Look what the Congresswoman has achieved in her first year in the new Democratic Majority! Without a Vote!

• New Chair of subcommittee that controls D.C. job base, tourism, and economic development

• Won House passage of DC Voting Rights Bill

• Won the vote for D.C. in the Committee of the Whole,  allowing Norton to vote on the House floor on many matters

• Got Deadly Needle Exchange Congressional ban removed 

• Got Ban on spending Local Funds for DC Voting Rights remove

• Got annual Tuition Grants that have doubled DC college attendance reauthorized^*

• Won new access to millions of dollars for facilities and many programs for UDC, first inclusion in Farm Bill

• Won return of DC Postmark on all DC mail

• Got equal services for DC prisoners

• Got toxic substance trains re-routed around D.C.

• Won first comprehensive Anacostia Clean-up bill enacted

*Tuition grants:  $10,000 annually for U.S. public colleges; $2,500 for private colleges in DC and region

  
 
Norton Keeps Scoring Victories: WMATA, AMTRAK, More Dr.’s and Nurses

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton’s three transportation bills for WMATA funding, Amtrak modernization, and rail safety cleared the House in a bipartisan, unanimous consent vote. A bill, consolidating three separate bills, now in the Senate, will go to the President, “if it continues the new glide path this bill has now found” Norton said. The Congresswoman was an original co-sponsor of the original WMATA bill to provide $150 million annually and $1.5 billion over ten years for capital costs for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).
 
“The need for the WMATA authorization is vital to relieve record crowding, as increasing gas prices have forced people to abandon their cars in favor of mass transit,” Norton said.  In addition, the Congresswoman, whose District is the headquarters for Amtrak, said “The path-breaking Amtrak bill authorizes the first high-speed rail in our country and it will run between D.C., and New York City.” The Amtrak Reauthorization includes $13.06 billion over five years for passenger rail, reforms the board of directors, improves the Northeast Corridor to a state-of-good-repair, and fines for freight railroads that delay Amtrak.
 
The railroad safety improvements, Norton said “already have been vindicated by the recent rail accident in California. The bill’s elimination of “limbo time,” the first major rail safety bill in decades, also relieves workers from waiting for hours off work, many miles from home. Norton also fought to include work and rest periods for crews and signal operators in this bill.     
 
The Congresswoman, a member of both the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which authorized both bills, and the Homeland Security Committees said, "Capital funding for WMATA provides the only way to conquer the huge and mounting difficulties that WMATA faces.”  In struggling for approval, Norton argued that “most of the weekday riders are federal employees or tourists” and that in post-911 “security needs alone make a strong case for federal funding for the system that moves federal employees throughout the region." The WMATA funding will allow the core 103 mile Metro and the bus system to begin track work, and add railcars, cameras for buses, information technology, and improve water damaged tunnels and passenger facilities.
 
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton’s (D-DC) bill, which adds the District as a designated area where primary health care professionals can serve for two years in exchange for student loan forgiveness, passed this evening and is on its way to the President for signature.  Dentists, for whom Norton earlier sought similar benefits in H.R. 2168, the Dedicated Dental Service for HIV/AIDS Act, also will qualify for the same relief. 
 
Norton argued strenuously that D.C. should not have been left out of the original bill in the first place because congressional legislation is always intended for “the 50 states and the District of Columbia.”  The D.C. Loan Repayment Equity Technical Amendment Act, an amendment to H.R. 1343 was Norton’s top health care priority for the city this term.  H.R. 1343 is “especially necessary in our city, where professional medical help assistance tends to be downtown and in the most affluent areas, with too few health care professionals located where health care indicators show the greatest needs,”  Norton said.  “The seamless incorporation of my much needed bill to do the same for particularly rare dentists in underserved areas was a real bonus.”