The Brightest Lights In Washington
Aren’t Necessarily On Capitol Hill
Greetings from Washington, D.C. I’m filing this week’s column from our nation’s capitol while attending the National League of Cities Congressional Conference. While I didn’t score any press credentials for the White House (despite being an avid fan of The West Wing) there were lots of interesting people to talk to besides the President and Vice-President.
There was the doorman at the hotel, a night clerk, a cab driver and the woman behind the counter at the Krispy Kreme. They all knew about as much as anyone I met on Capitol Hill about what needs done in this country. Perhaps even a little bit more.
To start with, the rising cost of health care would be their top priority. None of them had health insurance. Everyone on Capitol Hill does. None of them got money from big drug manufacturers. But it seems a lot of people on Capitol Hill did.
The people I talked to were all working at night and probably had too much stress in their lives. Of course most members of Congress work nights too. There are a lot of parties to attend and somebody has to do it. The lobbyists aren’t going to just wine and dine themselves.
All of the real Washingtonians I met seemed to be counting on Social Security when they retire. They must not have had the same luck investing in stock portfolios as those Senators and Congressmen who want us to invest in private accounts.
Not that a majority of people on Capitol Hill really care what the residents of the District of Columbia think. They are a federally “managed” area, not a State or part of any state. They aren’t even allowed to have a real Congressman so they have no real voice in how our nation’s governed.
The Mayor of Washington, the Honorable Anthony Williams, made that point when he spoke to the delegates of our convention on Sunday. He pointed out that the District of Columbia, with a population of over 572,000, has more people than the State of Wyoming (the home of Vice-President Dick Cheny), but is still denied a vote in Congress. Seems to me we fought a revolution or something to insure no taxation without representation.
This morning I turned on the news and there was Mayor Williams appearing at a news conference. I thought it was a fluff piece about the conference, but they all looked too serious. Turning up the volume I learned there had been an anthrax scare involving the Pentagon and that a Washington Post Office had been closed and hundreds of workers were getting shots of antibiotics “just in case”…just in case.
It really made me think about how the people who live and work in our Nation’s Capitol are on the front line of the War On Terror. That made their lack of representation in Congress all the more egregious.
Abraham Lincoln understood the problem. Take out a penny and look at the back. There is the Lincoln Memorial, one of the most visible symbols of our United States. Most visitors take the time to read The Gettysburg Address carved on its walls. A few less take the time to read the text of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address on the opposite wall.
But if you take the time to visit the museum beneath the monument, they have a few more of Lincoln’s words carved in stone. Those who oppose giving the residents of the District of Columbia a vote in Congress should take the time to read these words:
“Allow all the governed an equal voice in government, and that, and only that, is self government.”
Abraham Lincoln (October 16, 1854, Peoria, Illinois)
I met a city official from Kansas my first day at the conference. He said he came to tell the Washington politicians and bureaucrats to quit ignoring the rest of the country. If he lived in Washington and had those views I would take him for a Democrat. But because he was from Kansas and had those same views, I figured he was a Republican. It’s funny how much Americans agree when they stop calling each other names during elections.
I think it was our own Harry Truman who said, “It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when you don’t take any of the credit.” I sometimes think the members of Congress have forgotten what it’s like to talk, just simply talk, to someone of the opposite political party without accusing them of something. Maybe we should mix up the seating arrangements or make them carpool together. Or every Thursday could be take a Republican or Democrat to lunch day. The lobbyists and special interest groups would just have to make do with six other luncheon dates a week.
With me in Washington are Council members Mark Brown, John Gieske and Larry Muench as well as the Mayor. We’re hearing some pretty good speakers, like Chris Mathews and Senators Joe Biden (D- Delaware) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee). One speaker said, half tongue-in-cheek, that a “friend” in Washington is someone who stabs you in the chest instead of the back. Politics here is a full contact sport and there are a lot of issues at stake for cities.
One is the continuation of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG funds). The loss of CDBG funds just shifts more of the tax burden on to local taxpayers. The lack of Federal funding to help local police and public safety agencies to provide Homeland Security is another hot topic at the conference.
Other important issues are transportation funding (a big one for St. Charles) and trying to figure out what the United States Supreme Court will do with eminent domain powers. The Court is deliberating on a case involving eminent domain by a community for economic redevelopment. This has been a major tool for cities and counties across the nation to eliminate blight, assemble land for parks, new roads, etc. A major shift by the Court could have a profound effect on the role of government and is being followed closely by municipal officials.
As the conference participants flocked to Capitol Hill today, I didn’t hold out much hope of them changing the tenor or direction of the national debate. Tomorrow we leave town and the high priced lobbyists and special interest money remains. We’re talking about a town where standing on the street corner outside the Environmental Protection Agency you could be overcome by the bus fumes. Still, it can’t hurt to stay in touch.
The part of town where we’re staying is called Embassy Row. Embassies of a hundred nations, great and small, are here. Within a block of our hotel you can see the flags of Ireland, Portugal, France and Indonesia flying over these official residences. Walking past them every day did give me an idea. Maybe if working people and the middle-class opened an embassy, Washington insiders would care more about what we think. At least we could get diplomatic immunity.
