House lifts ban on D.C. abortion funding

The House passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill Thursday that gives the District of Columbia more control over such local issues as funding abortions and legalizing medical marijuana.

The legislation, which passed 221-202, also would overturn a ban on local funding for D.C. needle-exchange programs and phase out the city’s federally-funded school-vouchers program. The legislation also would lift a nationwide ban on the use of federal funds for needle exchange.

The Senate is expected to pass the legislation, with a vote as early as Saturday.

The District’s non-voting House member Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, said the vote was a “historic step to ensure greater democracy in the nation’s capital.”

“We will never make up for the HIV/AIDS epidemic that besieged this city because needle exchange was banned for a decade or make up for the loss of lives,” Mrs. Norton said. “There is no way to make poor women, forced to carry pregnancies to term, believe that their reproductive choice was guaranteed in the decades when there was a ban on using local funds for abortion for poor women.”

The legislation now before the Democratic-controlled Congress would allow the city to decide whether to implement a referendum to permit the use of medical marijuana.

In 1998, city residents voted in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. But the initiative was blocked by a rider sponsored by Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican who is no longer in Congress. The legislation passed Thursday would lift the so-called Barr Amendment.

D.C. lawmakers said before the vote they would proceed cautiously if the ban is lifted.

Congress oversees much of the District’s government and approves its budget. District residents have long pushed for more autonomy — or “home rule” — including having a House member with full voting privileges.

The effort to give D.C. a full House member came close to passing last year when lawmakers proposed also giving Utah another House member, which would likely be a Republican. However, the effort failed because opponents said such a change would require a constitutional amendment.

The omnibus spending bill gives domestic programs a third major boost this year and awards lawmakers with more than 5,000 home-state projects. The bill combines $447 billion in operating budgets with roughly $650 billion in payments for federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The Senate immediately voted to begin debate, with a final vote likely this weekend.

No House Republicans voted for the bill. Some 28 Democrats, chiefly moderates and abortion opponents, opposed it.

The measure provides spending increases averaging about 10 percent to programs under immediate control of Congress. It comes on top of an infusion of cash to domestic agencies in February’s economic stimulus bill and a $410 billion measure in March that also bestowed budget increases well above inflation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said the House will vote to raise the cap on government borrowing, currently set at $12.1 trillion. The hike in the debt ceiling is likely to exceed $1.5 trillion so that another politically excruciating vote to raise the limit won’t be needed next year.

The deficit for the 2009 budget year registered $1.4 trillion and a comparable deficit is expected for 2010 — and that’s before Congress spends up to $100 billion to renew extended jobless payments and health insurance subsidies for the unemployed and passes legislation intended to create jobs.

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