Norton Condemns Short-Term Spending Bill's Violation of D.C. Home Rule, and will Call Reid Today

Norton Condemns Short-Term Spending Bill‘s Violation of D.C. Home Rule, and will Call Reid and Administration Today

April 5, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC -- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said she would fight hard against a provision in the one-week continuing resolution (CR) House Republicans introduced last night that would prohibit the District from spending its local taxpayer-raised funds on abortions for low-income women. "With this one-week CR, Republicans have demonstrated their contempt for the American citizens who reside in the District of Columbia," Norton said. "The only other prohibition in the bill would prevent Guantanamo Bay detainees from being brought into the United States. District residents are not easy bargaining chips to be used like non-citizens at Guantanamo Bay. We are not surprised by this insult from House Republicans. We will be outraged if President Obama, Majority Leader Reid and the Senate Democratic majority throw the District of Columbia under the bus because of how the city chooses to spend its own local funds." Norton said the battle being fought is about reducing the federal deficit. She intends to call Majority Leader Reid and administration negotiators to remind them that local spending on abortions for low-income women is not part of the federal deficit.

Norton wrote to President Obama, Majority Leader Reid and Senate appropriators and has been working with them to remove from the House-passed full-year CR the bans on the District's use of its local funds for abortions and needle-exchange programs, as well as the reestablishment of a private school voucher program in the District. She got all of the anti-home-rule riders removed during the last four years of Democratic control.

The House Republican majority's all-out attack on the District started on the first day of the new Congress. After stripping District residents of their Committee of the Whole vote, Republicans introduced a bill that would permanently ban the District from spending its local funds on abortions, reintroduced the National Rifle Association-backed D.C. gun bill, passed a bill to re-impose private school vouchers on the District, and included the three anti-home-rule riders in the full-year CR.