Photo by Fedsib
The House Appropriations Committee approved today a spending bill covering, among other things, federal funding for the District of Columbia for the next fiscal year. The bill includes money for several District priorities, including the redevelopment of the St. Elizabeths East campus, treatment and prevention of AIDS and HIV and tuition assistance grants for college students.
But the bill also includes the controversial rider barring D.C. from using its own funds to subsidize abortion services for low-income women.
Not surprisingly, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), while pleased with the funding of many District programs, blasted the inclusion of the anti-abortion language. “The intrusion into the lives of the city’s low-income women deprives them of constitutional rights all other women in every district in the United States exercise with impunity,” Norton said in a press release.
During the panel’s deliberations before the vote, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) introduced an amendment that would have removed the rider, but it fell on a 21-26 vote. The Senate version of the bill does not contain the abortion policy.
The bill, which now goes to the full House, includes $30 million for the college assistance grants, $5.1 million less than requested in the White House’s budget for fiscal 2013. It also includes $24.7 million for emergency planning, $9.8 million of which would cover the cost of next January’s presidential inauguration; $20 million each for D.C.’s public and charter school systems; $9.8 million for St. Elizabeths; and $5 million for HIV/AIDS services. Earlier this week, President Obama agreed to restore funding to a school voucher program that is unpopular with local officials but something of a political token for Congressional Republicans.
As for the abortion rider, which continues a policy that has been imposed by Congress for more than a decade save 2010 when Democrats controlled the House, Norton said in the press release that she plans to work with her fellow Democratic members as well as a coalition of pro-choice groups in an attempt to remove the policy from the final bill. That’s shaping up to be a tough fight, though. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), chairwoman of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, told the Post that it is unlikely that the GOP-dominated House will pass a spending bill for D.C. that does not include the abortion prohibition.
