Norton Gets Committee of the Whole Vote Returned But Wants Full House Vote - 1/24/2007

Norton Gets Committee of the Whole Vote Returned
But Wants Full House Vote Brought to the Floor
January 24, 2007

Washington, DC-As Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today won back the Committee of the Whole vote she got after her first two years in the House, she called on the House leadership to bring H.R. 328, the District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act, to the floor. Norton said that today's delegate vote resolution, which passed 226 to 191, was a necessary step because the Republicans had removed delegate voting when they took control of the House. However, she said, passage of H.R. 328, the bill that Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) and she came close to getting through the last Congress, is the bill that D.C. residents, the civil rights coalition that have worked for four years, and she want to see on the floor.

Today's passage came after extended hours of heated debate and protest votes by Republicans that Norton fears could infect the positive atmosphere that has marked the bipartisan efforts that produced progress toward the full House vote in the last Congress. Commenting on today's delegate vote debate, she said, "Never has a vote that offers so little for Americans, who have given so much, been subject to such contentious debate. The delegates from the territories and D.C. deserve the vote authorized by the federal courts that was disgracefully taken from us. After decades of promises to the people of the District, however, our party is finally in charge and in a position to act on its words of support for the full House vote."

Norton is particularly concerned about confusion between the Committee of the Whole vote and H.R. 328 and regretted that the delegate vote was not a part of the opening day rules package, as it was in the 103rd Congress. Predictably, she said, today's debate allowed Republicans to re-argue at length the delegate vote issue they lost on the House floor and in the federal courts 14 years ago, and to disparage delegates with smaller populations who pay no federal income taxes but have always served disproportionately in the armed services. She said that the delegate vote is valuable because it allows a vote on much House business, but "it falls far short of what the taxpaying residents of the District now expect and deserve."

Norton first won the delegate vote in the 103rd Congress by writing a memo arguing that the vote in the Committee of the Whole was comparable to delegate voting in traditional committees. Republicans were unsuccessful in challenging this vote in federal district and appellate courts. They revoked delegate voting upon taking power in the 104th session in 1995.