Rep. Raskin Recognizes Letter to Editor ‘Hey, White House: Leave D.C. Alone’

WASHINGTON, June 14 -- Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., issued the following speech, which was published in the Congressional Record on June 12, recognizing a letter to the editor "Hey, White House: Leave D.C. Alone":

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share an excellent Letter to the Editor, urging the Trump administration to respect the political autonomy of American citizens living in Washington, D.C., written by David Jonas Bardin to the Washington Post.

In "Hey, White House: Leave D.C. Alone," David writes:

"The May 28 editorial 'More meddling' said that the White House has joined Congress "in trying to block the District's Death with Dignity law." President Trump's proposed budget would unconstitutionally forbid implementation of that law in the 2018 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. The Constitution established federal legislative power over a future federal district as well as future federal installations outside the District of Columbia, such as Fort Bragg, N.C., to safeguard legitimate federal government interests there. The Bill of Rights immediately limited those powers in order to block tyranny.

"Even before statehood and even without D.C. voting rights in Congress, it is high time to recognize that Americans living in the District count as 'the people' under the 10th Amendment, which says: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' Power to allow, forbid or regulate physician-assisted suicide was never delegated to the federal government.

"Mr. Trump should heed President William Henry Harrison's wise words: 'The people of the District of Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the States, but free American citizens.'"