Educational inclusion civil rights 'test cases' in 2013 and 2016 and 2010 settlement show systemic problem

Updated April 1, 2017 with link explaining underfunding IDEA Section 619 that Section 611 is used as a supplemental funding stream for.


Henry Frost was a precedent-setting 'test case' 'exception' that cannot become the 'rule' or 'new normal' without more new money to pay the costs of inclusion that individuals cannot.   

  Henry Frost was a civil rights law 'test case' to set a precedent that bad public budget policy still prevents replication of, not 'compliance with the law' of social acceptance and educational inclusion, until building the intersection of 'who pays the costs' of educational inclusion.  

  Neoliberalism known in the USA as neoconservativism/American 'exceptionalism' has the economic 'world view' that 'exceptions' are honored as 'the rule' of an economic 'new normal,' after shock and chaotic crisis, has the fatal flaw of ignorance of the question of 'who pays the costs' that people similarly situated to the exceptional 'test case' when individuals cannot pay.


  Simply following IDEA mandates for a FAPE (free appropriate public education) in a LRE (least restrictive environment) (despite 40 years of federal underfunding of IDEA Sections 611 and 619 grant programs) to educate 3-21 year old children and adolescents with disabilities,

was a choice not made at the Florida state level compensating for bad federal budget policy, 


in order to cut property taxes for low income senior citizens (generationally dividing people for Republican state incumbent and federal candidate electoral benefit) 

 [link dead by 2017 copy and paste follows]


http://www.postonpolitics.com/2007/10/cutting-21-b-is-holding-schools-harmless/ 


Cutting $2.1 B is ‘holding schools harmless’?
Oct 15th, 2007 @ 02:11 pm › Palm Beach Post Staff
Recall lawmakers’ and Gov. Charlie Crist’s vows to “hold schools harmless” in a new property tax plan? Figures released by House and Senate analysts today show a four-year cut to public schools of $2.1 billion — $1.3 billion coming from House Speaker Marco Rubio’s idea to eliminate all property taxes for low-income senior citizens.

In all, the package’s price tag comes in at just over $11 billion — 62 percent higher than the conservative, $6.8 billion four-year cost of the “super” exemption proposal crafted in June.


with tragic consequences for one autistic St. Lucie County schools student Alex Barton and his right to a FAPE in a LRE in St. Lucie County, FL, that required a better-trained teacher than Wendy Portillo, who had Barton's classmates vote on whether to continue to include young, and more susceptible to a lifetime of trauma to recover from Alex, in class.   


[link dead by 2017 copy and paste follows]

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2007/sep/12/school-budget-scenario-could-mean-52m-less-for/


School budget scenario could mean $5.2M less for Martin County
By Kelly Tyko

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Treasure Coast school districts could lose about $24 million in state money if a Department of Education "budget reduction scenario" becomes reality.

All state agencies were required to submit possible ways of how to cut 10 percent from their budgets in August and told to be prepared for a 4 percent cut. The Department of Education's scenario of $754 million in reductions — which includes a $27 million cut in textbooks and $49 million from student transportation — is how a 4 percent cut could affect Florida public schools.

The scenario shows St. Lucie public schools losing $11.5 million in state aid, Martin County losing $5.2 million, Indian River $4.9 million and Okeechobee $2 million. In Gov. Charlie Crist's budget recommendations, which were released last week, K-12 education is spared from major cuts, though community colleges and universities face reductions.

"I think everyone is or should be nervous now, not just school districts," said Ruth Melton, director of legislative relations for the Florida School Boards Association. "We are heading into what will be at least four years, more likely longer, of living in a state where the economy is struggling if not declining. So it's not just this year that cuts will need to be made. It means cuts will need to be made each year."

With a special session by the Legislature being planned, Melton said she believes it's too soon to know what the impact of the state's revenue shortfall will have on education. Perhaps, school districts could be left with bigger cuts. And if the "super exemption" tax reform referendum passes in January, schools districts are estimated to lose $7 billion in money collected in property taxes.

Several legislators have said they would hold schools "harmless" when it comes to budget cuts.

"I consider them men of their word and men of honor," said St. Lucie County Schools Superintendent Michael Lannon, referring to promises from the governor, House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-Miami, and Senate President Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, to hold education harmless in this year's budget.

But state leaders are trying to cut $1.1 billion from the 2007-2008 budget. A special session will need to be conducted to make the budget changes.

In his budget recommendations, Crist proposes cutting funding for Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution and the amount allocated for the state's 2-year-old voluntary pre-kindergarten program.

One of the ways Crist proposes to balance the budget, which he said would not "impact on students, school districts or class size reduction," is by moving $120 million from state trust funds into education funding.

That's not an idea Pruitt supports.

"We're not going to raid the future to pay for today," Pruitt said. "We don't like getting bad news, but I'd rather have to take a little bit of medicine now then to deal with catastrophic news later."

Pruitt said education is a priority, but regardless of what happens in the special session — which could be in late October or early November — schools still will receive more money than last year.

Since local school boards have approved their 2007-2008 budgets in the past week and the state sets the school property tax rate, if money is cut from schools, there is not much "wiggle room" to make adjustments, said Vern Pickup-Crawford, a consultant who lobbies for Treasure Coast school districts in Tallahassee.

Staff writer Colleen Wixon

contributed to this report.


 © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online 


 Fortunately by Nov. 24, 2010, Alex's mother Melissa Barton settled a lawsuit for $350,000.   The settlement came after the 'wave' 2010 Republican election of the House and Senate members who, as Republican and 'tea party'
(later rebranded 'freedom') caucuses, ultimately repealed the CLASS Act, officially by Dec. 2012, (the end of that Congress).  



Similar generational divisions for Republican Senate candidate (and by 2017 a 2-term incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio) electoral benefit (property tax cuts and their devastating consequences for public school provision of FAPE in a LRE) delayed Henry Frost's start date in Hillsborough County, FL Wilson middle school because they could not supply an aide Mr. Frost required to support his full inclusion in 'mainstream' classes.



Hillsborough schools wanted him to attend a special program at Coleman Middle School. Frost, and his family, wanted to attend Wilson Middle School in his South Tampa neighborhood.
Frost doesn’t yet know when he can attend classes since the school district must hire an aide first.
His mother, Lauri Hunt, was surprised by the decision. The family had autism advocates such as Ari Ne’em[a]n listening to the meeting by phone to work on Frost’s behalf.
But she was grateful the school district was insisting on services which included a 1-on-1 aide, that staff were trained how to use Frost’s special hearing aide and that Frost had access to a team of specialist in teaching students with hearing loss.

  The long-term likely fiscal policy reason for the lack of availability of an aide in 2012 for the educational inclusion of Henry Frost


County Administrator Mike Merrill will present a $3 billion budget to commissioners next week for fiscal 2013 that factors in another $14 million in declining property taxes. Since 2007, property taxes collected by the county have fallen about $300 million.



  Henry Frost was honored by ASAN at its Nov 12, 2013 fundraising dinner. His neighborhood school that wouldn't presume him competent with a tablet voice synthesizer app to type words into was in Tampa, Florida.  Hillsborough County government had lost $300 million in property tax revenue from 2007-2012.  Schools had to have been cut, including special education, shown by the delay in allowing Henry Frost to start school because no aide was on staff.  


  The 'Arlington 5' group of educational civil rights 'test case' plaintiffs in Arlington County, VA (wealthier property tax base than Hillsborough County, FL) won their civil rights lawsuit for public school inclusion (with the assistance of similar AAC assistive technology to what Henry Frost used) and were honored at the 2016 ASAN fundraising dinner. 

  Two civil rights lawsuits for inclusion of students with disabilities who needed AAC (assistive technology to communicate) were won within 4 years.  One lawsuit for horrible discrimination against Alex Barton was settled two years earlier in 2010.  The need to file lawsuits in the first place shows a systemic problem of inadequate funding in even wealthy public school districts like Arlington County, VA.   

What are 2009 advocates who won the 'battle' for the CLASS Act doing in 2017 to restore it?

Submitted for reader discussion, hopefully approval, a paraphrase of the Mother Jones quote

"Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living"

 used on the following flyer to publicize

 #Ddomxxxx vigils erasing the intersection between better services and fewer crimes that ASAN, Not Dead Yet, DREDF and NCIL since March 30, 2012 and March 1 each year since:


Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living….
to end the Medicaid institutional bias by expanding the promise of the 1999 #scotus case Olmstead v. LC and EW, 

to keep all people with disabilities living lives with dignity to eliminate the choice of death with dignity and the crime of murder (filicide).

Add the name of one plaintiff EW Elaine Wilson who died in 2004,
after too short of a life in a community of her own choosing, to the list to read at vigils.

Reenact the CLASS Act/Community Choice Act/MiCassa NOW.

The 'tea party'/House freedom caucus/congressional Republican majorities since January 2011 are more complicit in moving #PwDs farther from life with dignity. The members of the House and Senate caucuses and party majorities should be held more accountable for the July 31, 2011 Budget Control Act (sequester bill) that created a hostile fiscal climate to the CLASS Act that was repealed between October 2011 and December 2012 as part of 'fiscal cliff' FY2013 budget bad deal.   




    The following mass email was sent in support of the CLASS Act then still titled the Community Choice Act:


Is Sen. Tom Harkin's successor, Sen. Joni Ernst, listening to the activism of the disability rights movement for inclusion with financial aid to pay the costs of inclusion that individuals with disabilities cannot pay?  

Is Sen. Pat Toomey, Sen. Arlen Specter's successor, listening to the activism of the disability rights movement for inclusion with financial aid to pay the costs of inclusion that individuals with disabilities cannot pay?  

Is Congressmember Danny Davis, who is still an incumbent, continuing to work on the issue of providing financial aid to pay the costs of community inclusion, when individuals with disabilities cannot pay them, for all people with disabilities?

What are the disability rights activists who organized this rally and are mentioned, by name, in the following mass email about the 2009 rally for the Community Choice Act, doing now to continue the fight for the CCA that was passed, and repealed, under the new name CLASS Act?


from: ADA Watch/NCDR 
Date: Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 4:53 PM
Subject: Community Choice Act National Kick-Off Draws Thousands



Just minutes ago in Washington, DC, ADAPT's National Kickoff for the Community Choice Act concluded with a rally call to "Pass CCA Now!

With thousands of advocates in DC and at more than 120 conference call-in sites across the country, Community Choice Act (CCA) cosponsors Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Arlen Specter and Congressman Danny Davis made crystal clear their commitment to passing the Community Choice Act in the 111th Congress. The event was an upbeat event at times filled with thunderous applause and the chanting of "Pass CCA Now!"

[ Editor's Note: You can start or join a discussion about this event by adding your comments at the bottom of this page: http://adawatch.org/?p=331 ]
  
[http://adawatch.org/?p=331 no longer loads its content in 2017.]

Sen. Tom Harkin led off this important event on Capitol Hill and declared that CCA will pass in this Congress and be on the President's desk either as a part of the healthcare reform bill or on its own. He noted that it has been 10 years since the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision which affirmed the Constitutional rights of people with disabilities to live in the least restrictive environment and he told the critics who say CCA will cost too much that by allowing individuals with disabilities to live and work in their own homes and communities rather than institutions, the costs will be offset by new taxpayers.

Senator Harkin declared: "We can't afford not to do this!"

ADA Watch and the National Coalition for Disability Rights (NCDR) are longtime supporters of CCA, formally known as MiCASSA, the legislation that gives people real choice in long term care options. This legislation ends the institutional bias in the Medicaid program by giving individuals who are eligible for nursing facility services or other institutional "care" equal access to community-based services and supports, like attendant services.

The event was moderated by Kansas ADAPT member, Mike Oxford and the other speakers included  Dawn Russell, ADAPT, Andy Imparato, American Association of Persons with Disabilities (AAPD), Marty Ford, Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), John Lancaster, National Council on Independent Living (NCIL), Victor Robinson, Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE), and Mitch LaPlante, University of California, San Francisco.

Congressman Danny Davis received huge applause when, after promising to do everything in his power in the House this session, he quoted the lyrics to a Sam Cooke song:

I was born by the river in a little tent

And just like that river I've been running ever since

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will

With a progressive president in the White House, powerful co-sponsors in a more receptive Congress and more than 700 disability organizations signed-on in support of the Community Choice Act, the chant of "Pass CCA Now!" at the conclusion of this rally had an empowered and celebratory tone rather than a pleading one. All of the speakers, however, acknowledged that there is hard work ahead for all as the community works to attract Congressional sponsors to the bill, educate the media and mobilize public support for CCA.

Today, everybody seemed ready to take on that hard work.
 
For more information about the Community Choice Act, go to www.adapt.org



National Coalition for Disability Rights
1701 Pennsylvania Avenue, Suite 300
Washington, District of Columbia 20006

Crimes (Filicide) Against Individuals Often Have Roots in Systemic Public Policy and Legal Failures

  The part of a statement from March 16, 2012 regarding the murder of George Hodgins by his mom, who later killed herself, is problematic because it erases the economic intersection between how the individual impacts of publicly-funded LTSS, delivered in HCBS settings, can prevent (or cause if the funding is inadequate) tragedies and crimes one person with a disability at a time:


https://www.thearcofil.org/arc-and-the-murder-of-george-hodgins/


Why is the story being told this way? Because we live in a world that doesn’t acknowledge the value of our lives as disabled people. Because so many people in our society can’t imagine a disabled person living a fulfilling life, so they don’t see the tragedy and the wasted potential when one of our lives is cut short.
As disabled people, we have to take a stand against this kind of thinking. We have to get the word out that our lives matter, [that our] lives are our own stories and not just the stories of our non-disabled parents and relatives and caretakers. We have to let people know that they are missing part of the story.
Because the story of George Hodgins’s murder is also the story of the disabled community losing one of our own. It’s the story of the other disabled people who were murdered by their family members, and it’s the story of the society that thinks so little of people with disabilities that these murders are all too often justified as “understandable.” Most of all, it’s George’s story – the story of a young man who enjoyed hiking, who was always looking to learn new skills, who had his whole life in front of him.
Now George is gone, and only his memory remains, and already that memory is being distorted by people who want to tell his story and leave him out. That’s not going to happen tonight. We’re here to remember the real story.


  More often than disability rights self-advocates are willing to publicly and directly admit people with disabilities need LTSS, as well as public funding for the LTSS, to help people with disabilities 'write' and act to make our lives our own stories not the stories of our non-disabled (temporarily able-bodied) parents and caregivers. 
 
  George "enjoyed hiking, …was always looking to learn new skills, who had his whole life in front of him," but could not learn new skills without help.  George was not getting the help the killer mom felt he needed from the services his killer mom turned down at the Morgan Center. 
 
  The killer mom didn't think Morgan Center adult services that George transitioned (aged) into were community-based or future-focused on helping George care for himself when his parents cannot or would help find another caregiver to replace aging parents who can no longer fill their caregiver role.

 The excerpt from this article 

http://www.mercurynews.com/2012/03/07/sunnyvale-police-mother-killed-22-year-old-autistic-son-then-herself/

shows the dependent living situation for George Hodgins and how the failure of systemic funding for transition services, with the goal of creating an independent living situation, for youth with disabilities 'aging out' stretched a caregiver mom beyond her limits with tragic and criminal consequences for individuals.  


“She said she was tired and was having a difficult time getting him into a program. She couldn’t find one that would take him,” neighbor Jacquie Jauch said Wednesday. “She was just tired, tired and very lonely. She said she just couldn’t do it anymore — take care of him.”
….
Jauch described the son — the couple’s only child — as low functioning and high maintenance, unable to speak and easily agitated, but fully mobile. The neighbors’ dogs frightened him. He often wore headphones and listened to music to calm himself down.
The neighbors weren’t sure why George Hodgins left the Morgan Autism Center. But Jennifer Sullivan, executive director of the center, said Elizabeth Hodgins told her that she wanted to find a program that was more community-oriented, where her son could be out in the world. He had been attending the school since he was 6, Sullivan said. When he turned 22, however, he could have moved into the adult program there.
When told that Hodgins was having trouble finding a new program, Sullivan became upset: “I wish we would have known. He could have come back here. We loved George.”
His mother adored him and the two were “very close,” she said.
“He was delightful,” Sullivan said. “He was nonverbal but very physically active. He loved walking and hiking.” He used a voice-output device that allowed him to communicate on a limited basis. He did not drive and “constantly was working on his independent-living skills,” she said. “He needed to be supervised at all times for his own safety.”
Having a child with autism can be very “isolating. You’re on 24 hours a day. There is no respite,” she said. “It’s ongoing, and once your children become adults, you continually wonder, ‘Who will take care of my child when I die?’

  It is as wrong to generalize the possibility of one person's success, such as articulate speech by AAC methods or finding meaningfully paid jobs without state and federally-funded Vocational Rehabilitation supported and customized employment services,  as it is to generalize the possibility of one person having problems based on the experience of others having similar problems.
  
  What the root of the rejection, by many leaders in the autistic self-advocacy community, of 'high functioning autistic' and 'low functioning autistic' labels or terminology, is really about is the lack of attention paid to how one individual manifests a set of problems and how to assist the autistic with paying the costs, in money and time, of customizing a solution to those problems to make the life of the autistic more meaningful on the terms of the autistic. 

  When a person with a disability with a developmental age, not matching chronological age, still needs constant supervision the need is a measure of the original meaning of the terminology 'low functioning autistic' where an autistic cannot perform ADA-defined Major Life Activities to enough of an extent a caregiver was needed to prevent unintentional self-harm.
 
“He [George Hodgins at 22] needed to be supervised at all times for his own safety.”

 Identifying a common set of problems and strengths, each manifested differently from autistic person to autistic person, to then start the process of helping each individual overcome the problems and maximize the strengths is what the concept of 'cure,' with respect to autism spectrum disorders, should be about.

Unbreakable Link between Adequately-Funded Community-Based LTSS and Good Caregiving to Prevent Tragedies and Crimes

  The excellent news aggregator crooksandliars.com aggregated a study about cost of caregiving below with original links.

http://crooksandliars.com/2016/02/emotional-toll-caregiving-takes-person

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2491683

Source: Wolff J, Spillman B, Freedman V, et al. A National Profile of Family and Unpaid Caregivers Who Assist Older Adults With Health Care Activities. JAMA Internal Medicine. 2016.

 

  Economic desperation of lack of a sustainable income, for more and more people having to be unpaid caregivers, leads to tragedies of suicide and crimes of murder and accessory to murder.  The great caregivers people read about on social media or corporate-owned news media are more exceptions people should aspire to emulate.  However, emulation or aspirational models of people as 'heroes' or 'superheroes' (inspiration porn) are a bad basis for public policy.  

  Viewing individual problems as individual manifestations of systemic failures is better public policy.  Changing the 'system' AKA public sector budgeted funding streams, as financial aid for the growing number of people who can't pay the costs of inclusion in money or time, can have faster positive effects on the lives of more individuals.  

  To understand the above 'point' in musical form read the lyrics to "Ain't No Such Thing as Superman" by the late Gil Scott-Heron.  


  Original lyrics are posted here

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gilscottheron/aintnosuchthingassuperman.html


  The song "(Wish I could fly like) Superman" by The Kinks, as well as other songs on the album the song was originally released on entitled "Low Budget,"  makes the same 'point' in song about the flaws of 'inspiration porn' as a basis for equally flawed neoliberal/neoclassical (pre-Keynesian) fiscal and neoconservative national security (defense) and immigration policies.  

  Link to buy the whole Kinks album "Low Budget" and individual songs here:  

 
 "(Wish I could fly like) Superman" can also be played here

  People wish they were 'superheroes' when their limited human capabilities are becoming stretched to their limits.  Those limits are more static (unchangeable) than the authors of 'inspiration porn' would have their readers believe.

Economic Intersectionality between Death with Dignity and Community Inclusion for People with Disabilities

 The following paragraph from a letter opposing the 2016 assisted suicide law in the District of Columbia from Ryan T. Anderson, senior research fellow at the Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity at the Republican-leaning Heritage Foundation was problematic.




We should respond to suffering with true compassion. We should offer appropriate psychiatric care and human presence. For those in physical pain, palliative medicine can manage symptoms effectively. For those for whom death is imminent, hospice care and fellowship can accompany them in their last days. Anything less falls short of what human dignity requires.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/debating-what-death-with-dignity-means/2016/11/04/6aac7310-a1e5-11e6-8864-6f892cad0865_story.html


 The paragraph was problematic by erasing the economic intersection/public policy question of 'who pays the costs that individuals cannot pay themselves or with individual or group health and long term care insurance' to allow individuals to make the choice not to choose to hasten their own deaths.  


 Who pays for, as Mr. Anderson describes, the "palliative medicine," the "hospice care and fellowship"  and "appropriate psychiatric care and human presence?"  The CLASS Act would have paid for LTC (long term care) and LTSS (long term services and supports) in community-based settings by ending the Medicaid 'institutional bias' against paying for HCBS (home and community based services) not services provided in an RTC (residential treatment center).  Possibly people would have been subsidized into a required purchase of individual LTC (long term care) insurance.  That model was supported by the Heritage Foundation, creator of the very Institute Mr. Anderson works for/is paid by, in their 'alternative' for what became the Affordable Care Act as a counter to President Bill Clinton's 'health care (insurance) reform' bill of 1994 that had an employer mandate to offer health insurance instead of an individual mandate to buy health insurance.  The CLASS Act was originally known as the Community Choice Act that was itself derived from the MiCassa (medicare/medicaid attended services and supports act) and was rooted in the 1999 USA Supreme Court decision Olmstead v. LC and EW.

  

 That USA Supreme Court decision required people with disabilities to be allowed to choose their own housing in communities of their own choosing instead of being forced to live in nursing homes/residential treatment centers that accepted medicaid payments if the person with a disability (or their families) couldn't pay for long term care.  Republicans in Congress singled the CLASS Act out for 'cutting government spending' to pay for a raise in the federal debt ceiling in the July 31, 2011 'sequester bill' (Budget Control Act).  The CLASS Act was officially killed off in Jan 2013 as part of the 'fiscal cliff' FY 2013 budget 'deal,' delayed by Republican majority obstruction during a presidential election year, with a study commission also known as (AKA) 'paralysis by analysis.' 

 According to the footnotes on the presentation text below one litigant Elaine Wilson EW died on Dec 5, 2004.  


 The cost of raising a child with a severe disability, 

paid mostly by the child's parents in both money and time applying for financial aid from social safety net programs at local, state and federal levels of government can reach five figures ($10 million in cases of severe intellectual and cognitive disability caused by zika virus infections) over the life of a person with a disability, defined as an inability to carry out what the ADA defines as Major Life Activities.  


  Applying for private sector 'mini-grants,' supplementing individual and family income to fund ABLE Accounts, combined with 'crowd-funding' which, when used to pay for basic human needs of food, clothing, education, shelter and medical care, essentially turns people with disabilities into 'high technology panhandlers/beggars.'  

 Search for the text of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights for a list of the international consensus on necessities for a thriving human life. 


  The linked blog post opposing the same freedom to choose death with dignity law in Maryland, as the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C) passed, nearly erases the same intersection/public policy question of 'who pays the costs of community inclusion if the individual cannot.'  


Links within the post include in case the link dies 

Where The Prescription For Autism Can Be Death
http://tinyurl.com/hjleqwk

House Bill HB0404
http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2016RS/bills/hb/hb0404f.pdf

The Furor Over Death Drugs and the Cases of Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5517492&page=1

Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Policy on Assisted Suicide
http://dredf.org/public-policy/assisted-suicide/




   The link below could be harshly characterized as 'inspiration porn.'  The link could be more kindly characterized as overgeneralizing one person's lived experience to the possibility of replication as other peoples' lived experiences after not changing laws to allow people the freedom to choose death with dignity, in the absence of LTSS delivered in HCBS settings, to allow life with dignity on the terms of the person concerned.
 






My Terminal Illness Survival Story as testimony before Maryland Congress  

  

 The continuing Republican majority in Congress passed a Congressional Review Act bill 

to block the Washington, D.C. freedom to choose death with dignity law from taking effect.  President Don Trump has until February 17, 2017 to sign it if the bill also passes the continuing Republican majority-controlled Senate.  

Washington, D.C. must submit all of their laws, including budgets, to Congress for prior approval before taking effect.  D.C. residents deeply oppose the lack of respect for 'home rule' shown mostly by Republican House and Senate majorities by calling D.C. 'the last colony.'