Home Rule For the District of Columbia

Floor Speech

Ms. NORTON. 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.

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