Senator Marion Barry (D-D.C.)
The House of Representatives reconvened this week after its Easter Recess. A key legislative item is the renewed effort to begin the process of transmogrifying the District of Columbia into the functional equivalent of a State of the Union-- and to do so without the benefit of an amendment to the Constitution. Never underestimate how wily liberal leadership can be. The proposal is claimed to be nothing more than according the District’s Delegate to the House full voting privileges. The pitch is wrapped in the appealing clothing of citizenship, democracy, enfranchisement, voting rights, combined with a racial tinge (as though an opponent were a racist).
(Not surprisingly, quieter and less influential folk are interested in pursuing Congressional seats for Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands – and Puerto Rico if the faltering independence movement fails were the D.C. measure to succeed.)
The reality is easy to come by. Read the Washington Post, the Washington Times, or any other cognizant publication, or talk with, or listen to, a D. C. politician or anybody remotely familiar with D. C. politics. The real effort is to create the functional equivalent of one Member of the House of Representatives and two United States Senators. It’s the PR and legislative equivalent of the proverbial camel’s nose in the tent but it’s far cleverer than any beast of burden. Begin with a House seat; keep the two D.C. so-called “shadow United States Senators” out of sight; avoid - maybe, desecrate? - the Constitution step by step.
The cause has the oft-touted appeal of “bipartisanship” because a Republican Member (himself an adroit and ambitious leader and PR master) loudly co-sponsors the House measure.
The House is likely to pass the measure, the Senate less likely. Presidential advisors are advising President George W. Bush to veto (which veto almost assuredly would be sustained). If the proposal jumps these hurdles a Constitutional challenge in the Federal Judiciary would follow. The Congressional Research Service already has opined that the measure is unconstitutional. Those few legal scholars who have researched the question are not in accord with one another. (I find the negative scholarship more persuasive than the affirmative but have not researched independently.)
A Constitutional amendment is unlikely to succeed, requiring, as it would, ratification by 38 State legislatures. In 1978 Congress sent to the States a proposed amendment which would have granted the District of Columbia a voting House seat. Few State legislatures ratified the proposed amendment; the (very generous) seven-year period for ratification expired; no amendment.
The option of retrocession to the State of Maryland remains, cumbersome though it may be to achieve in light of D. C. politicians’ self-interest. If the principal goal of D. C. politicians were fully to enfranchise D. C. residents on the same basis as residents of the fifty States retrocession would achieve the goal. D. C. residents would become Marylanders, just as, since 1847, D. C. residents and their successors west of the Potomac River have been Virginians. Those residents would fit in well politically with Maryland, a liberal State. The Nation’s Capital, as the Framers intended, would comprise that small and monumental area housing the key offices (and the many monuments) of the Federal Government—the White House and major federal agencies, Congress, the Supreme Court. (Several key offices—e.g., the Department of Defense—are already outside the District of Columbia, for which their functioning clearly is none the worse.) The Nation’s Capital would be just that, not a city embarrassingly noted for its crime - and for a local government of unmatched proportionately numerous bureaucracy and (at best, erratic) incompetence.
--A Free Congress Foundation Commentary
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, The Free Congress Foundation.
Comments
Seeing as how this nation was partially founded upon the principle of “no taxation without representation,” I would have no trouble supporting a Constitutional Amendment to grant the District of Columbia a single member of the U.S. House of Representatives (but I would NEVER support granting it full statehood and/or Senatorial representation). But this can only be done via Constitutional Amendment; even a cursory reading of the Constitution makes that eminently clear. And it seems obvious such an Amendment would fare no better today than it did in 1978, thus the issue ought to be dead. As far as Congressional representation for Puerto Rico and Guam is concerned, by my reckoning those aren’t even authentic parts of the United States of America and should thus be granted full national independence with all due speed. I’m not sure I don’t feel the same way about Hawaii, for that matter.
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There’s a plus and a minus. If DC becomes a state they will be completely fiscally non-viable owing to their small tax base and giant welfare outlays. The plus is that they would then tighten their welfare belts and stop parasitizing off the rest of the union.
The minus is two more hardcore ultra leftist senators.
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Bob’s Riddle
All anti-white racists agree that it’s ok for whites to become minorities in their own countries. All anti-white racists also agree that a Japanese person who wants to become a minority in his own country is either a traitor or clinically insane. Therefore, what is an anti-white racist? Answer
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Such a person wants the genocide of whites. Of course
it then means that said nutjob would have to really
work for a living because if they get their way, all
the productive people would be gone. But that is beside
the point.
They would not stop badgering the rest of the onion
for freebies. What makes you think they would?
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DC is the most Democrat/Liberal city in America after
San Francisco. That means it’s one of the
most unfriendly places in the country for families
and other living things: high crime rates, the largest
divide between rich and poor, the worst school system,
failing social services, and inefficient public
services.
A fitting place to be designated the Imperial City
of a declining Republic, that has lost it’s values.
Give DC a vote? ARe you kidding. They can’t even
run their own elections, much less run a city
It’s a city of Left-over political activists, grown up
hippies who are now yuppies that don’t care anything for
anybody but their own hedonism, and welfare cases. Oh,
yeah, and increasingly the home of libertarian, far-right
“think tanks” devoted solely to the purpose of strippign
the American middle class of their economic security.
CATO and AEI...are you listening?
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The motto of DC is a big whine: “Taxation without
Representation”. Actually, they are the most subsidized
city in the country. The residents don’t pay nearly
in taxes what they cost to maintain themselves, and their
inefficient joke of a Mayor and City Council are
proof enough of that they are unable to govern themselves.
I say if they want representation, then lets
increase the taxation on the residents so the rest of
the country is rid of the burden of this most corrupt
and inefficient community.
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What’s the big deal?
Since when have any State’s Rights
prevailed in America?
D.C. would not get any more or less
graft than it is getting already.
The only drawback is that granting “statehood” (ha!)
would effect a net increase in the lowest form
of life in Amercia: Politicians
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