The House tries to save DC Democrats from themselves
Byron York
THE HOUSE TRIES TO SAVE DC DEMOCRATS FROM THEMSELVES. The relationship between Congress and the local government in the District of Columbia is long and complicated. It goes back to the Constitution. The founders created the district specifically as the home of the new federal government. The idea was to create a new seat of government that was not in any state and not beholden to any state and not subject to the control of any state.
So the Constitution created the district and gave Congress, not any local government, control over it. Article 1 gave Congress the power to “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district…as may…become the seat of the government of the United States.” When the founders granted authority using words and phrases such as “exclusive” and “all cases whatsoever,” they meant for there to be no ambiguity. From the day of the Constitution’s ratification, Congress has had total control over the District of Columbia. It still does.
Starting in the Civil War and Reconstruction, black Americans moved to the district in large numbers. Through the decades that followed, local politics often became racial politics. Local leaders pressed for what was called home rule, which meant Congress giving the city the right to govern itself. Since the Constitution gave Congress exclusive control over the district, one way lawmakers could exercise that power was by giving some control to the city itself.
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In 1957, the district became a majority-black city. Even more than before, political debates could become racial debates. Pressure for home rule increased, often framed as a civil rights issue. The victory was won in 1973 when Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed, the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. The law gave the city the right to govern itself. But that did not change the Constitution. Congress still had the right to intervene in the city’s affairs, and one of the ways lawmakers made that clear in the text of the Home Rule Act was by requiring that the Council of the District of Columbia submit all newly passed legislation to Congress for review.
After a bill is submitted, if Congress does nothing, the new legislation becomes law. But if Congress expresses its disapproval, the legislation dies. Over the years, Congress has mostly stayed out of the city’s affairs but has at times stepped in to exercise its constitutional authority. Each time Congress stepped in, city leaders howled about lawmakers interfering with the city’s self-governance.
Fast-forward to today. Gentrification has brought enormous change to the district. It is no longer a majority-black city. Issues that were once discussed as simple but volatile black-and-white racial questions are now more complex. Still, racial politics persist. In 2020, for example, Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered the creation of a huge “Black Lives Matter” sign on 16th Street within view of the White House. The City Council is as woke as others in deeply blue cities.
Recently, the City Council finished a reworking of the district’s criminal code. With crime rising, the City Council, acting in the name of equity, decided to reduce penalties for a range of serious crimes. A Washington Post editorial noted that the bill “decreases punishments for violent crimes such as carjackings, home invasion burglaries, robberies and even homicides. [It] will further tie the hands of police and prosecutors while overwhelming courts. With the capital city awash in handguns, the measure would also scale back penalties for convicted felons illegally carrying firearms, as well as for using them to commit crimes.”
The bill reduces the maximum penalty for criminals convicted of using a gun to commit a violent felony from 15 years to four years. It eliminates mandatory minimum sentences. It also eliminates life sentences altogether. To her credit, Bowser vetoed the bill. To its shame, the City Council, by a nearly unanimous vote, overrode the mayor’s veto. The new criminal code was passed.
Only one more step — send the bill to Congress. Yes, that is still required under the Home Rule Act. Up until that point, the fight over the bill had been a fight among Democrats. In the district, the mayor is a Democrat, and 11 of the 13 members of the City Council are Democrats. (The other two call themselves independents.) There are no Republicans.
But the GOP now controls the House of Representatives. And the Republican leadership of the House decided it would be appropriate to express disapproval of the measure. A vote was held. The Republicans present, 219 in all, voted unanimously to stop the bill.
Then something remarkable happened. Thirty-one Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the City Council’s action. The other 173 Democrats voted in support of the City Council. While the supporters constitute a big majority of the party, having 31 Democrats vote against what in the past would have been characterized as a black-and-white, home rule, civil rights measure that all Democrats should support — that was notable.
Then something just as remarkable happened. Bowser did not complain. Normally, a Washington mayor would go into full battle mode against those bad Republicans in Congress. But Bowser, who still opposes what the City Council did, chose not to attack GOP lawmakers who were, in this case, on her side.
Of course, the House cannot stop City Council legislation by itself. The resolution stopping the bill has to go to the Senate and then, if it passes there, to the president for signature.
Will the Senate go along with the House? Normally, Democrats there would stop something like this. But with the hospitalization of Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), Senate Democrats are down to a 50-49 edge. Even when Fetterman returns, it’s possible Democrats could lose two centrist members to the Republican side. If that happens, the disapproval measure will pass the Senate, and Congress will have acted to stop the City Council from enacting its new, lenient criminal code.
And that means the bill will go to President Joe Biden. What would he do? Sign or veto? On the one hand, a clear and overwhelming majority of his party’s members voted with the City Council. They voted to approve letting the district “decrease punishments for violent crimes such as carjackings, home invasion burglaries, robberies, and even homicides” and “scale back penalties for convicted felons illegally carrying firearms, as well as for using them to commit crimes.”
If the Washington, D.C., government wants to do that, an overwhelming number of Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate support the district government. But a substantial minority of Democrats had the courage to defy the party. And a presidential election is coming up. Crime is a potent issue. If Biden runs for reelection, he will certainly face a Republican accusing him and his party of being soft on crime. A vote to uphold the council’s soft-on-crime bill will not help.
And by the way, the crime bill is not the only way the Council of the District of Columbia is giving national Democrats headaches. It also voted to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. The House voted to disapprove of that measure, too, and in that vote, 42 Democrats joined unanimous Republicans in opposing the council’s action. What if that one, too, gets through the Senate and to the president’s desk? There is no area that evokes more disapproval of Biden’s job performance than illegal immigration and the mess on the U.S.-Mexico border. Will Biden uphold a measure to let noncitizens vote in the nation’s capital city?
There’s no doubt the local government of Washington, D.C., has created some difficult problems for the president. Now, the opposition party, the House GOP, is trying to save the District of Columbia, and the Democratic Party, from the excesses of the Left. Whether Democrats will go along with being saved is another question.
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