Day 61: Hearing for DC Statehood
Reconciling the right to “no taxation without representation” is under continued construction in the United States, as members of the House of Representatives sat for a hearing today on HR 51, the DC Statehood bill.
“The United States is the only democratic country that denies voting representation in the national legislature to the residents of its capital,” said presiding House Oversight and Reform Committee chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). “In the year 2021, we should not need to discuss the importance of voting rights in a democracy… Taxation without representation was the battlecry of our revolution and it is still a battlecry.”
Maloney opened her argument with a quick history of the bill and how it passed in the House last year but went ignored by the then Republican majority. She later gently reminded the members of the historic Republican support for DC Statehood, in particular.
“D.C. residents are American citizens,” she said. “They fight honorably to protect our nation overseas. They pay taxes — in fact, D.C. pays more in federal taxes than 22 states and more per capita than any state in our nation. D.C. residents have all the responsibility of citizenship but they have no congressional voting rights and only limited self-government.
“These fundamental disparities for hundreds of thousands of Americans conflict with the core principles of our republic. Our country was founded on the belief that no people should be subjected to taxation without representation or be governed without the consent of the governed.” Further, “Representative government only functions properly when all people have a voice in the laws that govern them.”
“Let’s be very clear. Today’s hearing is all about creating two new Democratic U.S. Senate seats,” retorted Ranking Member Rep. James Comer (R-KY), echoing the favored argument against Statehood in recent Republican circles. He called the bill an unconstitutional “radical leftist agenda” to consolidate Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s “power.”
“The Constitution does not establish any prerequisites for states,” answered the bill’s author, non-voting member Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC). “…The Constitution’s Admission Clause give Congress the authority to admit new states and all 37 states have been admitted by an act of Congress.”
She went on to remind that the petitioning for District voting rights and local autonomy has been ongoing since the District became the capital some 220 years ago.
“The Constitution’s District Clause which gives Congress plenary power or authority over the federal district sets a maximum — maximum — not a minimum size of the federal district,” Holmes Norton said. “Congress previously has reduced the size of the federal district by 30 percent.”
Shadow Senator Paul Strauss (D-DC) said later via CNN of the hearing, “It is a first step, but it’s an important one.”
Next up: the committee may schedule a vote and if the bill passes [again] with a simple majority (218-435) it would go on to the Senate, this time with at least 41 cosponsors.