Rules Committee Objects to Norton's Amendment and Votes to Keep City Open Only Until March 18

Rules Committee Objects to Norton's Amendment and Votes to Keep City Open Only Until March 18

March 1, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC -- Late Monday evening, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton's (D-DC) amendment to the short-term continuing resolution (CR), to allow the District to spend its local funds for the remainder of the fiscal year, offered during a Committee on Rules emergency meeting, was voted down by a party-line vote of 8 to 4, leaving open the possibility of a District government shutdown if Congress fails to pass an appropriations bill by March 18, when the pending short-term CR would expire. Norton will submit the same amendment, co-sponsored by Representative Jim Moran (D-VA), a member of the Appropriations Committee, today in the Rules Committee to the must-pass short-term surface transportation reauthorization bill, which must be signed into law by March 4, to stress the importance of keeping the District open all year. The Congresswoman is now working with the Senate on a long-term authorization for the District to spend its local funds.

"Republican leaders do not appear to want to close the government, at least for now," said Norton. "But Republicans and Democrats are not yet in the hot and heavy part of the necessary negotiations process. Even if the federal government does not shut down, there are serious consequences to making the District sweat through successive CRs. I mentioned as an example in my Rules Committee testimony yesterday the District's possible default on contracts by late March if the District could not spend local funds. The Congress may want to play chicken with the federal budget, but the city cannot afford this game."