I’ve often thought that the solution would be to treat DC as an independent Congressional district, to which it compares quite favorably.
Give 'em one voting member in the House with a guaranteed seat on the Committe on Government Reform, Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, and the Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on the District of Columbia.
Then in the Senate you could elevate the currently useless Shadow Senator to a non-voting Senate-delegate with a vote in the Committee on Governmental Affairs and its Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia, and a vote in the Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee on the District.
By doing this you only hand off one vote in Congress to the Dems, about a fifth of a percent of the total votes, but the District has voting representatives in the Committees which directly oversees its administration. Republicans could even stand to profit from the move because by guaranteeing an otherwise powerless Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Republicans would be able to be even more partisan, arrogant and insensitive in the times when they control the Senate majority. Oops, did I say that?
Anyway, what do you Connie-law types have to say about that? Is that a provision that would have to be made by amendment, or could it be enacted through simple legislation? Or is it feasible at all? Could the requirement for an amendment perhaps be outmaneuvered by couching DC as something like a “sovereign independent” district of Maryland?