainable practices to preserve energy and water, and the possible location of a nationally significant museum or memorial. In addition, it would bring the SW Ecodistrict closer to fruition.

I urge my colleagues to support this timely, important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, it is virtually mandatory that I come to the floor this afternoon because the two most serious, antidemocratic, and anti-home rule amendments are pending in this House. I am very hopeful that they will not be sustained when the full Congress gets a look at them, but they certainly have passed this House: an amendment from Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky that attempts to wipe out, eliminate, all the gun laws of the Nation's Capital--the Nation's Capital, a prime terrorist target; the Nation's Capital, where Cabinet members lunch in our public places, go to our theaters, and walk in our streets; the Nation's Capital, where there are 650,000 residents; the Nation's Capital, one of the big cities of America, and it is those big cities where gun violence is most likely to occur. That is the amendment from Representative Massie.

Then there is another amendment from Representative Andy Harris, an amendment that flies in the face of what is occurring across the country, of course, as 18 States long before the District of Columbia decriminalized their marijuana laws. So, too, has the District of Columbia. But this Member is seeking to meddle in the affairs of the District of Columbia--the local affairs, local matters--and to somehow keep the local legislature from passing a local law just like the laws of those 18 States.

Now, I hasten to add that the Senate, the comparable subcommittee in the Senate, has considered this matter, and the Senate has passed what we call a clean bill, a clean appropriations bill for the District of Columbia.

Of course, there is a kind of anomaly here. Why am I talking about the District of Columbia at all? Well, that is an anomaly that allows the District's budget--every cent of it raised in the District of Columbia--to somehow come here to be approved by Members that are unaccountable for having raised a cent of that budget.

So, yes, the Senate had to consider the District's budget. By the way, our D.C. budget is balanced. The D.C. budget has a large amount of revenue in excess of its annual taxes, a rainy day fund that would be the envy of most Members of this House, and yet it has to come to a House that has hardly been able to pass bills much less balance its budget.

So the Senate says we recognize you can handle your own affairs, like any other American jurisdiction, and they have quickly passed or approved the District's local budget. In addition, the Senate has also given the District both autonomy over its own budget so it wouldn't have to come the Congress in the first place, and what we call legislative autonomy.

In addition to having to bring its local budget here, the residents of the District of Columbia, when they pass their local laws, those local laws have to rest here for a certain period of time to see if there is any Member who wants to jump up and ask to overturn them. However, usually the process of overturning a local law of the District of Columbia does not come through regular order, through the House and Senate, although there is such a process that is allowed. It usually comes in the way in which Representative Massie and Representative Harris have interfered with the District. They simply try to use an amendment to an appropriation bill in order to overturn a District law, a kind of shortcut method.

Of course, if one looks at why the District budget is over here, the American people would be, I think, pleased to know that no one, not one Member looks at the budget. They recognize that they are incompetent to do so, not because they are inherently incompetent, but because nobody would want to look at somebody else's budget if

they have not had the opportunity to go through what they have gone through, and that is all of the hearings and the rest of it. So Congress doesn't care about the budget. They have the budget here in order to use it as a vehicle to overturn local laws, and that is what has happened with the gun amendment and with the marijuana decriminalization amendment.

Now, I want to speak about both responses from residents and about what these Members have done. The gun amendment is the most serious because what Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky has tried to do affects the lives and the public safety of the residents of this city. This is something you don't fool with. The reason that the Framers left such local matters, public safety, to local people, is because of what is at stake. Nobody in Washington, that is to say official Washington, can tell anyone in someone's hometown anything that they should want to hear about their own local public safety.

As it turns out, the District of Columbia is very proud of its low crime rate, its low gun violence rate, because like other big cities, earlier on, within the last 15 or 20 years, it was like other big cities. It had high gun violence rates, but those have been brought down.

And you can imagine that in a big city, keeping the city safe from gun violence is a very big deal, particularly when that city turns out not to be just any city, when it turns out to be the Capital of the United States. And yet what Representative Massie has done would make the District of Columbia the most permissive gun jurisdiction in the United States. What is almost laughable, if it weren't so tragic, is that, were his amendment to become law, the District of Columbia would have a more permissive set of gun laws than Representative Massie's own district in Kentucky. This gentleman lives in a county of 17,000 people. He is a cattle farmer. That is a different culture that I respect in his county, and yes, in his State.

All the people of the District of Columbia are demanding is the same kind of respect, reciprocal respect, and that is what you don't get when a Member decides not to attend to the business of his own State, but knowing nothing about your State, saying not one mumbling word to you, who represent the District, the only Member who represents this district, or to any local official, when you then decide in the most tyrannical way to use authority that essentially even this Congress never intended you to have because 40 years ago the Congress passed the Home Rule Act.

It recognized when the country was, frankly, being criticized for not using the same standard with its own Capital that it demands of the rest of the world. Its own Capital didn't even have a local government, a home rule government. It was ruled by three commissioners. The people of the District couldn't elect their government. It had no Member of Congress. What kind of democracy is that in your Nation's Capital? Well, Congress said that is not democracy.

So Members can cite all they want about the Constitution, which indeed said that because it is the Nation's Capital, there is jurisdiction in the Congress. But nothing in the Constitution said that Congress had to keep that jurisdiction and could never give the District democracy, and so it did. The Home Rule Act of 1973, with that act, from this Congress, this Congress said we shall no longer be the tyrannical lawmakers for people unaccountable to us, making laws for people who can't vote for us or against us. We give that up because it is inconsistent with our values of democracy, and we say it to the world: we give it up now. And so they did.

So any Member who tries to say we have the authority, it is like any tyrant in the world who says because I can do it, I am going to do it. Yes, you can do it if you want to betray your own principles.

Now, I note for the Record that these Members profess to be Tea Party Republicans. Their major standard in this Congress is that power, even power that the Federal Government legitimately has, shall be devolved, sent back to local jurisdictions and to States.

How can you call yourself a small government, local government, states' rights Republican and then be instrumental in putting the big foot of the Federal Government on a local jurisdiction--as it turns out, your own Nation's Capital--and just to make this more absurdly antidemocratic, in a Congress where that Member cannot even vote up or down on the Harris amendment or on the Massie amendment.

If, my friends, that is not tyranny, then the word has no meaning. Unaccountable, and you stand in the way of making the only Member who represents the District, where you are interfering, making her unaccountable too with no vote on this floor--is this America? No, it is the Tea Party Republican Congress.

The gun amendment that has been introduced by Representative Massie as a bald attempt to score political points, and he says so--I will quote from his own statement shortly--to make political points at the expense of states' rights, the rights of my own constituents, and most seriously, at the expense of their public safety.

What is Representative Thomas Massie trying to do here in Washington, instead of finding things to do for the people of Kentucky? Well, this is what he is trying to do in the Nation's Capital: to allow carrying on the streets a gun, open or concealed, of any kind; assault weapon, any kind, no holds; allowing assault weapons, including .50-caliber sniper weapons, to be possessed; allowing magazines holding an unlimited number of bullets to be possessed.

Do you know how many motorcades of cars go through the streets of the Nation's Capital every single day carrying dignitaries at every level of government from across the world? They stop the traffic because the safety of these officials is so important to the Nation and to the world. So we are not only talking about our own Cabinet officials, we are talking about 20 million people who visit this city, prime ministers, heads of states.

Let me go on about what kind of gun atmosphere Mr. Massie wants here in the Nation's Capital.

Private sale of guns without any background checks. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry, rogue or criminal, could get a gun and bring it into the Nation's Capital.

The purchase of guns with no waiting period.

The purchase of an unlimited number of guns in one day.

That is what he wants here in one of the big cities, the Nation's Capital.

Well, all he has done is bring unintended confusion. He certainly has gotten a response from the city. The mayor of the city, the police chief was out of town but her assistant chief came to this House and held a press conference about the outrage of interfering with the chief and most important duty of the mayor and the police chief: keeping the streets of the District safe.

But this amendment isn't quite doing what Mr. Massie intended. In fact, both of these amendments, the Harris marijuana decriminalization amendment and the Massie amendment, show why amendments to appropriations bills really aren't the way to proceed. It is true that you can try to introduce a bill to accomplish the same thing, but amendments to appropriations contain a few words and they end up doing things you never expected. This was a 69-word appropriation rider that tries to overturn four complicated laws; you just can't do it with an amendment and get done what you are trying to do.

This is what we found. We are still looking at the implications of the Massie amendment. It appears that Thomas Massie has made some of our laws less restrictive and some more restrictive.

Then there is another interpretation that says that the city may be left with only laws that have been declared unconstitutional, and of course, those are unenforceable.

Then looking at the language, another reading says that the amendment has not only blocked the four complicated gun laws intended, but has also blocked enforcement of laws that these laws amended, and these laws amended laws that have been found unconstitutional. That is just how complicated this is.

Now, what I think I have shown is that it is technically impossible to do what Thomas Massie tried to do in 69 words. Never mind, though, if all you are bent on is undemocratically poking, inserting yourself into a district not your own, you are bound to make mistakes.

In order to do what Thomas Massie wanted to do, he would have had to write a law as complicated as the District of Columbia's own carefully- wrought laws--gun laws are. Remember, their laws had to be redeveloped because of the Supreme Court decision that said that D.C.'s original laws were not constitutional, so they went back and revised their laws, and they came up with, yes, strict gun laws.

There have been challenges to those gun laws. The Federal courts have upheld the District's gun registration requirement, the Federal courts have upheld the District's assault weapons ban, and the Federal courts have upheld the District's ban on large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

Why in the world would anyone have gone to court against those in the first place, I am not sure, but anybody who reads the Supreme Court decision as saying you can carry any gun, anywhere you want to, ought to read it again.

All the Supreme Court said was that you are allowed to have and own a gun in your own home, period. That is all the Supreme Court has said-- not to carry those guns into the streets of big cities where gun tragedies occur on a frequent basis.

I make no challenge to where my colleagues stand on guns. I believe in a country full of diversity of all kinds. If you look at the great United States from East to West, with its extraordinary diverse geography, you can understand why there would be vast differences among residents on issues like guns.

Why in the world would we not want to respect those differences? This is the United States of America. It means, in the States & D.C., we have the freedom to entertain differences and to carry them out there. That is all the residents of the District of Columbia are asking-- indeed, demanding.

Wherever you stand on guns is no business of mine, and I will never try to convince you in your own State how to behave with those guns. All that the people I represent are asking is that we be accorded the same respect.

Representative Massie came on this floor initially with a version of his gun amendment. The Speaker sitting there before him found his amendment to be out of order. It was unartfully written.

Normally, if your own party--the Speaker in the chair is from his party, the majority controls the floor--if your own Speaker says that your amendment is out of order, that is the end of it.

To understand the kind of Member we are dealing with--his own Speaker had ruled his amendment out of order--the sensible thing to do is what he was finally forced to do, go back, go to the staff who knows how to write these amendments, and say: write me an amendment that won't be out of order.

Instead, he stood his ground and said he wanted a vote to overrule his own Speaker, that his amendment was out of order. That so embarrassed his colleagues on the other side that people gathered around him trying to convince him he really didn't want to do that, there was another way, go back and rewrite your amendment.

What began as stubbornness was becoming a matter of embarrassment for the Republican majority because a vote to overrule the Speaker demands an immediate vote of the House. It was now 7 or 8 at night.

Members had been told there would be no more votes, so they were scattered throughout the region, in Maryland, in Virginia, and the far reaches of the District of Columbia. Had, indeed, they been called back, the most angry Member would not have been me, it would have been his own colleagues.

Finally, unable to convince him to accept the ruling of the Chair-- and the people of Kentucky ought to know what kind of Member they sent here and perhaps do something about it--instead of accepting the technical problem and going back forthrightly and dealing with it, he demanded a vote anyway.

The vote could only be called a humiliation of the Member because the votes were by voice and both sides voted against the Member's amendment, including his own side over there, and the only one to vote for his amendment was him.

So what he did finally is what he had to do. He went back, and he rewrote his amendment, and, of course, he has come back, and it passed, but with the unintended and confused consequences I just indicated.

This is a Member, I say to the people of Kentucky, who has introduced all of six bills--just by way of comparison only, because you can't be judged by the number of bills you introduce--but he has introduced six, I have introduced 64. The difference is I have spent my time asking: What do my constituents need?

I bet the people of Mr. Massie's district in Kentucky need more than an amendment likely not to prevail at the end of the Congress that overturns all the gun laws in the Nation's Capital. Indeed, I want to know what that does for one single resident of Thomas Massie's district.

He was asked by the press: Why would you do this? He said: Because I want to try to restore gun rights anywhere I can.

He thinks he can here, despite the Home Rule Act, where Congress gave up the authority to pass laws for the District of Columbia.

Well, he had an opportunity twice since the D.C. amendment passed to try to restore gun rights any way he could. A congressional staff member was arrested here in the House just a few days ago for bringing a gun into the Capitol complex. This person has been arrested. I can't believe, since he is a staffer, he intended to bring it here, but the law is the law, whether you are a staffer or a visitor.

Why hasn't Thomas Massie introduced a bill here where nobody could say he lacks jurisdiction, a bill to allow guns to be brought into the House of Representatives? I challenge him, if he means what he says, that he wants to at least try to restore gun rights ``anywhere I can,'' then he must begin where he lives, right here on the House floor, so that no staff member will be embarrassed again. Here, at least, those who would be affected are accountable to him, as the residents I represent are not.

It looks like--if you were to judge by these incidents all within a week's time--there are people who believe that Representative Massie meant what he said because just a couple of days ago, a man--yet again, from South Carolina--brought a loaded Ruger LC9 semiautomatic pistol with a round in the chamber, into the Capitol complex, and he too was arrested, because it is a Federal law, 40 U.S.C. 5104, which makes it an offense to carry a gun in the Capitol complex with a penalty up to 5 years of imprisonment.

Do you want to do something for the people of Kentucky who may visit here or the people of America? Here is a law that Thomas Massie has full jurisdiction to overturn, so I challenge him--if Thomas Massie is looking for a way to restore gun rights ``anywhere I can,'' I challenge you to at least introduce such a bill here, if for no other reason, for consistency's sake.

Don't think that what Mr. Massie has done has not been noted in Kentucky. I am quoting from a Kentucky TV station--and maybe this is partly inexperience because we don't see more experienced Members who may agree with Mr. Massie coming forward so recklessly--but this Kentucky staffer says:

First-term Republican Representative Thomas Massie said it

is his business to try to overturn Washington, D.C.'s gun

control laws.

Then it says--and this is a straight-out news report:

Massie's congressional district stretches from eastern

Jefferson County, Oldham, Shelby, and Spencer Counties, all

the way to the West Virginia border.

If the libertarian Republican has his way, his influence

will stretch to the District of Columbia's gun laws.

That is how it was reported in Kentucky. There is an irony here that is not lost in his home State. Take the Courier-Journal in Kentucky, which ran an editorial that was headlined, ``Big foot government.''

It says, ``A couple of Members of Kentucky's congressional delegation who claim to want government out of

our lives want to force more of it on the District of Columbia. Tea Party favorites''--they also name Rand Paul because he has introduced a bill (not an appropriation amendment) that has been set back in the Senate, but his is an entire bill to overturn the gun laws of the Nation's Capital.

Rand Paul wants to be President of the United States, and he is putting in bills, by the way, that are far softer than the gun bill-- bills that you might expect from the Democratic side--in order to try to make Independents and Democrats think that he is more acceptable than his words have indicated he is in the past.

Continuing, The Courier-Journal, the biggest newspaper in Kentucky, says that the two of them, ``libertarian-leaning Republicans, are pushing measures in Congress to roll back Washington, D.C.'s strict gun laws adopted by its officials to try to reduce gun violence in the nation's capital.''

It goes on, but let me quote from another part of that editorial. ``Too bad their concern doesn't extend to the right of residents of Washington to have a vote in Congress. The delegate from Washington has no floor vote, which means Ms. Norton could only complain about the gun measure, but not vote against it. That sounds like taxation without representation, something anyone who purports to love liberty ought to oppose.''

Mr. Speaker, not only taxation without representation, but the people I represent pay the highest taxes per capita to the Federal Government, $12,000 per resident, which is the highest in the United States.

One ought to understand our outrage when people from Kentucky or Maryland or anywhere else in the country who pay less taxes try to tell us how to conduct our local affairs.

The gun amendment certainly riled D.C. residents, but that amendment is one of only two such amendments. The other, of course, is the marijuana decriminalization law that I mentioned when I began.

It is interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that when the marijuana decriminalization law passed, along with the gun law, The Associated Press had an apt headline: ``Guns Okay, Pot Dangerous.'' That tells you something about the Republican House of Representatives.

The residents of this region--where we have lived as one region--have built the same Metro and use the same Metro with taxes coming from the entire region, and even though we have differing views on many issues, we try to live as one region and not meddle into the affairs of our neighbors, so this marijuana amendment was a particular outrage because it came from a Maryland Representative.

The first thing that the largest D.C. rights organization in D.C. did was to call for a boycott of the Eastern Shore, which Mr. Harris represents. The Eastern Shore lives off of Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., in the summertime. They have got to make it then, or the Eastern Shore isn't going to make it for the rest of the year.

When D.C. Vote called for a boycott, it suggested that residents choose Rehoboth Beach, Delaware; or Chincoteague Island, Virginia; but not the Eastern Shore because it said: They don't support us; why should we support them?

Of course, there will be allies across the region who will hear that call and who will not go to the Eastern Shore this summer.

Residents continue to try in other ways to say to Representative Harris: stay out of our affairs, attend to your own.

Two dozen residents came here this week to file complaints with Representative Harris. They say he is acting like he is a member of the city council, so we are going to treat him like he is a member of the city council.

So they brought their complaints one by one, and Representative Harris' chief of staff had to stand there to receive these complaints from the residents of the District of Columbia.

Nathan Harrington, who is a teacher in the District of Columbia, said, now that he sees who has the power, he is coming to Rep. Harris because there are some vacant houses in his neighborhood and he demands that Representative Andy Harris take care of those vacant houses, right away. Andy Harris has got the power. He has shown us he has got the power.

Mr. Harrington said: either he represents us or doesn't. If he doesn't, then stay out of our business. If he does, take care of those vacant houses.

Representative Harris did not come forward to receive these complaints, but his chief of staff did stand there, with civility, and receive these office-hours complaints from D.C. Vote residents.

There were a number of other complaints that came to Mr. Harris' office. A resident said they wanted more visible street signs. One resident said they want more bike lanes. If you have got somebody who can put the big foot of the Federal Government on your back, then surely he can do little things like get you some bike lanes.

This may be tongue-in-cheek, but it does show you the residents of the District of Columbia are going to come at you in more ways than one, and yes, there is a sense of humor here, and then there is something very serious, like that boycott.

To its credit, when the boycott of the Eastern Shore was initiated by D.C. Vote, it sent word to its local chamber of commerce and to its local commercial section that it had absolutely nothing against them, that many of us had enjoyed the Eastern Shore, but essentially, we were powerless here.

I could note vote against the Harris amendment. I don't expect the residents of the District of Columbia to sit around and take it. You want to mess with us, we are going to mess with you. We are going to mess with you in your district, we are going to mess with you here.

We are first-class American citizens. We are not going to take it. We are going to do everything we can to blanket your State about how you are meddling in our affairs, instead of taking care of your state's business.

I didn't organize any of this. I am expressing the outrage of the people I represent, and let me tell you, while they made light with this constituent services day in Representative Harris' office, this is dead serious for us because our marijuana amendment wasn't passed because of some college students--and this is a big college town-- lobbied the council about pot.

It was passed in the wake of two studies by very reputable organizations, The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the American Civil Liberties Union. They found that in this progressive town, 90 percent of those arrested for smoking marijuana were Black.

I can't tell you exactly why, but it probably has a lot to do with where the police presence is most likely to be, but these figures fly in the face of figures that show that Blacks and Whites use marijuana at the same rate.

I don't know whether Members appreciate what a ``drug'' offense--and that is what a marijuana offense is--means to a Black kid. It is the end of his working life. He is likely to carry around a stereotype based on his color and often his gender, if he is a Black boy or Black man. He won't be able to explain away this drug offense--marijuana offense.

That is what got the city council to pass this law. So anyone who interferes with us on this issue is meddling with a serious racial issue in the District of Columbia, and we are demanding that you stay out of this very serious affair.

The amendment was passed to combat racial injustice. Twenty-three States have legalized medical marijuana, 18 have decriminalized marijuana, and two States have legalized marijuana. We will not be treated differently from any other State in the Union. The one thing we demand is equal treatment.

I must note that there is a growing sense among my Republican colleagues in this Congress that marijuana should no longer be criminally treated. We don't treat alcohol, which does far more harm, in a criminal fashion. While I am the last one to say smoke weed or cigarettes, I don't think people should get a criminal record for having done so.

We do not see any consistency among my Republican colleagues. When the Harris amendment came in committee, Republicans voted for it, and I want to say something about those Republicans.

Ken Calvert of California, Jeff Fortenberry, Jaime Herrera Beutler, David Joyce, David

Valadao, Andy Harris--of course--and Mark Amodei, these members, along with Mr. Harris, violated their own limited, small government, local control, states' rights principles by voting in committee for the Harris amendment.

I want to say a special word about Mark Amodei of Nevada because he exceeded other Members in hypocrisy. He joined a majority last month on the floor in favor of an amendment blocking the Federal Government from interfering with medical marijuana in those States which allow it-- because Nevada allows it.

He didn't want the Federal Government interfering with what had been sanctioned by his own state, but he was quick to interfere with the local affairs on a related substance right afterwards.

I call on my Republican colleagues to at least abide by their own principles and to show some consistency of principle.

Also passed recently was an amendment that prevents the Federal Government from penalizing financial institutions that provide services to legal marijuana businesses. If you have got a marijuana business in your State and the State says it is okay, then the Federal Government cannot keep financial institutions from dealing in bank transactions with these local marijuana businesses.

Forty-five Republicans voted for that amendment that passed. That is a large number of Republicans to cross the aisle in this House. The House has also voted to block the Drug Enforcement Administration from using funds to target medical marijuana operations in States where those operations are legal. Forty-nine Republicans voted for that.

Be consistent. If you are going to vote to keep the Federal Government out of matters involving marijuana where your State has sanctioned its use, then apply that same principle to the District of Columbia. That is why the Associated Press said: ``House GOP to D.C.: Guns OK, pot dangerous.''

Like the Massie gun amendment, the Harris amendment had unintended consequences, too. The District of Columbia marijuana decriminalization is legal because the law has passed its layover period of 60 legislative days. At the end of that 60 days, the law became legal. Now, the Harris amendment--seeks to overturn it. What happens when you use a pre-loaded Federal political bomb against a local jurisdiction is clear from what has happened with Representative Harris' amendment. That amendment now would not only block the District from enforcing its laws, it would block the District from issuing the fines that, with a sense of responsibility, were put in the law for those who, for example, smoke marijuana on the streets. There are unintended consequences because you don't know what you are doing when you meddle in the business, the local business, of another jurisdiction.

It is remarkable that Mr. Harris is a Club for Growth, Tea Party acolyte, who was known before he came here and is known now for his support of states' rights more than he is known for anything else; and it is remarkable to note that his own State, Maryland, has decriminalized marijuana. He is a Member who has the power in Maryland. Yet, he could not keep his own State from decriminalizing marijuana. So he tries to do in the District what he could not do in the State where he is accountable to the voters.

A recent article on Mr. Harris and the District of Columbia when these residents Constituent Services Day in Representative Harris' office:

I thought this media stunt was going to be a colossally

goofball effort that had little to no effect on Harris or his

views, and we still don't know if it will, but on that day,

his employees were clearly rattled, so mission accomplished.

Moreover, Harris--who also has said that, to District

residents, Congress is their local legislature--missed an

opportunity to come across as something beyond another guy

stuffed in a suit, overreaching his boundaries. By leaving

the completely manageable demonstration to his marginally

prepared aides, his stance on what the city's drug policies

should be came across as even more aloof and more nonsensical

than ever.

Look at how you are viewed. Think before you decide to insert yourself against your own professed--and often announced--principles into the affairs of a local jurisdiction not your own.

I am here this afternoon to serve notice on these two Members--and we are not through with them yet--or on any other Members who come forward that, yes, you can vote when I can't, but you cannot keep the residents of the District of Columbia from doing what they can to show you and to show America that we will not be treated as second-class citizens in our own country, not by Thomas Massie, not by Andy Harris, not by any Member of the House or Senate. Don't expect us to just lie down and take it. No red-blooded American would take what these Members have tried to do to this city with the gun amendment and with the marijuana decriminalization amendment.

In the name of your own principles--principles on which I agree that matters in the States and localities are for them, and my friends, maybe even some of the things we do here can better be done in the States--there is a democratic way to accomplish that mission, but it is not by an act of profound congressional bullying where you exert power to which even the local Member cannot respond except on this floor, with her voice--not even with a vote.

When Thomas Massie decided that he wanted to overrule his chair, they didn't pull him off the floor. They let him have a vote. I will not have a vote on any matter affecting the District of Columbia. In the name of decency, if you are not going to give me a vote, stay out of the affairs of the District of Columbia.

I yield back the balance of my time.