Congressional Crunch: A Bitter Recipe for the District's Eternal Servitude

(As printed in News Dimensions)

by John Gloster

It is time for responsible leaders in the District to stop going along with the charade that Eleanor Holmes Norton is the Knight in Shining Armor, come to battle the Dragon of Congress and save the city. To the contrary, Delegate Norton's actions in recent years have had the net effect of emboldening the city's enemies to do blatantly and violently to us what they used to attempt more carefully and subtly. By courting and wooing the District's natural enemies, those who have nothing but disdain for the ordinary citizens of the city, Ms. Norton has lent an air of credibility to what would otherwise be a more transparent campaign of flagrant racist, chauvinist, condescending and elitist terror on the city, at the hands of Congress and the White House.

In the meantime, what has our Congressperson purchased for us with this sellout? Her big alleged victory is a deal with the Senate and House of Representatives, which is complicated in its redefining and distorting of our relationship with the Federal Government. After reshuffling billions of dollars, however, we end up with a budgetary wash in the present. The District government, it is argued by the proponents, would end up with a net of an extra $130 million. That, however, is the same money that President Clinton had separately pledged for road repair and construction, which now may not be used for that purpose at all.

Meanwhile, what is being slipped into the brew is an elimination of the precedent for Federal payments to the District to compensate the city for the huge cost of housing the Nation's Capital. Ms. Norton protests that it is unfair to focus on the loss of this payment. That of course is preposterous when that is one of the primary purposes of this tangled mess of a deal-- to create a permanent disjunction between the city's cost of housing the Feds and Congress' obligation to pay the District for this service. (The current estimate of the cost to the District to house the Nation's Capital is about $1.5 billion. The Congress currently allots the District $660 million for this purpose and treats it like charity.) Let's remember that this is not a deal struck between equals. Once this deal goes through it will become painfully clear where it is heading. Let us look carefully at the major components of the tradeoff.

The Federal Government promises to take over responsibility for the under-funded pension plan. That's nice, but let us not forget that Congress is the one that stuck the city with the under-funded pension plan in the first place. As far as the other responsibilities that the Federal Government would take over -- like the prison and court systems, and an increased share of Medicaid costs -- Congress will have the ability and inclination to directly control or eliminate the costs of these programs by unilaterally mandating changes in the way these systems are run, in ways that are contrary to the will of the citizens. For instance, if the prison system is federalized, as proposed, District prisoners would likely become subject to the mandate that currently forces all non-disabled federal prisoners to work (at between 15 cents and $1.15 per hour) on commercial enterprises, often in direct competition with the U.S. workforce. The prisons themselves could be privatized. As for Medicaid and other programs, the Federal Government is already taking draconian steps to slash these services on the national level, and will likely speed up steps to do this in the District. What can the District do, however, to control the cost of housing the Capital? The answer is absolutely nothing, and with the Federal Government no longer picking up even part of the tab, what is their incentive to even control these costs? If someone were to draw up a plan to keep the District perpetually insolvent, perennially looking for a handout, and permanently serving as the Whipping Boy/Poster Boy for The White Man's Burden, they could do no better than this plan.

Delegate Norton is undoubtedly positioning herself in Congress to regain her full committee representation. While that may massage her ego and gain her stature on Capital Hill, it does little to ease the tremendous pain she is about to help bring down on her constituents. I cast no aspersions on her intentions, but sometimes intentions are not good enough. Though she still knows how to get amongst the citizenry and make them feel she is one of them, she has lost touch with the common peoples' needs. Her embrace of the zero percent capital gains tax (excluding residences), for instance, will win her points amongst the well-heeled, but such strategies in the past, despite Supply Side rhetoric and theory, have not been shown to do much for the common citizen. Likewise, what ordinary citizen wants, as Ms. Norton does, to have an un-elected, Federally controlled "Economic Development Corporation" come into the city, with powers of imminent domain, wiping aside local zoning laws, and potentially displacing more city residents and businesses in the name of someone else's vision of "progress". It is time for Delegate Norton to recall her true mission, or else it will soon be time for the People to recall her.

John Gloster, Jr. is Chairperson of the D.C. Statehood Party

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