Norton’s Top Priorities Funded, Most Riders Off, But Remaining Rider Means Democracy Denied in Omnibus Spending Bill

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today expressed relief that the fiscal year 2012 omnibus spending bill funded her three top priorities – the District of Columbia Tuition Assistance Grant (DCTAG) program, the Department of Homeland Security headquarters, and HIV/AIDS prevention in D.C. – and that she was able to prevent the re-imposition of the deadly D.C. needle exchange rider or other anti-home-rule riders. At the same time, Norton said residents were justifiably angry that the D.C. abortion rider, which she was able to remove last Congress, was re-imposed for the second fiscal year in a row, despite not only her efforts, but an energetic campaign by D.C. residents, DC Vote, and national groups that came to the District's defense.

"We will never be satisfied as long as there is a single prohibition on D.C.'s use of its local funds," Norton said. "It is especially ironic that the final sticking point in the negotiations on the conference report was how to promote democracy in Cuba while the bill tramples on democracy in the ‘capital of the free world' with a rider keeping its residents from spending their own local funds on abortion services for low-income women. Yet there is good reason for relief and some satisfaction. Throughout the year, every priority in today's bill was under severe threat. In the end, instead of destroying DCTAG with means testing, Congress fully funded the program. Instead of defunding the St. Elizabeths Department of Homeland Security headquarters project, as the House did, Congress has ensured completion of the first building and occupancy by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2013. And not only was our hard fight to prevent the dreaded D.C. needle exchange rider successful, we were able to prevent a number of other riders that had been promised, including riders to eliminate the city's gun laws and to abolish D.C.'s marriage equality law. Although it is a relief that the federal government, and in turn, the District government, will not be shut down, considering my pending bill to permanently keep the city from shutdowns over federal budget fights, the District should never have been put in such a precarious position in the first place."

The bill includes $30 million for DCTAG, a program Norton got passed in 1999 to provide higher education opportunities for D.C. students equal to those available to other Americans by granting D.C. students up to $10,000 annually for in-state tuition at any U.S. public college and up to $2,500 annually to attend private colleges in D.C. and the region. DCTAG has doubled college attendance rates in D.C., now up to 60 percent – 10 points above the national average. Earlier this year, Norton fought hard against House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-WI) proposal to means-test for DCTAG in order to pay for the new congressionally imposed D.C. private school voucher program, a change that would have all but killed DCTAG.

The new U.S. Coast Guard building under construction at the St. Elizabeths campus in Ward 8 will receive $56 million, which helps ensure that the Coast Guard building, the first of several, will open on time in 2013. The General Services Administration (GSA) also received $50 million for construction nationally, and Norton expects a large portion of that to go toward construction at St. Elizabeths, GSA's top priority.

Norton said she was particularly grateful that the District received $5 million for HIV/AIDS testing and treatment. The District has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the country, in large part because of the old needle-exchange rider. Norton thanked House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government Chairwoman Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) and Ranking Member Jose Serrano (D-NY) for fulfilling their commitment to get the HIV/AIDS funding in the final bill, even though it was in neither the House or Senate spending bill.

Preventing the D.C. needle-exchange rider from being re-imposed was a top Norton priority. The District's needle-exchange program has been remarkably successful since its post-rider program was started in May 2008, with a 60 percent decrease in the number of HIV/AIDS cases attributable to injection drug use.

Norton was successful in getting $15 million for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority's Combined Sewer Overflow Long-Term Plan to restore the Anacostia River, her top environmental priority. The bill has another $14.9 million to reimburse the city for security and related costs resulting from demonstrations and other federally related activities requiring District personnel. Norton, who first got the special annual federal payment after 9/11, said the funding will be helpful this year in light of several months of Occupy demonstrations.