00:00Recognized. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I might consume.
00:04Recognized. I want to start by humbly suggesting the majority
00:08needs someone new working on legislative acronyms for these messaging bills.
00:12This is the DC Crimes Act, which stands for the DC Reforms to Immediately Make Everyone Safe Act
00:22of 2024. Immediately make everyone safe. That doesn't sound like legislation. It sounds like a
00:29Penn and Teller magic trick to me. If the gentleman from Florida can actually immediately
00:33make everyone safe, he should not only be Donald Trump's running mate, as I keep hearing about,
00:38he should be the mayor of the District of Columbia. But the Immediately Make Everyone
00:42Safe Act is the fourth bill the majority has now brought to the floor to vilify,
00:47heckle, and micromanage the elected mayor and council of the District of Columbia
00:53on the appalling conceit that the distinguished members of the Republican Conference from
00:58Florida or Kentucky or Arizona care more about public safety and public welfare in Washington,
01:05D.C. than do the 700,000 people who live there and their elected officials on the D.C. council
01:13and the mayor. But this one is even more sweeping and radical than the prior bills. It doesn't
01:17simply overturn one specific current D.C. law. It permanently strips D.C. of authority over any of
01:27its criminal laws, making this legislation, perhaps inadvertently I concede, the largest
01:33proposed rollback of D.C.'s authority to govern itself in nearly 30 years. Now, our colleagues
01:40may be shocked to learn during this debate what exactly it is they're being asked to vote for
01:45today. At the Rules Committee meeting yesterday, I asked the Republican members whether they
01:49understood what this bill actually does if you take the time to read the language. None of them
01:55seem to know. So let me explain. The bill amends the D.C. Home Rule Act to say that the D.C. council
02:02may not, quote, enact any act, resolution, or rule to change any criminal sentence in effect on the
02:10date of the enactment of the D.C. Crimes Act of 2024. In other words, if this bill becomes law,
02:17the D.C. council could never increase criminal penalties again without Congress acting first,
02:24nor could it create any new criminal offenses at all. That is their big tough-on-crime
02:32package they offer the Congress. No increases in criminal sentences, indefinitely in the District
02:38of Columbia, and no new offenses can be passed at all. Say the D.C. council wanted to create a new
02:43criminal offense for, say, directing an organized retail theft ring. Well, Mr. Donald's bill would
02:50prevent them from doing it. Say D.C. wanted to make it a crime to possess a firearm with a
02:56removed or altered or mutilated serial number under Mr. Donald's bill, they would be barred
03:02from doing so. But in fact, that's precisely what D.C. just did a few months ago. My Republican
03:09colleagues seem blissfully oblivious to the fact that earlier this year, responding to the spike
03:15in crime occurring across America, not just in Washington, D.C., of course, the D.C. council
03:21passed a 63-page law called the Secure D.C. Omnibus Act of 2024, which dramatically increased
03:31criminal penalties for nine different crimes and created six new criminal offenses. The D.C. bill,
03:38which was passed unanimously by the council and signed into law by the mayor, does what Republicans
03:44have so eloquently been orating about on the floor. It increased criminal penalties,
03:49including for gun crimes, violence in parks, violence committed against vulnerable people,
03:55violence committed against rideshare drivers, metro drivers, and transit workers. The Secure
04:01D.C. Act also created a host of new offenses, including directing a retail theft ring,
04:08strangulation, firing bullets in public, possessing a firearm with a removed or altered
04:14serial number, and unlawful discarding of firearms or ammunition. They addressed the actual problems
04:23that they're experiencing in their city, something our colleagues seriously know nothing about and
04:29don't care about. But if Mr. Donald's bill had actually been law at the time, the D.C. council
04:35would have been barred from enacting all of these tough-on-crime penalties altogether. And
04:42they will be barred in the future from responding to the kinds of spikes in crime that they
04:49experience. Now, amazingly, the gentleman proposes this naked power grab against Washington, denying
04:57them the crime-fighting tools they need, despite the fact that they've done a good job and total
05:03crime in D.C. is down 16 percent in 2024, compared to the same period last year, which was conceded
05:10by the Republicans in the Rules Committee yesterday. There's been a 26 percent reduction in
05:16violent crime in 2024, which they conceded in the Rules Committee yesterday, and a 22 percent
05:22reduction in homicides. In other words, local democracy works. Let the local governments
05:28respond to the problems they're having. But our colleagues insist that crime is still spiking in
05:33D.C., despite the evidence to the contrary. So what is their big tough-on-crime solution? The
05:40bold solution they offer us to combat crime in the nation's capital is to prohibit the D.C. council
05:46from ever increasing any criminal penalties and blocking the D.C. council from ever creating any
05:53new crimes. And if that's not what they intend to do, then I think they need to go back and try again
05:58with some new legislation. In any event, for my Republican colleagues who love to castigate
06:06the people of D.C., who I concede voted more than 90 percent against Donald Trump in the last
06:12election, I would respectfully suggest that they consider the following fact. D.C. has higher
06:18maximum criminal penalties than many Republican states do. Let's compare. The maximum penalty for
06:25armed robbery in D.C. is 30 years. In Kentucky, represented by the chairman of the Oversight
06:32Committee, the maximum is 20 years, 50 percent less. In North Dakota, it is 10 years, or 66 percent
06:42less. In D.C., criminals can receive a 40-year sentence for armed carjacking. In Kentucky,
06:50represented by the chairman of the Oversight Committee, carjacking is not a separate,
06:56independent offense. You've got to charge somebody with armed robbery, but even then,
07:00you can only get half the sentence you can get in D.C. for carjacking. Look,
07:06um, despite all of the the fine election year rhetoric we've heard, there's something
07:13profoundly antithetical to our system of government in what the gentleman is proposing. If you read
07:19the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson set forth a bill of particulars against King
07:25George in the Parliament, and one of the central allegations of it was that they were denying the
07:30colonists the right to define criminal offenses for themselves. People over in England were
07:37dictating to people in our country what the criminal offenses should be, and that's like,
07:44with all due respect, the gentleman from Florida dictating the people in Washington, D.C.,
07:49how they should order their affairs when it comes to the criminal law. Jefferson would have
07:54understood very well this situation that we're in, and our friends in Washington, 713,000
08:01tax-paying, draftable U.S. citizens have petitioned for statehood because they no longer want to be
08:08kicked around by other people's representatives. They want to have an equal say in this body,
08:12an equal say in the U.S. Senate, and they don't want other people's representatives telling them
08:18that they can't pass the criminal offenses or the increased criminal sentences that they want for
08:24their crimes. I'll reserve. Thank you.
