Day 84: Markup Committee Approves HR51
The Washington, D.C. Admission Act (H.R. 51) was advanced today in a 25-19 vote, concluding the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s markup of the bill. It next goes to the Committee on Rules and then to the House Floor for a full chamber vote, both expected to occur next week.
“Congress can no longer exclude D.C. residents from the democratic process, forcing residents to watch from the sidelines as Congress votes on laws that affect the nation or votes even on the laws of the duly elected D.C. government,” nonvoting Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), said. “Democracy requires much more.”
“The United States is the only democratic country that denies both voting rights in the national legislature and local self-government to the people of its capital. That is wrong,” said Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). “It violates everything we stand for as Americans.”
There were a few “good for TV” moments during the debate. Opponents of the bill’s passage again called it a Democratic “power grab” and decried commuter taxes that the new state may impose on those who work in D.C. and use the local public services, like transportation and emergency response teams, but who don’t live in D.C. (read: who don’t pay taxes in D.C.).
Proponents responded swiftly with curiosity about whether or not Republicans are attempting to dismantle voting rights and precisely why it’s now a misdemeanor in Georgia to give water to someone on line to vote.
The usual fears of the Federal seat being surrounded by people who live in the state of DC were also put forth — and debunked because the people may very well continue to live in D.C. regardless of the population’s suffrage status, as many have done for generations.
“Today’s committee passage of the D.C. statehood bill is historic for the District, but to me it’s also personal,” Norton said. “My own family has lived in D.C. since my great-grandfather Richard Holmes, as a slave, walked away from a plantation in Virginia and made his way to D.C. almost 200 years ago. Richard Holmes made it as far as D.C., a walk to freedom but not to equal citizenship so far for our family.”
Several amendments were considered, too, including ones that would require a 60-member vote for passage in the Senate and that repeals the Constitution’s 23rd Amendment — granting District residents 3 Electoral College votes for the Presidency — prior to Statehood; and ones that would require DC to take over management of certain programs and pay back federal courts, on a time limit required of no other state’s admission.
Residual curiosity about whether or not D.C. residents — who voted 86% in favor of Statehood in 2016 — are truly backing the most “common sense” solution. Retrocession to Maryland was offered, again, but not by Maryland herself.
“That’s the elegance of this [statehood] solution,” said John Sarbanes (D-MD). Whereas retrocession would render 712,000 people “subsumed” to a culture somewhat unfamiliar, statehood “brings the vote to the community” and “respects the identity” of DC, which is surely a unique one some 200+ years after its establishment.