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On Monday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing on HR 51, the Washington, DC Admission Act, which would grant the nation’s capital state status, and featured testimony from the mayor of DC Muriel Bowser and other local officials.
“To argue that Washingtonians must remain disenfranchised to protect the interests of the federal government is dangerous, outdated and downright insulting,” he said.
While it is part of the progressive wish list, the chances of DC legislation passing in the House and then garnering 60 votes in the Senate are nil. But it shows the drive of progressives to advance their agenda while Democrats control all the levers of government.
Bowser pointed to racism as one of the reasons the drive for statehood in DC was abandoned in the past when the District became a majority African-American. “The drive to correct the evil was replaced by racist efforts to subvert a growing and prosperous black city,” he told lawmakers.
Before the hearing, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in a call with reporters that House Democrats would take HR 51 to the floor.
“We passed that legislation in 2020, but the Republican-controlled Senate, unsurprisingly, declined to mention it,” he said.
The Maryland Democrat said he is “hopeful” that Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who introduced the legislation in the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, will make sure it makes it to the Senate and passes, to that can be sent to President Joe. Biden’s desk.
Throughout the hearing, Democrats made clear that they see granting DC statehood as a matter of civil rights and representation, while Republicans claimed to make the nation’s capital the 51st state through the Legislation, rather than a constitutional amendment, challenged the laws of the nation and rejected other logistical and political issues.
Norton told lawmakers that Congress faces a choice between continuing to “exercise autocratic and undemocratic authority over American citizens residing in our nation’s capital” or “can fulfill the promise and ideals of this nation, end with taxes without representation and pass HR 51. “
Representative James Comer, the committee’s highest-ranking Republican, called Norton’s legislation “Plan B of Democratic political seizure” after “Plan A,” which removes legislative obstructionism to pass legislation in the Senate with A simple majority seems unlikely due to opposition from moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.
“DC statehood is a key part of the radical left’s agenda to reshape America, along with the Green New Deal, defund the police and fill the US Supreme Court,” he said.
Although the legislation was subject to public hearings the last time the House considered it, Speaker of the House Oversight Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, defended the decision to follow the regular order, echoing Norton’s message on the importance of educating the American public, too. how to convince “undecided Democratic senators” that “statehood is the right thing to do and it’s constitutional.”
Responding later in the hearing to comments from Republicans like Comer, Maloney said, “The real takeover is denying 712,000 tax-paying US citizens the right to vote.”
Maloney said he also hoped to use the panel hearing to build a legislative record because he believes “there will be an inevitable judicial challenge.”
While it will be an uphill challenge to get the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation in the narrowly divided Senate, Carper expressed confidence in his ability to get his colleagues to join him, telling reporters: “I am tenacious. I give up, And I’m pretty good at working across the aisle. So is Joe Lieberman (who previously introduced the DC legislation in the Senate), and go ahead. “
While defending the push for DC statehood, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly referenced the concept of “taxes without representation,” alluding to the Revolutionary War and citing that DC pays more federal taxes per capita than any state in the country.
“The mayor of DC cannot deploy the DC National Guard case in emergencies like the insurrection we saw just two months ago on our nation’s Capitol that resulted in the deaths of police officers and dozens of injuries,” he said, invoking the events of January 6. .
Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the House Speaker in the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump, told Bowser that DC residents have a “very strong and legitimate complaint about the disenfranchisement and lack of representation in Congress, and yet they never attacked the US Congress. ” broke our windows, robbed our cameras or caused the death or injury of more than 100 of our police officers, “continuing,” I want to thank you for following the non-violent and constitutional path to political equality in America that is established in the Constitution per se “.
