Ernest Istook: “Mr. Speaker, I would have to note, in response to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), and it has…”

“Mr. Speaker, I would have to note, in response to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), and it has been a good opportunity to work together, but if we saw, as was presented, if the Members of her party, the Democrat members, the 160 or so who voted for the bill before, switch their votes today because the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia asks them to, then I would have to wonder who is in charge of the votes of those Members. Is it the people who elected them, or have they locked up their votes and handed them to another person, in the person of the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia? I would certainly hope that constituents would not find that their Members of Congress changed their votes just because the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) was unhappy. I would have to say that the things of which they complain, and we have put in the Record a chart, these are nothing new. These are what has been part of this bill for years. We have not added anything new. The only thing new is in their extremism to get the District of Columbia to be legalizing drugs, to go back to the days when it was the butt of late night talk show jokes about the then mayor of the District and drug use.”