Democrats introduce bill to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state

SNIP
The measure was reintroduced in the House by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents the District of Columbia, and its companion was unveiled in the Senate by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. As of Tuesday evening, Norton said that she had more than 200 co-sponsors in the House.

Carper, however, said in a statement that D.C. statehood isn’t “a Republican or Democratic issue.”

“It’s an American issue because the lack of fair representation given to the residents of D.C. is inconsistent with the values on which this country was founded,” he said. “It is therefore incumbent upon all of us who enjoy the right and the privilege of full voting rights and representation to take up the cause of our fellow citizens in the District of Columbia.”
ENDSNIP

https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats-introduce-bill-washington-dc-155940048.html

I fully agree with Carper.... 712K DC residents are not fully represented in the House or Senate, with a population greater than 2 states and close to 3 others...

Puerto Rico is another issue and I'm not fully committed to that becoming a state, but it's way past time for DC...

Is this finally the time? When the R's filibuster this (as they will), is this the issue that will get rid of it? I bet even Sinema and Manchin are pro DC statehood....

 

DC was created specifically for the purpose of having a common ground for our national congress to meet and work without being in any single STATE. It should take a Constitutional amendment to give that district statehood.

 

SNIP

• The Constitution sets only a maximum size, “ten miles square,” for the federal district that is the “Seat of the Government of the United States.” Congress has the authority to redefine the borders of the federal district and shrink its size, as it did in 1846, when the portion west of the Potomac was returned to Virginia (now Arlington and Alexandria Counties.
• Creating the new state will require a simple reduction in the size of the federal district to an unpopulated area which includes the US Capitol, the National Mall, museums, some federal office buildings, the White House, the Supreme Court, and major national monuments.

ENDSNIP

https://statehood.dc.gov/page/why-statehood-dc

Problem solved

 

Yeah, Manchin will probably be behind this

https://www.wtrf.com/news/west-virg...hin-open-to-adding-two-more-states-to-the-us/

So now, he's going to have to decide what's more important..... Taxation without Representation or supporting an obsolete Senate delay tactic...

Good luck, Joe!

 

And that "10 miles" doesn't have to be contiguous does it ?

 

so to do this they need to deny all Americans that live there the right to have a vote?

maybe in trade they should not have to pay a fed income tax

 

LINK: 2020 District Of Columbia Election Results

Who was denied a vote in DC?

 

for congress, not President

 

Well, there is the problem that DC will become an urban sh!thole like other Black majority cities.

 

Problem not solved.

I'm convinced much of the democrat party was sick during 6th grade civics.

It was intentional that DC was not in a state. If people moved into DC, then they knew what they were getting into. Don't want to live in the district, then move out.

 

Well, that I don't know... I would assume they could carve out a reasonably contiguous and connected block of unpopulated DC to maintain the DC part...

Sort of like some horrible gerrymandered district somewhere..

 

They can't move to another location thats a state to have representation?

 

The problem with this is that every new 'district' will be an argument for taxation without representation, and thus we will be adding every new state per district given this argument. Well, as much lunacy as has happened I'll admit this is a pretty tame problem.

I would actually just expand voting rights to a 'sister' state. Which in this example would be Virginia. If they want representation, they can count Virginia's representatives/senators as their own, and thus also be allowed to vote for them. That gives them representation without having to admit a 'new state'.

 

Then you could cede that section back to Maryland. Problem also solved.

 

The city government does get a payment from the US in lieu of property tax.

 

Really? The point of DC not being a state is to keep the U.S. Capitol separate from the political pollution. It's the Country's Capitol. If it becomes a state, where is the Capitol then? Idiot thinking.

 

Yeah, I don't think that's gonna fly... more reading for you...

SNIP
An alternative proposal to retrocession was the District of Columbia Voting Rights Restoration Act of 2004 (H.R. 3709), which would have treated the residents of the district as residents of Maryland for the purposes of congressional representation. Maryland's congressional delegation would then have been apportioned accordingly to include the population of the district.[65] Those in favor of such a plan argued that the Congress already has the necessary authority to pass such legislation without the constitutional concerns of other proposed remedies. From the foundation of the district in 1790 until the passage of the Organic Act of 1801, citizens living in D.C. continued to vote for members of Congress in Maryland or Virginia; legal scholars therefore propose that the Congress has the power to restore those voting rights while maintaining the integrity of the federal district.[66] The proposed legislation, however, never made it out of committee.[65]
ENDSNIP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocession

 

You could, if both groups agreed to it, which they haven't and won't....

 

Gee, I guess they'll have to jack up the Capitol and move it out of the Capital, perhaps to Mar-A-Lago for further destruction.....

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/capi...efer to uppercase,which the US Congress meets.

Post 3 answers all your questions.... No worries, you'll still have a Capitol building to attempt another riot in....

 

Post 3 answers nothing. This destroys Federalism. But, that's what the fascist Democrats want, right! Washington DC could be the capital of DC. But it would not be the capital of the country any longer. It must remain separate according to the Constitution.

 

Sort of like the Vatican. A wall will be built to keep the public out. Fascists!

 

Close... a wall might be built to keep out the rioting fascists... thanks for that, BTW....

 

But it doesn't have too and doesn't need to. If I choose to live in Guam or Puerto Rico or the Federal District I am fully aware I have no voting on the floor members of the Congress. I can live in a State in order to have a state representative. We have no need to put the seat of government under such dependence on one state for it's protection.

"Madison and the other Founders worried, as well, that the federal government’s independence of action in the national interest would be imperiled by subjecting its physical security to state and local authorities. This was not a hypothetical problem. In June 1783 a drunken mob of unpaid Continental Army soldiers surrounded the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. State and local authorities in Pennsylvania refused Alexander Hamilton’s desperate pleas to defend the Congress. Led by Hamilton and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, its members fled across the Delaware River into New Jersey and took up temporary housing in Princeton. Hamilton spent the time in New Jersey exile drafting a resolution calling for a constitutional convention. The Framers of the Constitution that was drafted at that convention (conducted in secrecy from the Philadelphia crowd) understood that a government with more permanent quarters could not so easily pack its bags.

With the events of 1783 fresh in mind, Madison warned that, without federal control of the capital, “the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings interrupted with impunity. . . . A dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence” to the detriment of other states. In 1812, as president, Madison saw the capital burned by an invader when the Maryland militia could not protect it. His insight proved prophetic in 1861, when Maryland teetered on the verge of joining Virginia in seceding. Federal authorities needed to subdue angry mobs in Baltimore and send a young Andrew Carnegie at the head of a military and technical crew to keep the District connected by rail and telegraph to the North. The next four years of war centered heavily on the physical defense of the capital, and of the Confederate capital in Richmond."
The District of Columbia Should Not Be a State | National Review

Hmmm insurrection. Imagine Trump and family and the White House under attack and the current Mayor having the control of the security in the immediate area and the federal government not being able to deploy federal security around the WH without her approval?

But then it will require an amendment and not enough state legislatures will agree to the purely partisan political efforts.

If DC were a predominately Republican area instead of almost 90% Democrats the Democrats would be yelling and screaming about NO statehood for DC as they are now.

 

LMAO, of course the basic and simplified solution to a problem never makes it out of committee. That's our government for you.

 

Why would breaking up the seat of the federal government into 10 one square mile segments be better than the contiguous it is now? What is the advantage to the federal government to give up that federal land?