House lawmakers Friday passed a measure that would make the District of Columbia the nation’s 51st state, bypassing GOP objections and the reality that the Republican-led Senate will not take up the bill.
Democrats tied the measure, which passed 232-180, to the current civil unrest and demands for an end to racial injustice. They argued that D.C. residents were unfairly taxed without fair representation in Congress.
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The city, which has a population of more than 700,000, has one non-voting delegate in the House and a shadow senator. City residents pay more in taxes than 22 states, Democrats said.
“I can think of no more honorable or patriotic endeavor than taking up this legislation today to give the people of the District the same rights enjoyed by hundreds of millions of other Americans across our country,” House Government and Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, said. “The United States is a democracy, but its capital is not. 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 the capital. This is wrong and violates everything we stand for as Americans.”
The bill would rename the District as Washington Frederick Douglass State, named after the famed abolitionist and author.
Democrats defeated a last-ditch amendment by Republicans that would have conditioned D.C. statehood on it prohibiting sanctuary city policies or defunding the police department and guaranteeing its residents the right to own firearms.
Democrats and District of Columbia residents have tried to win statehood for many years and have even added the message to the city’s license plates, which read, “Taxation without representation.”
“The fact is, people in the District of Columbia pay taxes, fight our wars, risk their lives for our democracy, and yet, they have no vote in the House or the Senate about whether we go to war and how those taxes are exacted,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Friday ahead of the vote.
The D.C. statehood push has convinced very few Republicans, and the bill won’t come up for a vote in the GOP-led Senate.
Republicans pointed out during the floor debate on Friday that the district was created as a federal enclave and was never intended to be a state. They accuse the House Democratic majority of trying to put two additional voting Democrats in the Senate and a voting Democrat in the House. The dIstrict’s voting base has long been reliably Democratic.
“My friends on the other side of the aisle may protest and outrage at the suggestion that what this is all about is an attempt to get two more Democratic senators,” Rep. Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican, said. “But that’s what this is really all about.”
Republicans appear to have public sentiment on their side.
A July 2019 Gallup poll found overwhelming national opposition to D.C. statehood. The poll found 64% of people in the United States opposed statehood for the district, and just 29% supported it.
Republicans say the district cannot become a state unless Congress first introduces a constitutional amendment that would have to be ratified by 38 of the 50 states, but Democrats argue it can be accomplished by simply passing legislation in the House and Senate and winning the president’s signature.
“Granting D.C. statehood goes against not only American citizens’ desires, but more importantly, the Constitution and the Framers’ intent,” Hice said.
