Statehood for D.C.?

[JRDelirious]

BTW being discussed in the name-of-the-new-state thread:

@HMS_Irruncible

@Chronos

Of course, the reason that DC wasn’t made a state in the first place is that it already has much more representation than any state does, and there’s no reason to make that imbalance even greater.

This was never the reason that DC wasn’t made a state, and there’s no way you can demonstrate that DC residents’ votes count for more than anyone else’s. This opinion is so prima facie wrong that I don’t understand how it could be held in sincerity.

@Chronos

If there’s any issue that’s important to residents of DC, then it’ll also be important to all 535 members of Congress, because all of them are residents of DC
(…)
They’re not elected by the residents of DC, but they do represent them.

@HMS_Irruncible

Unelected representation by an out-of-state part-timer? Wow, that sounds grand. Would you like to be represented in a similar way? Why or why not?

OK, now, as for this…
The membership of Congress is uniquely NONrepresentative of the interests of the people of the District, and that’s by design. The whole point is that the Federal bodies NOT be beholden or dependent to the local political interests of the city and state they are sited at.

Part of what caused the proposal to create an autonomous Federal District was that while sited at Philadelphia, at least once the authorities of the city and of the commonwealth refused to provide aid to the Congress, and Pennsylvania being a separate sovereign could not be commanded to.

For the local DC political establishment i.e. the Mayor and Council, the real issue is not only the representation. It’s becoming independent from Congress in order to legislate and make fiscal policy according to the wants and needs of their voters: to take away from Congress veto power over, for instance, a decision to establish a “commuter” income tax for people who work within the limits but live outside.

Really, saying that Congress “represents” the residents of DC is like saying that a council of the top executives of Wall Street firms should be the ones telling the mayor of New York City how to run the place because they represent better what’s good for the city than what the residents of Queens and the Bronx want and like.