On the recordApril 19, 2012
I've come to the floor today to inform the Congress of exciting new developments about the major priority for the District of Columbia for this year's Congress. These developments have come very quickly, both in the Congress and in the Nation. We now have unprecedented momentum, both in the country and here in the Congress, to allow the District to spend its own local funds without coming to the Congress of the United States. That will seem very strange to Members of the public since they've never heard of a local jurisdiction having to bring its own local funds to a national legislature, which had nothing to do with raising those funds, for approval to spend them. It is an anomaly whose time has passed. And I'm very pleased at the response we are getting in the Congress, and that we have gotten in very little time, less than 6 months. We see it culminating in a national poll that, in essence, blesses the momentum we are seeing in the Congress for budget autonomy for the District of Columbia. This poll was released just this week, and it's been an important week for the District of Columbia, because the District has just celebrated Emancipation Day. The slaves who lived in the District of Columbia were emancipated 9 months before slaves in the rest of the United States. And there's some analogy here, my friends, because what was not emancipated was the budget of the District of Columbia. And that's what we're trying to free now.…
