DC and the Budget

[fabrisse]

The budget proposal has riders. One pertains to inmates at Guantanamo.

The other two pertain to The District of Columbia and how we are allowed to spend our own tax dollars. Let me repeat that: The riders are on how we spend DC -- not Federal -- tax revenue.

The first would forbid our allowing any abortions on state Medicaid. The poorest women in the city would not be allowed to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

The second forbids us from funding a needle exchange program. Again, this is with our own tax revenue. Five percent of our population is HIV positive. The last time the GOP got this rider passed -- in 2005/6 -- the rate of infection went up substantially.

Please contact your representative and senators and ask them not to use the lives of the poorest people in a city without representation as a political football. Please. I'm begging.

Comments

[disbelief11.livejournal.com]

Good grief! I detest how things can be tacked onto bills, proposals, etc., as leverage points.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Bad enough when it's pork barrel, but this is the health or our citizens.

[wadjet-theperv.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked that's even possible in a country where even the laws change from state to state. It's outrageous.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Ah, but The District isn't a state and therefore has none of a state's rights, including the right to representation in Congress.

Not that I'm bitter or anything. *G*

[wadjet-theperv.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* Of course it isn't. Sorry. You guys definitely need another Tea Party. No taxation etc. It flies in the face of the very democracy that the United States wants to be held up as a beacon of.

I can well imagine you're bitter. It would be like the UK government telling North Yorkshire County Council how to spend their money with no sitting MPs.

Do the residents of DC have no representation in either house then? I'm afraid my knowledge of US politics is extremely sketchy.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

We got a Delegate who has no voting rights in the 1970s -- this is called "Home Rule" because politicians have senses of humor. That's also when we finally were allowed to vote in Presidential elections, too.