Well, Tom Davis sponsored a bill to give D.C a vote in the House of Representatives, balancing it with another representative from Utah, and it got out of two committees, but now there’s no chance. It’s not on the agenda for this week, the last one before the 109th Congress adjourns and the 110th Congress begins work, which means somebody will have to introduce it again next year, for the third year in a row. Damn it, people, what is so hard about this?
Taxation without representation? Yet some opponents of the bill had the gall to argue that,
because the Constitution doesn’t specifically spell out that DC gets 1 or more congresspersons,
they aren’t entitled to any at all.
Actually, they are exactly right. The Constitution does SPECIFICALLY spell out who gets representatives, in Article I, Sec. 2:
That’s not some zany “it could go either way” viewpoint. The Constitution clearly and specifically says STATES.
From the Wikipedia:
If Washington, D.C. were a state, it would rank last in area behind Rhode Island, 50th in population ahead of Wyoming, first in population density ahead of New Jersey, and 35th in Gross State Product.
That is to say, that although Washington is important, it has very few residents. Nearby Price George’s County, Maryland has more people. If DC wants representation, it ought to be folded back into Maryland from whence it came. Such a small population would not even be noticed in Maryland.
That idea would never fly as getting a Congresscritter that way would not allow the Ruling Class of DC to control the seat. That is the real issue, the desire of the DC elite to have their own set. Consider the case of Jessie Jackson who was elected Shadow Senator. He lost interest after a few months.
Another solution would be to repeal taxation in the District. Newt Ginrich proposed that, the idea went nowhere.
So wait…because it has fewer residents than almost every state, it doesn’t deserve its own representation, and those states do? Because it’s more productive than nearly half the country, it doesn’t deserve the representation that they get? Because it’s more crowded than any other state, it doesn’t deserve representation?
Besides, if the population involved were really a factor, nobody would have passed laws against same-sex marriages: after all, since so few people are affected, we don’t need to do anything about it. I don’t have any idea of the numbers, but I would venture to say that Congress and associated workers do not form the majority of D.C.'s population.
As regards Maryland, I think that’s already been tried and voted down; anyway, the point of Congress is to represent the citizens – how well would a Maryland Congresscritter represent D.C. citizens?
I agree that DC deserves representation in the House, but it would unquestionably require a Constitutional amendment, not a statute. (Or the admittance of DC as a state – but that would be dumb.)
I say: Give them their one Representative, but no Senators. Seems like a fair deal. Good luck getting 38 states to consent to it, though.
I should think a Maryland representative could represent Washington, Maryland quite well.
At least, I assume that’s what Paul meant: just put D.C. part and parcel back whence it came.
Given that the Committee on the Constitution reported favorably on the bill mentioned in my OP which was not meant as a Constitutional amendment, it seems fairly certain that Congress disagrees.
From their report:
I personally have no problem with D.C. having a Senator, or even two, but that will surely never happen. The balance of power is much more precarious in the Senate, where all the races (usually) are real, since states can’t be gerrymandered.
Although Congress would have the authority to send the non-federal parts of DC to join Maryland, Congress would also need the specific authorization of the Maryland legislature. And given the problems of the city of Washington (crime, education, corruption, etc), I’m not sure how enthusiastic the Maryland legislature would be to the idea.
This is the crux of the issue. All the small states will fillibuster the issue in the Senate until its supporters give up. It doesn’t matter if said Senators are Republicans or Democrats. The states that don’t get a lot of Representatives do NOT like the implication that some tiny dot on the US map is the equal (or near-equal) of their state.
I say retrocede the District back to Maryland and give them their Representative that way.
The District of Columbia is not a state. Any references in the U.S. Constitution to a “state” do not apply.
From the Committee on Government Reform’s report:
In other words, D.C. not being a state doesn’t mean that it’s not supposed to have representation. References to states do apply, they just haven’t all been enforced.
Well, that would be up to the Supreme Court. It does seem to me that it would be an all-or-nothing decision. Either D.C. is entitled to the full representation of a state, or to none.
From that report again:
So according to Congress, this is their jurisdiction, not the Supreme Court’s.
By the way, I’m getting this from the Library ofCongress. Just in case anybody was wondering.
Congress can create offices for non-states to have certain representation in the House; for example, the non-voting Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico and delegates from Guam, the USVI and DC. Since the House has the right to determine its own rules of procedure, it can give committee votes to the President of Zaire if they want, but when acting as a full legislative body, only true Representatives can vote.
The Committee’s report is eloquent but quite clearly incorrect – any attempt at a statute authorizing actual Representatives to be elected from a non-state would be overturned by the court system. That’s not altogether surprising; the job of congressional committees is to concoct dubious arguments about why legislation is a good idea and why it might actually be constitutional.
The Constitution is very clear that DC was not meant to be considered a state. From Article 1, Section 8 (Powers of Congress):
So there’s a district formed from land ceded by states. If they had wanted the seat of government to be in a state, they would have just put it in a state, and not mucked around with creating a new, special District.
And the reason why DC doesn’t have a Representative and two Senators is that DC instead has 454 Representatives and 100 Senators. You think those guys don’t have a vested interest in DC? In addition to their home constituencies, every single member of Congress also represents Washington. Granted, they may not give Washington as high a priority as they give to their own states, but that’s more than balanced by the fact that the members of Congress from every single state represent DC in this way.
Forgive me, I was promoting the idea of retrocession, the end of the DC government, to make it a county in Maryland. Then Maryland’s delegation of six would have one person who would cover that county. No muss, no fuss.
Except it would never fly as the DC elite prefer being big fish in a small pond rather than the other way around.
No, that’s because they didn’t want any state to have undue power over the federal government by having the district in its boundaries. As for the vested interest thing, there’s a reason D.C. has such horrible crime and unemployment, and it isn’t because Congress gives a crap. Hint: there’s something to do with the government taking shitloads of money from the city government and by and large not giving any back.
The idea has no merit. The territory used to make Washington has not been a part of Maryland since the 18th century. The proposal makes no more sense than suggesting that West Virginia should rejoin Virginia. Washington is in many ways in direct economic competition with the surrounding communities in Virginia and Maryland and it is ludicrous to suggest that a representative of Maryland would be able to represent Washington and Maryland interests.
In fact, one of the problems facing the District is that committee members who have oversight over DC issues come from communities in competition with the District. Jim Moran (8th, VA) for example, has used his position to interfere with how the District enforces traffic laws because it inconvenienced commuters from Northern Virginia.
Every discussion on this issue, someone suggests that DC become part of Maryland. While we’re at it: Louisiana should become part of France, they’ve been apart for less time than Maryland and Washington.
I vote to have this thread absorbed back into GD. Off ya’ go.