A House committee Tuesday advanced legislation that would make the District of Columbia the nation’s 51st state.
While the measure stands little chance of becoming law this year, it marks the first time in 27 years Congress has advanced a D.C. statehood bill.
“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,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat. “Ladies and gentlemen, as simply as I can say it, that is wrong. It violates everything we stand for as Americans.”
In a party-line vote, Democrats approved the Washington D.C. Admission Act, which would create a state out of the 10-mile enclave made up of the district’s eight wards. It would exclude the territory occupied by the Capitol, the White House, federal government buildings, and the monuments.
The new state would be authorized to elect two senators and at least one representative in the House, all with voting rights.
The measure is sponsored by D.C.’s nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who has long fought for the right to vote in the House.
The measure is backed by House Democratic leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.
The measure is likely to get a House vote this year and is poised to pass: There are 223 sponsors, all Democrats.
A Senate version, authored by Sen. Tom Carper, has 34 Democratic co-sponsors, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, is unlikely to bring up the bill.
D.C. residents heavily favor statehood. Voters in the district approved D.C. statehood overwhelmingly in a 2016 referendum.
But Republicans have long resisted the move for a variety of reasons, including the district’s long history of fiscal troubles. Their opposition stems primarily from the guarantee that the electorate will send two Democratic senators and a Democratic representative to Congress.
Rep. Jim Jordan, who is the top Republican on the oversight panel, said the measure raises “serious constitutional and policy problems” and that Congress cannot admit the district as a state legislatively.
Jordan cited past and ongoing corruption problems in the D.C. government, as well as the city’s dependence on federal funding to run parts of the government, which would continue indefinitely even if the district became a state.
“The Constitution does not distinguish between the seat of federal government and the district, where the government is seated,” Jordan said. “The only way to overcome this problem would be to amend the Constitution.”
Democrats said the Constitution does not expressly require current states ratify the admission of new states, noting that 37 states were admitted by Congress alone.
The district was created in 1790 to serve as the seat of the federal government. The population has grown to 700,000 residents and is governed by a mayor and city council.
Democrats defeated a number of Republican amendments, including one that would have excluded from the new state the Old Post Office, now home to the Trump International Hotel.
D.C. officials said they sought to include the Trump hotel in the boundaries of the proposed state because it is a commercial property and would bring in new tax revenue.
Democrats denied that the map was designed to “jab at Trump,” but Rep. Jamie Raskin said the president’s ownership of the hotel violates the emoluments clause prohibiting the president from profiting from his office.
“It would be great to bring some law and order to the management of that property,” Raskin said.
