Floor Statements

I thank the chairman and the chairman of the subcommittee for the hearings that they held that exposed this bill for what it does to reproductive choice in our country unconstitutionally on two scores, because it targets also the District of Columbia and therefore separates us out, we who live in the District of Columbia, in violation of the 14th Amendment for treatment differently from women who live just across the river in one part of our country, or in any part of our country.

Mr. Speaker, this is the first time in our history that a standalone bill has come to the floor to deny the residents of the Nation's Capital the same constitutional rights as other Americans. We won't stand for it. Yet the folks behind this bill care nothing about the District of Columbia. They have picked on the District to get a phony Federal imprimatur on a bill that targets Roe v. Wade. In the process, they have picked a fight they do not want and cannot win with pro- choice America.

Bills based on pain or principle would not target only one city that has no vote on a bill that involves only the residents of that city. Women have blown the cover from a bill with a D.C. label because they know an attack on their reproductive health when they see it.

Republicans have taken the gloves off. No one can any longer doubt that the war on women is on, even when it is by proxy as with this bill, infiltrating the Susan G. Komen for the Cure to stop Planned Parenthood from funding breast cancer screening, defunding Planned Parenthood, and taking away contraceptives in insurance policies. All of these battles have failed.

Their final battle on the rights to the reproductive health of American women, abusing their congressional authority and using the women and physicians of the District of Columbia, that final battle must fail as well.

Mr. Speaker, almost all abortions in the District of Columbia are performed between six and 10 weeks.

Mr. Speaker, I was denied my request, my request was denied even to testify on this bill, even though this bill affects only residents of my city. I was told that, and I did not insist, that the Democrats had a witness. They had to hear from that witness.

Christy Zink had an abortion at 22 weeks, only after her physician told her that she was carrying a fetus with half a brain and that if it were born alive, it would have constant seizures throughout its life. This bill would not have allowed Christy Zink to have an abortion, and she would have had to carry that fetus to term.

She has now had a healthy baby. She still grieves for the baby she could not have, but she would never have deserved the punishment that this bill would have inflicted on her.

I ask Members of this House to respect the laws and the women and the residents of the District of Columbia. Let us do what you insist all over the United States be done in your districts.

We differ. Respect our differences, even as I respect yours.

[From the Washington Post, July 27, 2012]

The Kind of Woman Who Needs a Late-term Abortion

(By Christy Zink)

Introduce me to the woman who has an abortion after 20

weeks because she is cruel and heartless. Introduce me to the

lazy gal who gets knocked up and ignores her condition until,

more than halfway through her pregnancy, she ends it because

it has become too darn inconvenient for her selfish

lifestyle.

If such a woman exists, I have never met her. Sadly,

however, she appears to have influenced the thinking of even

savvy, politically informed people in this country.

Otherwise, how could they argue that carrying to term is

always the right decision late in pregnancy? In fact, the

myth of such callous women has been compelling enough to push

along a bill that would ban abortion in the District after 20

weeks of pregnancy; the bill was approved this month by the

House Judiciary Committee, moving it forward for

consideration by the full House, perhaps as soon as Tuesday.

Believing this fabrication of the radical right depends on

one's ability to conjure at once a perfectly unfeeling woman

and a perfectly healthy child, a stand-in for the much more

tragic and complex reality. Meet, instead, a real live,

breathing woman who terminated a much-wanted pregnancy at

almost 22 weeks, when her baby was found to have severe fetal

anomalies of the brain.

My son's condition could not have been detected earlier in

the pregnancy. Far from lazy, I was conscientious about

prenatal care. I received excellent medical attention from my

obstetrician, one of the District's best. Only at our 20-week

sonogram were there warning signs, and only with a high-

powered MRI did we discover the devastating truth of our

son's condition. He was missing the corpus callosum, the

central connecting structure of the brain, and essentially

one side of his brain.

If he survived the pregnancy and birth, the doctors told

us, he would have been born into a life of continuous

seizures and near-constant pain. He might never have left the

hospital. To help control the seizures, he would have needed

surgery to remove more of what little brain matter he had.

That was the reality for me and for my family.

Meet, too, the many real women I know who belong to one of

the saddest groups in the world: those carrying babies for

whom there was no real hope and who made the heartbreaking

decision to end their pregnancies for medical reasons. Meet

the women among this group who had gotten, they thought,

safely to the middle of pregnancy, who had been planning

nurseries and filling baby registries, only to find they

would need to plan a memorial service and to build, somehow,

a life in aftermath.

We are not reckless, ruthless creatures. Our hearts hurt

each day for our losses. We mourn. We speak the names and

nicknames of each other's babies to one another; we hold each

other up on the anniversaries of our losses, and we celebrate

new babies and new accomplishments, all bittersweet because

they arrive in the wake of grief. We extend our arms to the

women who must join our community, and we lament that our

numbers rise every day.

Medical research from the Guttmacher Institute shows that

post-21-week terminations make up less than 2 percent of all

abortions in this country. Women like me can seem an

exception. You also rarely hear stories like mine, because

they involve intensely private sorrow and because there is no

small amount of shame still associated with terminating a

pregnancy, no matter how medically necessary.

The consequences of the House bill, if it becomes law, will

be inhumane. If the restrictions in this bill had been the

law of the land when my husband and I received our diagnosis,

I would have had to carry to term and give birth to a baby

who the doctors concurred had no chance of a real life and

who would have faced severe, continual pain. The decision my

husband and I made to terminate the pregnancy was made out of

love--to spare my son pain and suffering.

The ugly politics in this Congress and the sheer number of

Republicans mean that this bill will likely pass in the

House. I understand any citizen's hesitancy when the issue of

the right to middle-term to late-term abortion arises. But I

also know from my own experience that this bill would have

calamitous ramifications for real women and real families,

and that the women it would most affect could never imagine

they would need their right to abortion protected in this

way.

Women and their families must be able to trust their

doctors and retain their access to medical care when they

most need it. To make sure that happens, members of the

Senate and ordinary people across this country must see

through the stereotype of the late-term aborter and see,

instead, the true face of a woman who has been in this

situation. I extend my hand; it is an honor to make your

acquaintance.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of Representatives to join me in honoring the life of Dr. Mae B. Wright. She was an inspirational teacher, mentor, and tireless servant in the District of Columbia and the D.C. public school system for over 47 years. As a dedicated member of the Washington community, she pioneered advancements in educational achievement and spiritual guidance for countless individuals through her service as a minister, teacher, and advisor.

Mother Wright, as she was fondly known, served as a teacher and business leader by profession. She was dedicated not only to educating students through the school system, but she believed in education through the principles of faith. She co-founded a support ministry called People inspiring People, PIP, with her husband, Raefield Wright, with the goal of helping others find peace, prosperity, and balance in their everyday lives.

Born in Kershaw County, South Carolina, in 1937, her parents instilled in her the importance of self-respect, hard work, integrity, and perseverance. Dr. Wright received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Minors Teachers College, which is currently the University of the District of Columbia. She also received graduate- level training in psychology and business administration.

Dr. Wright will be remembered as a person who always put people first and partnered with them to find peace, especially in the midst of the most challenging circumstances. She was always available, night or day, to help one work through a problem or provide a listening ear.

I ask the House to join me in honoring the life of Dr. Mae B. Wright.

Mr. Speaker, my request to testify was summarily refused on a bill to be marked up tomorrow to deny only women in my district, the District of Columbia, the right to an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy as guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. So I testify for 1 minute today.

Trent Franks, the chairman and sponsor of H.R. 3803 must have thought that one unfairness deserves another. The bill is of a piece with Republican attacks all year--to deny contraceptives in health insurance, and to defund Planned Parenthood.

The bill is unprincipled, or it would not apply only to the District of Columbia. Its bogus science is matched by the absence of a need. Recent figures show almost three-quarters of abortions in the District occurred under 10 weeks of pregnancy, only one past 21 weeks.

Madam Speaker, Republican attacks on lifesaving access to contraceptives in the health care act is one in a series on women's reproductive health this term. The worst is yet to come in the planned markup of H.R. 3803, to ban abortions after 20 weeks. Cloaked as a restriction on D.C. women, the bill merely uses them for a frontal attack on Roe v. Wade that guarantees abortion rights until viability, as determined by a physician.

The Franks bill picks on D.C. women because anti-choice opponents lack the courage of their own convictions, or they would have made the 20-week abortion ban a nationwide bill. That, of course, would bring on the wrath of the American people who support choice. Judging by their reaction even before markup, women see through the cynicism and are poised to protect their constitutional rights.

Well, I want to thank you, Representative Tonko, and my other good colleague, Representative Garamendi, for leading this special order and for offering the perspective that you've begun this hour with, something that our fathers and grandfathers are responsible for, the Greatest Generation, and now has been embraced by the American people. And as proud Democrats, we are very, very proud of that, of these very important reforms.

I wanted to come to the floor as well to offer some real-life, real- time evidence as people try to judge what they've heard on the floor today and what they heard on the floor yesterday about the health care bill. We teach our children fair play, you win some, you lose some. And when you lose, then you've lost that one; you try again another time.

What they've seen in the House this year and last year are the Republicans trying to repeal financial reform. They lost that. It's as if the law of the land weren't the law of the land. Now they're trying to repeal health care reform even when the Supreme Court announces the law of the land. They've come to the point where they do not recognize the law of the land as announced by passage in the Senate and the House, signature of the President, and, in the case of the health care reform bill, the imprimatur, which is the last word, of the Supreme Court.

But as I heard the debate, I was concerned that the American people would be concerned in the face of this economy about what they hear our colleagues on the other side say the health care bill will do to the economy, and attempt to essentially frighten people, especially yesterday when the Republicans came forward with a usual set of horribles, this after the bill was passed, now when we ought to be thinking of the best ways to implement it. But none of those horribles about what was going to happen because of the health care bill was data based.

We ought to ask ourselves: Why would the Republicans not use the one existing experience that we have, the 6-year experience of the Massachusetts health care law, which is the very model for the health care law we passed? And that, of course, was a law that was engineered by their own candidate for President, Mitt Romney.

Well, I had occasion to look at the experience under that bill because, as you may know, our colleagues had hearings all around the House yesterday on health care reform as a prelude to the repeal vote on the floor. And I was in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the hearing was on the impact on jobs. Now, if you want to scare the American people, tell them that the bill is going to add to the problems in their jobs.

One of the witnesses was a State senator from Massachusetts, who has been a State senator for 2 years. He was not in the senate when Governor Romney's bill was passed. He is the CEO of Cape Air. That's a 1,000-employee company. It's a tough business because it's the airline business. It's a regional airline. And he had some real-time experience for us.

And I think it's important just to say a few words about what Massachusetts Senator Daniel Wolf said who for 6 years served on the Federal Reserve Board's Advisory Council of New England, who was board chair of one of the largest chambers of commerce in Massachusetts and is a trustee of the largest mutual bank in the Cape and Islands region. He is a small businessman of the kind we have in mind when we talk about small business. This is what he reported: That his premiums today--under the Massachusetts bill which this bill, our bill, is patterned after--are roughly 3 percent of his company's gross income. And to quote him: ``Health care reform has not stifled business.'' Since the passage of the Massachusetts health care reform bill, the very bill that is the model for our health care bill, this company has added 15 percent more Massachusetts-based jobs.

He talked about premiums. Importantly, he said that just before the passage of the Massachusetts law, premiums were going up 15 to 20 percent. They are down now--going up 5 percent. And he said last year he was able to negotiate a 5 percent decrease. My friends, part of this, a great part of this, has to do with the large insurance pool that, of course, Massachusetts citizens are in now when you see these reductions.

The State spending for health care reform programs last year represented a 1.4 percent increase in the State

budget. Two-thirds of their residents support the health care reform.

It was extraordinary testimony from a businessman who had no reason to come forward. He's not a politician. Yes, he's in the State senate, but he has the credibility of being in the Senate and being a quintessential small businessman.

I want to suggest to my colleagues that there's a reason why our colleagues do not point to the only real experience that could tell us something about what is going to happen with this law, and that is because they are not driven by data, but by some ideology that is not understandable. But once you get it in your head that if you're against the bill even when it's passed, you've got to do all you can to kill it--If it's health care reform, you kill health care reform. If it's financial reform, even after the worst recession since the Great Depression, then you try to kill that.

I think that in hearing what has happened in Massachusetts that you would think Mitt Romney would be shouting from the hilltops about it. When you see what's happened in Massachusetts, what the Republicans, what we ourselves should be doing is studying in depth the experience of Massachusetts, seeing what their mistakes were, looking at their successes, instead of throwing horribles out there based on no data and based on nothing.

I thank you for coming forward to start a discussion that helps give the American people some broader sense of what this struggle is about and helps them to understand that when they hear the word ``repeal,'' it is not what it means. In order to repeal, you have to get both Houses and the signature of the President.

People should be alerted that this law is here to stay. It is almost impossible--it will be almost impossible, unless there is a Herculean change in the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, to change the Congress in the direction of those who oppose the law. Absent that, every Member of this House who believes in law and order, who believes in the rule of law, has an obligation to sit down together to make this law work and not try to undermine it. To the extent that you undermine it, you are now undermining the health care of the citizens of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, American women have been outraged by Republican attacks on reproductive health this term. We saw it in the decision that was later reversed by the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure when it initially pulled funding for Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings, and we saw it again in Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, and then again to block access to contraceptives as part of health insurance.

More seriously, beneath the radar, there has been a far-right campaign, as announced by anti-choice forces, that will emerge in the markup of H.R. 3803, a frontal attack on abortion rights as guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. Representative Trent Franks, the sponsor of H.R. 3803, and anti-choice forces have unleashed a full-fledged attack on Roe and the Nation's women, using women in the Nation's Capital as pawns.

The District of Columbia Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill without any scientific basis, seeks to ban all abortions in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with very limited exceptions. However, Roe v. Wade requires viability to be determined only by a physician and not by statute. Although the bill is nominally addressed only to women in the District of Columbia, it seeks to rally the most extreme Republicans by achieving a Federal imprimatur, however bogus or limited, for use in an ongoing campaign across the Nation to get States to defy the law of the land under Roe v. Wade. Several conservative States have already passed similar laws, but neither Congressional Republicans nor anti-choice organizations has the nerve to proceed in the usual way with a post-20-week abortion ban bill for the Nation because they know that women and their supporters would angrily turn back such an attack on Roe v. Wade.

The full and equal American citizens who live in the Nation's Capital, pay Federal taxes, and go to war demand to have their laws respected--especially by unaccountable Members of Congress. By moving the post-20-week abortion ban only in conservative States and targeting the District, which has no vote on such a bill on this floor, even though it affects only our residents, Republicans show they lack the courage of their own convictions and the courage to make this bill apply nationally, even in a Republican-controlled House where they would surely win. They target the District of Columbia women because they fear the wrath of the Nation's women that a nationwide bill would surely bring.

Well, we will not stand by as Republicans, who claim to favor small and local government, attempt to pass legislation affecting my constituents but not theirs in an act of disdain for the Federalist principles they profess.

Fortunately, the scheduled markup of the bill has helped us and pro- choice organizations to alert women across the United States that the D.C. label on this bill is a cover for a bill that seeks to undermine the reproductive rights of women across the United States.

Women have been watching closely ever since the first attacks on reproductive health in the House this term. With the post-20-week D.C. abortion bill, Republicans have left no doubt that the reproductive freedom of America's women depends upon a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President.

Mr. Speaker, the House just won't let up on American women. Tomorrow features a committee markup to deprive women of their constitutional right to an abortion. The bill picks on D.C. women because Republicans don't have the nerve to introduce this frontal attack on Roe v. Wade as a nationwide bill. But they make no secret of their purpose. They have already gotten several conservative States to pass similar laws and they seek a Federal precedent. But they can't get a legitimate one.

Women will easily see a House-only bill based on bogus science and limited to D.C. for what it is: The latest in a series of attacks on women's reproductive health this term.

Mr. Speaker, today, I am introducing the Rachel Carson Nature Trail Designation Act of 2012 to recognize Rachel Carson, an environmental pioneer and inspiration for the development of environmental consciousness and the environmental movement, best known for her groundbreaking book Silent Spring. September marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, which has been translated into more than a dozen foreign languages. My bill designates a National Park Service trail in the District of Columbia in honor of Rachel Carson.

Ms. Carson was born on May 27, 1907, on a farm in Springdale, Pennsylvania, graduated magna cum laude with a biology degree from the Pennsylvania College for Women (later Chatham College), and received a full scholarship that enabled her to obtain a master's degree in marine zoology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. A world-renowned environmental scientist, writer, and educator, Ms. Carson worked as a writer, editor, and ultimately Editor-in-Chief for the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife Service's publications department.

Ms. Carson lived in a city, not in the wilderness or in rural America. She accomplished much of her seminal professional work as a federal employee at the U.S. Department of the Interior in the District. She often used the Glover Archbold Park in the District as a site from which she drew observations about nature and the environment. She performed research on dangers of pesticides, and her findings were sustained by the Science Advisory Committee, created during President John F. Kennedy's administration. As a result, federal and state legislatures enacted pesticide legislation. Her work paved the way for groundbreaking environmental protection legislation throughout the world.

Ms. Carson was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honors. She died on April 14, 1964, in Silver Spring, Maryland, leaving a rich legacy that will continue to benefit present and future generations well beyond the fiftieth anniversary of Silent Spring.

My bill serves to commemorate Rachel Carson for her tireless efforts to make the District of Columbia, the United States, and, indeed, the world a better and safer place for us all. The trail designated by the bill, located in the NPS's Glover Archbold Park in the District of Columbia, will be known as the ``Rachel Carson Nature Trail.'' The bill ensures that Rachel Carson's contributions, many of which resulted from observations in Glover Park, will be remembered and treasured for years to come.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

I thank Chairman Mica and Ranking Member Rahall for working together on this bill. This year's transportation bill could be named the Jobs Act of 2012 because it is the only bill from the 112th Congress that will create a significant number of jobs.

A word on a couple of significant provisions. Seldom has a pioneering, landmark bill found its way into a transportation reauthorization bill, but in today's bill is the first bill to set national standards for subway safety, bringing subways in line with all other modes of transportation, which have long had national standards. This is probably the most significant provision of this bill.

The DBE language is tailored to ensure that the government is equipped with the tools it must have to address the compelling need for the government to meet its responsibility to continue to address discrimination in small business contracting.

With all of its shortcomings, and there are many, the American people finally will have a jobs bill from this Congress.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Members may be aware that I come to the floor occasionally in order to make certain that Members have the full background as they find themselves in the perplexing situation of receiving legislation on a local government and local residents.

We had a misunderstanding--I can only think it was a misunderstanding this week--when Senator Rand Paul, who I know has been a student of history when it comes to the Constitution, engaged in actions that had the effect of compelling a bipartisan group of Senators to pull back their budget autonomy bill for the District of Columbia.

First, recognize that the Framers didn't go to war with American citizens, including citizens who live right in the very city in which we are now meeting, the District of Columbia, only to leave them out of the very franchise and local control that made the Framers commit what, I'm sure, the British believed were acts of treason when they rebelled against England for its refusal to recognize that taxes are a matter of local control. Bear in mind that those who went to war included the residents of this city and that the Framers in every respect showed that they respected the fact that the citizens of this city were included among those who went to war.

For example, in the transition period--10 years--as the District of Columbia moved to become the Nation's Capital--the four Framers of the Constitution from Maryland and from Virginia made sure through legislation that their members lost nothing, in as much as Maryland and Virginia had donated the land to the Nation for our Nation's Capital. Maryland and Virginia citizens were allowed to vote in their jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia. They voted for Congress, and they were treated in every way like other Americans at that time. In 1802, when full transition to become the Nation's capital occurred, they lost what they had been promised. They lost their full rights as American citizens.

The District got back some of those rights under a Republican President 39 years ago when the District was granted home rule, the right to govern itself, under the Home Rule Act.

Richard Nixon said at the time:

I share the chagrin that most Americans feel at the fact that Congress continues to deny self-government to the Nation's Capital. I would remind the Congress that the Founding Fathers did nothing of the sort. Home rule was taken from the District only after more than 70 years of self-government, and this was done on grounds that were either factually shaky or morally doubtful.

So the Congress returned to the District some measure of home rule in 1973. In returning a good measure of home rule, the Congress nevertheless said to the District that, while it had

authority over its own budget, the budget had to come to the Congress of the United States before it became final.

We are trying, as I speak, to make sure that that budget does not become a vehicle for denying the very principles that the Framers fought for and that every American stands for. This is not a country where you can pay taxes and somebody else can have something to say over how those taxes will be used. That would cause another rebellion. When this matter was put to the American people in a recent poll, here is what they said: more than seven in 10 believe that the District of Columbia should control its own budget.

I suppose in America people are saying, Duh, of course. That's a basic founding principle. Why do you need to tell us that?

We need to tell you that because there are attempts here--and there was an attempt just this week in the Senate--that contradicted the increasing bipartisan consensus for local control by the District of its own local funds, funds that not one Member of this body has had anything to do with raising. So when you put that to the American people, you get a predictable answer: seven in 10 say yes to local control by the District alone of its own local funds.

What does that mean in terms of Democrats and Republicans?

Seventy-one percent of Democrats and, by the way, 72 percent of Republicans support it. I'm not surprised at those figures. Seventy-one percent of Democrats--and slightly more--72 percent of Republicans believe that the people who pay taxes and happen to live in their Nation's Capital should be treated as full American citizens when it comes to how they spend their own local funds.

That principle is not always recognized in this body, and that's why I've come to the floor today, because I do not believe that the failure to recognize this principle comes from venality. I think it comes because there is turnover in the Congress and because people don't focus on the anti-democratic bills that come before them, so they simply do what they are told to do. They don't do much analysis of their own about why they may be voting as a Member of Congress to overturn local laws.

Last year, the District of Columbia government was almost shut down three separate times. I don't think I could find a Member of this body--in fact, I'm sure I can't--who would say that when the Federal Government is engaged in a Federal fight over Federal spending that the District of Columbia should have to shut down, too; but that was the case because the District of Columbia local budget--its balanced budget (unlike our own)--which had been approved by the Appropriations Committee, was still here. Because it was still here and for no other reason, the District of Columbia three different times had to prepare for a shutdown of the city government, and had to prepare for the consequences of the possible violation of contracts and other serious consequences through no fault of their own.

It's important to note that a Senate appropriations bill this year does contain my no-shutdown bill for the District of Columbia, which simply says that the District of Columbia doesn't shut down if the Federal Government shuts down; of course, if the city is spending only its own local money, that's okay for the city to do.

When I refer to a bipartisan group of congressional leaders who support budget autonomy, I'm speaking of leaders who have been in the Congress, and have been in the District and have seen what the effects of not treating the District as a full local-controlled jurisdiction have been. In the House today, I am grateful to Chairman Darrell Issa, chairman of the committee with some jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, who is a leading proponent of budget autonomy for the District of Columbia, so much so that he has his own bill for budget autonomy, which is very much like my own.

In the Senate, Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins had a bipartisan bill in committee this week for budget autonomy for the District of Columbia much like Chairman Issa's. Budget autonomy has been supported by majority leader Eric Cantor. Budget autonomy has been supported by the Republican Governor of the State of Virginia.

When we note what happened in the Senate on the bill, we cannot believe that it came from animus or some sense that the District of Columbia is not a city whose citizens should be treated as other American citizens are treated. Yet, as the bill went to committee, Senator Rand Paul appeared to have proposed any and every amendment he could think of, amendments that no self-respecting American jurisdiction could possibly abide, not because there is anything inherently wrong with these amendments, but because they violate what the voting majority of taxpaying residents of the District of Columbia have approved as local law.

The Senator did not stay he disagrees with this or that policy and he wants to make sure that the District does this or that thing. He said: I think it's a good way to call attention to some issues that have national implications. We don't have control over the States, but we do for D.C.

Oh, really? What control do you have over our local funds? Do you raise a cent of it?

This must be a misunderstanding. Since Senator Rand Paul founded the Tea Party Caucus in the Senate and is the champion of small government and local control there, I choose to believe that this freshman Senator had not yet come to grips with the rather complicated history of the Nation's capital. If he had, I don't think he would have put forward an amendment that would require the city to allow conceal-and-carry permits. We may not have a problem with conceal and carry in the United States, but that's not what the people of the District of Columbia, who pay taxes here, have written into their constitutional local laws.

Moreover, public safety is the essence of local control. If you look to the two or three issues that nobody should have anything to say about in another local jurisdiction, surely at the head of the list would be local police power, when that power is consistent with the Constitution.

Then a stream of other amendments came forward from Senator Paul on abortion, one of them on licensed firearms dealer, one of them having to do with labor organizations. It's as if the Senator went down a checklist. He virtually said so himself. He said: What national issues can I highlight using the District of Columbia?--as if the city were nothing but a plaything and not a jurisdiction of 600,000 American citizens who have fought and died in every war, including the war that created the United States of America, of 600,000 citizens who pay the second highest Federal taxes per capita in the United States. That's 600,000 citizens, one of whom was killed in Afghanistan last month. It means 600,000 Americans who have every right to demand equal citizenship.

Nevertheless, good news, from bipartisan support and from national polls, continues to roll in. The Senate has just passed out of committee the D.C. budget. The most the Senate and the most the House should do is act as a pass-through as long as the D.C. budget does not violate the Constitution. Of course, no local budget belongs in the United States Congress. However, D.C. does not yet have budget autonomy. Yet there is nothing, in American principle or American history which says that once you have the local budget through here, you can just do anything you want to do, overturn local laws or restrict funds that Congress had nothing to do with raising.

I met Tea Party people for the first time when they came to Congress. I thought local control was their most basic principle. In fact, Senator Rand Paul would like to get the Federal Government out of issues where the Constitution allows the Federal Government to be. But what about hopping over Federal issues and trying to interfere in the business of a local jurisdiction? That's against his principles; that's against everything the Framers stood for.

Polls within the last few months show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe Congress should pass a D.C. budget without changes. Who is this overwhelming majority? Seventy eight percent of them are Democrats. Once again, Republicans lead the pack at 81 percent.

This is how the question was framed:

``Today, Members of Congress are withholding approval of Washington, D.C.'s local budget unless the city agrees to a series of unrelated provisions on issues ranging from guns to abortion. Do you think Congress should or should not interfere in the city's local affairs and budget in this way?''

If anything, the issue was framed against D.C. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that of this 81 percent of Republicans who answered that Congress should not interfere with D.C.'s local affairs and budget were many who, in fact, oppose abortion and oppose any restrictions on guns or gun owners. Yet this is how they responded when asked a base question, a fundamental question regarding, if it is local money, should a national body in Washington have any right, whatsoever, to impose its will on a local budget.

Congress does lag occasionally behind the American people. This is a big lag. But the lag does not include several leaders of this House and of the Senate.

Senator Joe Lieberman is retiring this year. He has been a champion of equal citizenship for the residents of the District of Columbia, whether it was voting rights or statehood or budget autonomy. Equal citizeship rights for District of Columbia citizens, in many ways, partially define his service.

Yet the first budget autonomy bill to pass at all in Congress came from Senator Susan Collins, when democrats were in the minority. That was in 2003. That bill went all the way to the floor and was passed in a Republican Senate. It was the House that did not pass it or D.C. budget autonomy would be law today.

So when I speak of first principles, I think there is great evidence that those first principles resonate in the Senate and resonate in the House. They resonate in the House when Representative Issa puts forward a budget autonomy bill, it resonates in the House, when Majority Leader Cantor, in fact, says he supports budget autonomy.

I don't believe that the average Member even desires the opportunity to use 600,000 American citizens as playthings through a local budget. We joust with one another. We disagree with one another. But I don't believe when it comes to this serious matter that if we had an opportunity, one on one, to speak with Members of this body they would give you a justification for a federal body overturning the will of the people of a local jurisdiction.

That is why I say this afternoon that by assuming that disparate treatment of any American citizens, even those who live in the District of Columbia, must reflect a misunderstanding that I hope, by coming to the floor from time to time, I can help clear up. Unequal treatment of American citizens flies in the face of the very principles that particularly Members of this House have professed from the moment the 112th Congress convened: Get the Federal Government out of our lives, even where the Federal Government has historically been in our lives; get the Federal Government out of any opportunity to get involved in our lives.

Witness the view of Republicans on the Affordable Health Care Act. Up with local control, and when it comes to local money, hands off.

You might imagine that when the District raises $6 billion from local citizens, they wouldn't want anybody telling them anything about how to spend their local funds. The District spends that money on some matters and in some ways that are different from the way the jurisdictions of my colleagues spend their own money. Isn't tolerating these differences what is most wonderful about America?

The Framers put together a nation that was very different, that has kept us from going to war with one another over issues by above all separating out local from Federal, meaning if you stay in your part, we won't go there. We will only go where matters of national concern are to be found. That was the promise.

I must say, to my colleagues, that's the promise that's been kept for every American district, except my own. And that is why I have called Senator Rand Paul. I have not been able to speak to him yet. I am going to ask to sit down with him. I am going to walk over to the Senate to see if I can have a good conversation with him about the District of Columbia, because I have no reason to believe, given his own short history in the Senate, that he means to do anything but carry out his own originalist principles, his principles that local control is different from Federal intervention. Given a conversation, we can at least make some headway on what the District means to our country and how the citizens of this city feel when they are basically kicked around.

We're powerless to do anything about it. If a bill comes to the floor which keeps us from spending our own money, every Member of this body can vote on that bill except the Member that represents the District of Columbia because, as of yet, the Congress has not, in fact, given the District the voting rights that we have given to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, with citizens from the District of Columbia among those fighting for their freedom. So I don't think anybody would blame us for coming forward to ask for what every other American takes for granted.

What is truly gratifying to me, even as I complain about the withdrawal of a budget autonomy bill in committee, which Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins had worked so hard to perfect, what encourages me is, first, the leadership we have in the House for budget autonomy, the leadership that continues to stand strong with us in the Senate. But most of all, Mr. Speaker, what encourages me is what these two charts tell us about our country, tell us about what the American public believes, tells us what they overwhelmingly believe--that American citizens have a right when it comes to their own funds raised by them and them alone.

Yes, I take heart in the fact that while there are only small differences between Democrats and Republicans on subject autonomy, those who most favor control of the city's own budget by its own local citizens are Republicans, who are, it seems to me, only confirming their own principles.

And when it comes to whether or not the Congress, when the D.C. budget comes here, should pass it clean, just as it was when it came, or should in some way use it to profile national issues, you have even greater majorities essentially sending Congress a message that it should pass the D.C. local budget without changes. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Americans regard this as something of a truism. My colleagues represent the people included in these massive majorities.

I don't expect my colleagues to spend a lot of time on the District of Columbia. I ask only that when the budget of a local jurisdiction comes here that there be some thought behind what you do when you have the vote on that budget and I do not. In a real sense, I ask you to put yourself in my position. I am a Member of the House of Representatives. I have the same standing that all of you have, except I do not have a vote.

I would be so bold as to ask my colleagues to put themselves in my position when they see Members of this House or Members of the Senate try to direct the District about how it ought to spend its own local funds. I ask you to put yourself in my position because I think there would be some genuine empathy with the position in which I find myself, representing 600,000 citizens who have lived up to every obligation of citizenship ever since the founding of the Republic of which they have always been a part, but never with equal citizenship.

We will continue to come forward in good faith and in the spirit of understanding and in the hope that, with greater highlighting of the discrepancies between professed principles and how they are occasionally carried out, change will come in a country which is always striving to live up to its own ideals.

I yield back the balance of my time.

[From the Washington Post, June 27, 2012]

Rand Paul's Situational Principle

(By Editorial Board)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) came to Washington on the wave of

the tea party movement to limit big government. ``I think a

lot of things could be handled locally . . . the

more local the better, and the more common sense the

decisions are, rather than having a federal government make

those decisions,'' he said during his 2010 campaign. So how

to explain his spoiling a move to give the District autonomy

over its own tax dollars by--and this is really rich--

injecting the federal government into local affairs?

We thought we could no longer be surprised by congressional

hypocrisy when it comes to the nation's capital, but Mr.

Paul's willingness to turn his back on his supposed

libertarian principles and devotion to local rule is truly

stunning.

A bill that would give D.C. officials the ability to spend

local dollars--we repeat, locally collected, locally paid tax

dollars--without congressional approval was pulled from

consideration this week after Mr. Paul introduced a set of

amendments that would dictate to the city policies on guns,

abortions and unions. ``The last senator I would expect it

from,'' said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), telling us

that she has never seen so many amendments offered at one

time by a single member to restrict D.C. rights. Ironically,

Ilir Zherlca, head of the advocacy group DC Vote, said that

Mr. Paul initially had been seen as a potential ally for the

District because of his views on small government.

Mr. Paul told The Post's Ben Pershing, ``I think it's a

good way to call attention to some issues that have national

implications. We don't have [control] over the states, but we

do for D.C.'' In other words, ``I am doing this because I

can''--not exactly the argument one expects to hear from

someone who has railed about federal intrusion. As Mr. Zherka

pointed out, Mr. Paul's brief for small government is not

whether the federal government has the power but whether it

should use it.

A spokesman for Mr. Paul e-mailed us a reminder that the

District is not a state but a federal jurisdiction: ``Efforts

to change that have failed, and until it is changed it is not

only the prerogative but the duty of Congress to have

jurisdiction over the Federal District.'' What we don't get

is how someone who raises the banner of a movement inspired

by a time when Americans were ruled without representation

could be so unsympathetic to the rights of D.C. citizens who

are in the same position.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Any doubt that today's contempt resolution is political was put to rest when the NRA joined in to blowtorch vulnerable Democrats to vote for contempt today.

The gun lobby is directly responsible for the gap in Federal law that allowed the straw purchases of guns here that were taken to Mexico, ultimately resulting in the tragic death of a border agent. Yet because of a political mandate from the gun lobby, our committee spent no time on the root cause of this tragedy. Instead, after the majority failed to get the documents it requested that were under court seal and documents related to ongoing investigations, it asked for internal communications that no Republican or Democratic administration has ever given up.

Instead of sparing no effort to give law enforcement the tools it must have to protect our border agents, our committee has spared no effort to get to today's contempt resolution over issues unrelated to the tragic killing. After 16 months, the committee found no evidence that the Attorney General or other top Justice Department officials knew about the ATF gunwalking. And the committee resolutely refused to hear from top ATF officials who said that they, in turn, had given the Justice Department no such information.

It is Attorney General Holder who stopped the gunwalking authorized and started by the Bush administration. The contempt today, Mr. Speaker, is for the truth.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I have come back from walking out of this proceeding to address the serious, baseless charge of a coverup. No one in the majority has been able to charge that the Attorney General or his top lieutenants knew about the gunwalking initiated in the Bush administration because there is no evidence of that after 16 months of investigation.

This contempt resolution stems from a letter from the Justice Department correcting the record resulting from a prior letter written in the Legislative Affairs section of the Justice Department that there was no gunwalking. That letter relied on statements of ATF officials and Justice Department officials who this Justice Department then fired and did its own investigation. So what you have is contempt for correcting the record.

What the Justice Department did was the opposite of a coverup. But it is alleged that if the Department has nothing to hide, it would simply turn over everything in its possession. The other side has gone so far as to say that when the President invoked executive privilege, he too was implicated in a coverup. But the Supreme Court itself has said that while the privilege is not absolute--and here I am quoting--human experience teaches us that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with concerns for appearances. Thus, Presidents have repeatedly asserted executive privilege to protect confidential executive branch deliberative materials from congressional subpoena.

The last leg of today's weak reed of contempt is the claim that the President asserted executive privilege too late. Why not from the beginning?

The President, like every President before him, did not assert the privilege until negotiations broke down. But the committee proceeded without even examining the basis for the privilege, as prior Chairs of our committee have done. A coverup is the most irresponsible allegation of this debate because no evidence of a coverup has been submitted.

This subpoena is so partisan and political that I expect any court to do just what our committee should have done--compel the parties to sit down and negotiate.

Madam Speaker, I have only brief remarks because I want to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Texas and the gentleman from Missouri and to thank them for bringing this bill forward. Special thanks are due to Chairman Darrel Issa and Ranking Member Cummings for their considerable assistance on this bill, and for two other good friends, Representative Gowdy, the chairman of the subcommittee, and Representative Davis, ranking member of the subcommittee.

The bill essentially incorporates technical changes for land that has been owned for almost 50 years by the District of Columbia, but land transferred in bills during the so-called pre-Home Rule period often contained language that is obsolete today and prevents the highest and best use.

Last Congress, the smaller part of this bill, the Washington Channel bill, was passed unanimously in committee and on the House floor. The channel part of the bill had to be updated because the channel was established in the 1800s, when the District of Columbia was a major port. This section allows the District now to use the waterfront for today's boating and other water activities.

All the relevant agencies--and I appreciate the work of the Coast Guard and the Navy--have signed off on this bill. I particularly appreciate the work of the gentleman from Texas and the gentleman from Missouri in bringing this bill forward, and Chairman Issa and ranking member Cummings of the Oversight and Government Reform bill, once again, and its subcommittee leadership as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of Representatives to join me in recognizing Ilir Zherka, Executive Director of DC Vote, who has been the outstanding leader of District of Columbia residents in the fight for equal citizenship rights in our country. Ilir will celebrate his tenth anniversary as Executive Director of DC Vote on June 24, 2012. Ilir has built DC Vote in membership and in the use of a wide assortment of sophisticated tactics and approaches. Under Ilir's leadership, DC Vote has sustained itself for 10 years without interruption, thus ensuring the sustainability of a citizen's movement here for the first time in decades. Ilir has been the major tactician of the movement, skillfully using approaches as varied as polling, lobbying, and civil disobedience.

Most recently, Ilir was the architect of unprecedented civil disobedience on the streets in front of the Senate and the White House last year, after Congress reimposed anti-home-rule riders on the D.C. appropriations bill, and after the District government barely avoided being shut down because of a federal budget fight in which the city was not involved. Ilir's own arrest was emblematic of the courageous leadership that he has given the movement.

Ilir's earlier leadership in the fight of D.C. residents for a full vote in the House brought the city the closest to success in its history. Ilir brought a wide variety of approaches to the voting rights struggle with mounting success. His valuable work behind the scenes in establishing contacts to help remove an amendment that tied passage of the D.C. House Voting Rights Act (DCVRA) to the elimination of the city's gun safety laws is not well known. Years of diligent and systematic work brought passage of the DCVRA in the House and Senate, only to be undercut by the dangerous gun amendment. This disappointment after many years of hard work would have caused many to move on. However, on the heels of the setback for voting rights, Ilir immediately turned to leading a new fight for D.C. budget autonomy and building an expanded national coalition to protect the District's home rule from an unprecedented series of attacks.

Ilir's aggressive creativity in building DC Vote has been matched by personal modesty, rare in a leader of a movement. Most who have worked with Ilir have been unaware that he was brought to this country as a child in an immigrant family from Montenegro, fleeing ethnic tension with Albanians. He rose from an underprivileged childhood in the South Bronx to attend college at Cornell University and law school at the University of Virginia. Ilir's work for justice before and during his leadership of DC Vote was chronicled in an April 2012 article in Washingtonian magazine, entitled ``Taking It to the Street.'' I ask for unanimous consent to place the article in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, for 10 years, Ilir Zherka has been leading the fight for equal rights for the residents of the District of Columbia, within view of the U.S. Capitol. Ilir has visited the offices of many Members. His leadership has been in the great tradition of citizens who have petitioned for their rights and engaged in citizen action, including time-honored civil disobedience. I ask the House to join me in commending Ilir Zherka for his outstanding leadership of the movement for equal citizenship rights for the more than 600,000 Americans who live in the Nation's capital.

Taking It to the Street

(By Ariel Sabar)

The Headquarters of DC Vote have a lived-in feel, with

scuffed blue carpets and hallways lined with stacks of

cardboard boxes. The walls are a bricolage of candid photos

from protests and posters from the group's well-known ad

campaigns (I AM DC, I DEMAND THE VOTE). When I first visited

last summer, a couple of rumpled dress shirts hung over the

backs of chairs in the office bullpen. A staffer apologized,

saying they'd been tossed there by interns who had changed

into T-shirts before going out to leaflet.

The corner office of DC Vote's executive director, Ilir

Zherka, was so tidy by comparison that I asked whether he'd

cleaned up for my visit. There was a stand for his leadership

awards, a single mounted news article, an impeccably trimmed

ficus. Zherka said the slim pile of papers on his desk was a

bit thicker than usual: ``I don't like clutter. It prevents

me from freeing up my mind to work.''

A diagram tacked to the inside of his door added to the

picture of Zherka as the cool tactician bringing discipline

to the District's long and messy struggle for full democratic

rights. The nation's capital has more residents than

Wyoming--but no vote in Congress, which has the power to

overrule the District's leaders on local matters.

The hand-drawn diagram, of X's and O's yoked by arcing

lines, looked like a page from a coach's playbook. Inside the

biggest loop was a list of what Zherka said were ``opponents

or problems.'' These included Power of Elites, Ignorance,

NRA, Republicans, Blue Dog Dems, Pseudo Strict

Constructionists. The list had the gravity of a voting-rights

Ten Plagues.

The diagram, Zherka explained, was a postmortem inked after

one of the movement's most spectacular defeats. Legislation

that DC Vote had spent seven years fighting for--and that had

won historic votes in both the House and the Senate--came to

an ugly end in the spring of 2010, the victim of a fractured

city leadership and of deft politicking by the national gun-

rights lobby. The DC Voting Rights Act would have expanded

the US House of Representatives by two seats. One would have

gone to DC, whose residents are overwhelmingly Democratic,

the other to Utah, a Republican-leaning state that had failed

by a whisker to win a fourth House seat through the 2000

census.

In trying to regroup, Zherka--a tall 46-year-old man with

narrow features, a loping gait, and a salt-and-pepper

goatee--had organized a series of meetings to pick through

the wreckage. The movement needed to pivot, to find a new way

forward. At the front of everyone's mind was the one-word

question scrawled in big red letters at the top of the

diagram: How?

As Zherka came to see it, the ``inside game''--of lobbying

Congress, of quiet meetings with elites--had to give way to

something more aggressive. The District had to make Congress

and the White House pay a higher price for denying greater

self-rule to the 600,000 residents of the nation's capital.

``Part of our strategy is to push this fight to the point

where Americans weigh in in large numbers,'' Zherka told me.

``That's the way the civil-rights movement worked, when

people from the North called their congressmen and said,

'Stop those dogs, turn off those water hoses.'''

We left Zherka's office and walked to the small break room.

Among the photos on the wall was one of Zherka wrapped in a

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION flag and pointing skyward

with his right hand. The gesture managed to evoke both the

Statue of Liberty and Moses.

Zherka said that the day after Barack Obama won the

presidency, he taped the Washington Post's front page to the

same wall. It was a totem to the man who was supposed to be

the movement's redeemer; the man who had backed the voting-

rights bill as a US senator, who ate at Ben's Chili Bowl, who

played basketball with then-DC mayor Adrian Fenty and won

Fenty's endorsement in the Democratic primary; the man, an

African-American, who said he saw this historically black

city on the Potomac as something more than a seat of federal

power.

That now felt like a long time ago. Last spring, Zherka

removed the Election Day front page and replaced it with one

more attuned to the times. Its centerpiece was a photograph

of current DC mayor Vincent Gray being handcuffed by the

Capitol Police on April 11 of last year, a day when 41

people, including Zherka, the mayor, and six DC Council

members, were arrested in the movement's largest act of civil

disobedience in decades. The arrests made headlines around

the world.

The television cameras, the turnout among local leaders,

and the location--a tightly policed street near the Capitol--

gave the appearance of significant advance planning. But

Zherka had put the entire demonstration together in about 48

hours. The catalyst was news that President Obama had agreed

to a Republican-sought ban on locally funded abortions in DC

in a last-minute deal to avert a federal-government shutdown.

``John, I will give you DC abortion,'' Obama had told GOP

House speaker John Boehner, according to a Washington Post

article reconstructing the negotiations.

From his iPhone that weekend, Zherka sent an e-mail

summoning his staff to a 10 AM conference call. This latest

attack on self-governance demanded a response, he said. They

would need to e-mail supporters, contact the media, work

Facebook and Twitter, and get permits from the Capitol

Police. Zherka and his deputies would need to track down

Mayor Gray and the council over the weekend and urge them to

attend. In less than three hours, an e-mail to supporters

announced a 5 PM demonstration that Monday, at Constitution

Avenue and Second Street, Northeast.

Zherka's plan was to have speeches and then lead perhaps a

half dozen protesters into the street, blocking traffic and

refusing police orders to move. Zherka suspected that Obama's

concession would inflame DC leaders, particularly those who

had worked to elect him. But how many were willing to be

thrown into the back of a police van? Zherka had run into

Mayor Gray at a social function the night before, but Gray

had been noncommittal.

The next day, after the speeches, Zherka was the first to

defy Capitol Police and set foot in the busy street. To his

relief, Gray was right behind him.

When I caught up with him not long afterward, Zherka told

me that the 41 arrests were a ``huge turning point.'' But a

year later, the movement's prospects seem anything but clear.

If Eleanor Holmes Norton--DC's nonvoting member of

Congress--and a string of the city's mayors have been the

public face of the fight for greater self-rule in the

District, Zherka is its chief strategist and organizer. He is

in many ways the movement's Zelig, a shape-shifter as

comfortable testifying before Congress as he is leading

chants through a bullhorn.

His own obscurity belies the influence of the nonpartisan

advocacy group he turned from a once-flailing nonprofit into

a many-tentacled powerhouse. Before its advent, Norton says,

she often felt like ``a talking head with nobody, meaning a

body of citizens to back her up.''

When he isn't emceeing rallies, Zherka is either on the

Hill or at DC Vote, in Dupont Circle, where he morphs into a

methodical puzzle-solver. At their Monday meetings, his

half dozen staffers turn in reports of their activities

over the past week, with a breakdown of successes and

failures. Zherka uses the reports as real-time

intelligence--a ``dashboard,'' as one of his deputies puts

it--to identify trends and new lines of attack.

In the halls of Congress, Zherka has a reputation for

relentlessness. When a hard-fought 2007 voting-rights bill

fell three votes short in the Senate, Zherka ``was absolutely

the first person who said, `We have to get back on the horse.

We have to get moving again. What are we doing? Who are we

targeting?' '' says Deborah Parkinson, then a senior staffer

on the Senate committee with District oversight. ``Just when

you're tired and ready to take a break for 24 hours, he was

right there saying, `What are we going to do to make sure we

get three votes for next time?' ''

I accompanied Zherka one morning to a seminar he was

leading for staffers from other nonprofits. The course was

based on a how-to advocacy book Zherka is writing. Its

chapter titles have the ring of both a battlefield manual and

a self-help guide--Recruit the Right Champions; Communicate

at All Times in All Directions; You Lose Until You Win.

The seminar was in a guesthouse at the villa-style DC home

of Daniel Solomon, a philanthropist who helped found DC Vote.

Zherka started with a lesson on issue-framing: why ``marriage

equality'' is a better phrase than ``gay marriage,'' why

``climate change'' is more likely to get a politician's ear

than ``global warming.''

He gave an example from his own movement: ``When someone

says `statehood,' people will ask, `Well, where's the

building going to be? Who's going to be the governor?' When

you frame it as `DC voting rights,' which is essentially the

same thing, people will say, `Oh, it's what everyone else

has.' ''

During a break, Zherka and I stepped onto the patio. ``When

I was in college,'' he said, ``I took one of those tests

that's supposed to tell you what career to go into.'' It was

some 150 questions but offered less clarity than he'd hoped.

``I remember the results were actor, politician, professor,

and military officer.''

When DC Vote hired Zherka as its executive director a

decade ago, it needed--and got--all four.

A group of civic leaders and philanthropists established DC

Vote in 1998 to rouse public support for the plaintiffs in

Alexander v. Daley. The civil suit grew out of a legal theory

that Jamin Raskin--a star professor at American University

and now also a Maryland state senator--had laid out in a

Harvard law journal. A group of 57 residents, joined by the

DC government, argued that their lack of full congressional

representation violated what Raskin said were equal-

protection and due-process rights to ``one person/one vote

without regard to geographic residence.''

DC Vote's founders saw in the suit new hope for a struggle

winding back 200 years. The District was founded in 1790 on

land ceded by Maryland and Virginia. A year after Congress

moved to the new capital in 1800, lawmakers stripped

residents of their ability to vote for Congress and

President. When Philadelphia had been the capital, the

Pennsylvania governor had refused to protect Congress from a

mob of angry soldiers. Never again, Congress felt, should the

seat of federal power be subject to the whims of local

politicians.

Washingtonians raised an outcry They paid federal taxes and

fought wars but were denied the very democracy the United

States had just fought Great Britain to win. Yet for the next

160 years, little changed.

Over the decades, resistance to self-rule took on more

cynical dimensions. For many in Congress, DC was simply too

liberal and too black. A history of local corruption didn't

help, though whether the District's scandals were any worse

than those in Congress or in the states remains a fair

question.

It wasn't until 1961, with the 23rd Amendment, that

Washingtonians won the right to vote in presidential

elections. In 1970, the District was granted a nonvoting

delegate in the House. Three years later, Congress let DC

residents elect a mayor and 13-member council. Though the so-

called Home Rule Act was a giant leap, Congress retained the

power to review the city's budget and all acts of the

council.

The momentum the District had drawn from the broader civil-

rights movement in the 1960s and '70s fizzled amid the

violence and corruption of the 1980s and '90s. After then-

mayor Marion Barry's arrest in a crack-cocaine sting, public

animus toward the city crested. ``The whole idea of making

this little pissant city into a state is ludicrous, something

like a fly landing on an elephant's rump and contemplating

rape,'' the Philadelphia Inquirer's David Boldt wrote in a

1993 editorial.

By October 2000, Anthony Williams--first as DC's chief

financial officer, then as mayor--had shored up the

District's finances and made friends in Congress. But the

civil suit hit a wall. The Supreme Court upheld a lower-court

ruling that under the Constitution only ``the People of the

several States'' could choose members of Congress, and DC was

not a state. The lower court had recognized the ``inequity''

but said only Congress could fix it.

By 2002, DC Vote was adrift and nearly bankrupt. Yet Daniel

Solomon and another founder, Joe Sternlieb, came to see the

legal defeat as an argument for the group's revival. As they

looked back at the history of the struggle, they noticed a

lack of continuity. Leaders came and went; passions burned

and cooled.

``There were these episodic moments of great interest but

nothing continuing, nothing being built,'' Solomon--whose

grandfather cofounded the Giant Food supermarket chain--told

me. ``As a philanthropist, I saw--we all saw--the importance

of building a structure that could keep pushing the issue

forward, even and especially in the lean times.''

Board members recognized that DC Vote's survival--and

perhaps the movement's--depended on its next choice of

leader.

Ilir Zherka was born in 1965 in Montenegro, then part of

socialist Yugoslavia. His grandparents were farmers who had

fought against the Italian and German occupation of Albania

during World War II. Disease and the ravages of war claimed

the lives of all but one of their seven children--Zherka's

father, Ahmet.

After the war, Zherka's grandfather clashed with Albania's

new Communist leaders and fled with the family to Montenegro.

(Zherka's parents are Muslim, though Zherka now goes with his

family to a Unitarian congregation.) In their small town,

Ahmet, charismatic and handsome, earned a reputation as an

agitator against police harassment of Albanians. ``My dad was

very brash, very nationalistic, very unafraid,'' Zherka says.

But after taking part in an ethnic brawl one day, Ahmet

feared for his family. They borrowed money from neighbors and

landed in New York in May 1968, when Zherka was 2\1/2\.

Eleven people--Zherka and his six siblings, their parents

and grandparents--squeezed into a three-bedroom apartment in

the South Bronx. His father worked as a janitor and elevator

operator by day; his mother cleaned offices at night. Zherka

remembers feeling humiliated when his mother paid for

groceries with food stamps.

When Marshal Tito or some other Yugoslav official visited

the United Nations, Ahmet hauled his children there in his

Pinto station wagon and helped lead hundreds of fellow

Albanian-Americans in protest. ``We, the kids, would march in

circles and would be holding signs and shouting out chants,''

Zherka says.

By the time Zherka was a teenager, in the late 1970s, the

South Bronx was a wasteland of poverty, racial tension, and

violence. His older brothers ran in a tough circle, and

several dropped out of high school.

For awhile, Zherka stayed out of trouble. He got a black

belt in karate by sixth grade and started rap and

breakdancing groups. In the schoolyards on Friday and

Saturday nights, Zherka--as MC Rockwell or Il Rock--would

join the crews who set up turntables and performed for the

neighborhood.

When the family moved to a slightly better-off neighborhood

in the North Bronx, Zherka fell in with a gang of Albanian

teenagers who robbed houses, sold drugs, and rumbled. Zherka

had to repeat ninth grade. When he transferred to Christopher

Columbus High School, the principal noticed the disparity

between his high test scores and his low grades and warned

him to get his act together. The message struck at the right

time. One of Zherka's friends was imprisoned for burglary;

another was found dead in a river, in what neighbors

suspected was a homicide.

It was during an 11th-grade government class that he felt a

calling for public service. By his senior year, he was a good

enough public speaker that teachers picked him to give

``scared straight'' talks to freshmen and to testify against

budget cuts before the board of education.

With the help of a state program for underprivileged

students, Zherka won a full scholarship to Fordham

University. He drew straight A's his freshman year and

transferred to Cornell.

The leap from the Bronx's mean streets to the Ivy league

necessitated a costume change: ``I went out and bought three

sweaters and a bunch of button-down shirts.'' He joined the

debate team and was elected president of the Cornell

Democrats. He interned in the office of New York senator

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and graduated from Cornell with

distinction and the school's John F. Kennedy Memorial Award

for public service.

Back in the Bronx, Zherka's success became a source of

pride. Among former classmates, Il Rock had become Political

Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask the House of Representatives to join me in recognizing Lieutenant Commander Wesley A. Brown '49, CEC, USN (Ret.), the first African American graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, who died on May 22, 2012, for his service to his country and to the residents of the District of Columbia. Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 6, 2012, the U.S. Naval Academy will hold Commander Brown's memorial service in the Academy's Main Chapel, a short walk from the stadium, the Wesley A. Brown Field House, named for him in recognition of his historic place in history.

The District of Columbia had no representation in Congress at the time, but Representative Adam Clayton Powell (NY) nominated Mr. Brown to the Naval Academy in 1945. According to historian Robert J. Schneller, Jr., who was commissioned by the Navy to write a book about Lieutenant Brown, Breaking the Color Barrier: The U.S. Naval Academy's First Black Midshipmen and the Struggle for Racial Equality, ``Having attended high school, played sports, led the Cadet Corps, held a full- time job, and taken a college course all at the same time, Brown was accustomed to working hard, working smart, and budgeting his time.''

Commander Brown never stopped serving his country. He chaired the District of Columbia Service Academy Selection Board and was Chairman Emeritus until his death. A lifelong resident of the District of Columbia, Lieutenant Commander Brown, the first in his family to be college-educated, grew up in Washington's Logan Circle neighborhood, and attended Dunbar High School, where he led the Dunbar Cadet Corps battalion. Upon his graduation, Mr. Brown attended Howard University through the Army's Specialized Training Reserve Program, because he was not old enough to apply to West Point.

Lieutenant Commander Brown is remembered as a hero at the United States Naval Academy and in his home town. With his beaming smile, Wes, who was always good for conversation and armed with an extraordinary memory and a sharp intellect, offered anecdotes instructed with living history. Lieutenant Commander Wes Brown, who withstood battle and gave generously of himself, had the heart of a warship.

I ask the House to join me in offering our sincere condolences and sympathy to Wes Brown's widow, Crystal, his children, Willeta, Carol, Wesley, Jr. and Gary, and his seven grandchildren, and in thanksgiving for a lifetime of service.