EXCLUSIVE: Reps. Harriet Hageman and Eric Burlison tackle problems with D.C. home rule: "We need to take that responsibility back"

President Donald Trump and former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill don’t share much in terms of ideology, but Reps. Harriet Hageman (R., Wyo.) and Eric Burlison (R., Mo.) emphasized that both Trump and O’Neill deeply understand the maxim that “all politics is local.”

The two lawmakers dove into how Trump has drastically reformed Washington, D.C. in just a few short weeks during the latest episode of the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) “Right to the Point” podcast — which was obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.

“In less than a month, President Trump has restored law and order in the District of Columbia,” Hageman said. “Elected Democrats have allowed our nation's capital to become one of the most lawless and dangerous places in this country, and our nation's capital should be a gold standard for safety, cleanliness, and beauty.”

Both Republicans agreed that until a few weeks ago, D.C.’s promise had gone unfulfilled for too long — and a key issue was a 1973 piece of legislation that gave D.C. limited home rule; now, Burlison wants that privilege gone.

“It's clear that the people who have been holding the keys…clearly demonstrated they are not responsible,” he said. “I'm not trying to belittle the people who are running this town, but as a parent, you take away your child's privileges if a child demonstrates that they can't be responsible with the things that they have. And so I think that this is something that we need to pull back in, set it right, and hopefully move on.”

Hageman, for her part, agreed that Trump “rightfully used his executive powers to bring law and order back to D.C.”; and the Wyoming lawmaker has the legal chops to back up her claims. She is the chairwoman of the RSC’s Article I Task Force.

“I went through some of the history of how Congress became responsible for overseeing the District of Columbia situation right now,” she explained. “Article I, Section Eight, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution states that the seat of government doctrine grants Congress plenary legislative authority over the District of Columbia as the federal capital. And what our forefathers saw was they didn't want the U.S. Capitol to be in any particular state. They recognized that the U.S. Capitol needed to be independent. But in 1973, Congress granted D.C. limited Home Rule authority through what's called the Home Rule Act, allowing them to have a City Council and pass their own rules and resolutions. But we oversee that, and that's our responsibility to do so.”

“We need to take that responsibility back,” Burlison quipped. He noted that D.C. is far from the only city long run by Democrats that is failing.

“There are a lot of blue cities that are being run by Democrats that have failed, and that are failing their cities,” he said. “In my own state, we have St. Louis and Kansas City that are being run by people who want to defund the police, and we're seeing the results. But the one place as a U.S. citizen that you think that you could go where you would be safe would be its nation's Capital. And ironically, it's not safe. And since we've been up here, I think we both have seen if you go anywhere outside of the Capitol building, just in fact, the sidewalks in front of the building that we're in right now, before August, there would be homeless people, guaranteed.”

Hageman explained that many of those problems come from an idea that is funded in part “by George Soros.” It makes sense, she said, “to talk about the prosecutors that he's attempted to put in positions of power who have made the decision that they're not going to prosecute violent crime. As a result, we have people in positions of power who are coddling the criminals and ignoring the citizens that they are supposed to represent.”

There are two specific actions the D.C. City Council did which showed Hageman that they can’t be trust. Following the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned decades of Chevron deference, she said, “the City Council of Washington, D.C. attempted to codify Chevron so that everybody would have to defer to the administrative agencies, rather than to their own City Council. The City Council was taking away their own power so that everybody would have to defer to what an administrative agency said, not even the City Council, not even the elected official, completely abdicating their responsibilities.”

The other action, she said, was when the Council “attempted to adopt a resolution changing the Open Meetings Act so that they could have meetings in secret, the stated purpose of which was to hide things from the President of the United States and Congress. They stated that the very purpose of changing the Open Meetings Act that applies to the D.C. City Council is so that they can have secret meetings to prevent us from knowing what was going on. Now, again, that violates the Constitution. It violates the Home Rule Act.”

Trump, she said, is tired of that happening. “The one thing that I will say about President Trump is he seems to have this knack of identifying a problem, isolating it, focusing on it, and then attempting to resolve it, and that's what he has done,” she said — but she wants Congress to play its constitutional role too. “We're the legislative branch, and we are the ones under the Constitution that really have that oversight authority over Washington, D.C. And I think that it's incredibly important that we exercise that authority and make sure that Washington, D.C. is actually carrying out their city council and the leadership is carrying out their obligations to manage the city.”

Burlison – and countless others – are tired of rolling the dice every time they walk outside.”It's just absurd that we allowed it to get to this point,” he said. “And I think it's time we clearly have given the keys to individuals who have demonstrated that they are not responsible. And so I think we need to take it back.”

The duo also discussed another controversial city planning policy favored by many Democrats from coast to coast: bike lane expansion.

“They cut off, for example, road lanes to put in these green environmental bike lanes, which would be nice to have if you had the space, but we don't,” Burlison lamented. :And the traffic now in this town, just to go one mile, can take you 30 minutes.”

“I think that's intentional because they're doing it in the neighborhood where I live as well,” Hageman agreed. “It used to be that you had two lanes in either direction, the traffic flowed well. You could have buses that could pull over and pick up people who were using public transportation. You had a bike lane. You had the ability to move through. Even just being gone in the last month, it was getting bad in terms of how they have taken out an entire lane on either side, going north and south. So now it's no longer four lanes, it's two lanes. And now they're even filling that in.”

“What I believe the leadership here is doing is they are intentionally trying to force people to get out of their cars and take public transportation,” she said. “And they're doing that by making everybody's lives miserable, by taking away parking spaces, by making it almost impossible to have a vehicle here. Yet at the same time, they're not providing the security and the safety that we need in public transportation to actually feel safe doing that. I would not feel safe taking the Metro at 10 o'clock at night. I'm sorry, but I don't.”

“At the same time that they're trying to force us to give up our means of transportation, they also are not providing the security, getting back to the crime issue, that we need to make sure that we would be safe being able to take public transportation as well,” Hageman added.

Hours after Congress reconvened, the RSC hosted a press conference in which its members – led by Hageman — explained why they’re backing the Trump administration’s tough-on-crime policies.

If the lengthy conversation between Hageman and Burlison is any indication, they won’t be stopping any time soon.

The latest episode of the “Right to the Point” podcast — along with all of its predecessors — can be found here.