Photo by Matt Cohen.
D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and Mayor Muriel Bowser—along with several representatives from national and local organizations—celebrated what’s quickly becoming D.C’s most sobering and grim annual holiday: the upcoming fiscal year appropriations process.
“I regret that this press conference has had to become an annual kickoff event,” Norton quipped during a conference earlier today. It’s around this time every year that Congress begins the appropriations process for the upcoming fiscal year and D.C. is reminded of its lack of voting rights.
That reminder came early this year with the House of Representatives voting to block a controversial D.C. law banning discrimination over reproductive health choices.
Along with Norton and Bowser, representatives from Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, NARAL Pro-Choice America, AIDS United, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and DC Vote were on hand to deliver a swift, simple message to members of Congress who like meddling in D.C. laws: Stop!
“This is truly extreme politics and it is terrible for women,” Dana Singiser, Planned Parenthood’s President for Public Policy and Government Affairs, said in reference to the measure introduced by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) and passed by a House majority last week. The measure effectively blocks a D.C. law that bans employers from discriminating based on reproductive health decisions, such as having an abortion or taking birth control.
House Democrats were understandably pissed at this.
Though the House blocked the measure, it still needs to pass the Senate and earn the signature from the President, who has said he would veto it. Still, it’s annoying for local officials and residents alike.
“It is outrageous that House Republicans would seek to overturn a duly-enacted D.C. law so that businesses can fire employees for their private health choices,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that called the attempt an “unconscionable intrusion into workers’ personal lives.”
Of course, this recent measure is just the latest grim reminder of D.C.’s lack of voting rights. In the past year or so, House Republicans have introduced bills—or attached riders on spending bills—to block D.C. gun laws and marijuana laws. And Norton says that, with an all-Republican Congress, she expects “the strongest attack ever on the District of Columbia and its local laws during this appropriations process,” hence the need for all these national organizations to team up.
“This year, the District needs help from the strong national coalition that has agreed to mobilize its members to alert the constituents of House and Senate Members that a local jurisdiction is being imperiled through an undemocratic intervention, taking away from the priorities they sent their Member to Congress to focus on,” Norton said.
Following today’s press conference, DC Vote sent a letter signed by 30 national organizations urging Congress to not use the 2016 spending bill as more reason to mess with local laws.
It’s unclear if that will do any good, but Norton, Bowser and quite a number of national organizations are determined to put up a hell of a fight.
“We issue a warning to Members of the House who oppose the District’s right to democratic local self-government by trying to overturn our local laws: I will force roll call votes on each and every rider targeting D.C. laws,” Norton said. “There will be no hiding from those back home for Members who infringe on the democratic rights of our local citizens.”
