A key Senate panel today listened to a new plea from champions of Washington, D.C., statehood, but the issue continues to be dead in the water.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who helped organize the hearing, simply said that if Washington residents want full representation in the House and the Senate, Maryland should take back part of the district.
“A better option, in my view, would be to retrocede a large portion of the district to Maryland. Retrocession is the preferable way to provide D.C. residents with voting representation in both chambers of Congress,” he said at the start of the hearing.
Republicans have long opposed making the district the 51st state. It is certain that if it became a state, the liberal district would add two new Democratic senators and make it difficult for the GOP to win back control of the chamber. The district typically votes 90% Democratic.
Portman’s suggestion has been offered before, largely because the federal city was created from land offered up by Maryland.
He gave a history lesson on the swap. “When Maryland authorized the cession of nearly 60 miles of its territory to the federal government for the creation of the District of Columbia in 1788, it did so for the purpose that ‘Congress may fix upon and accept [the land] for the seat of government.’ When Congress formally accepted the land from Maryland by legislative act in 1790, we explained that the land was ‘hereby accepted for the permanent seat of the government of the United States.’ Maryland gave up its land, and we accepted it so that we could create an independent federal governmental district. Making D.C. into a separate state violates the solemn compact we made over 200 years ago with Maryland, as well,” he said.
What’s more, he said, a city might be a bit small for a state.
“We’d be creating a state that by acreage comprises less than 6% of the next smallest state, Rhode Island,” he said.
