(Wikimedia Commons)
On Monday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee heard arguments over a proposed bill to grant the District of Columbia Statehood (whether it will get anywhere, well that's a different story). This is the first time the Senate has held a hearing on this topic in 20 years
Currently, Washington DC is a federal district that has a delegate to the House of Reps (Eleanor Holmes Norton) and two shadow senators (Michael Brown and Paul Strauss), but no actual votes in either chamber. It does get 3 Electoral College votes, though.
Now, the bill isn't really expected to get anywhere, because the GOP-led House wouldn't vote to support it. DC statehood has typically been an issue where Democrats support statehood and Republicans oppose statehood. Republicans wouldn't want it to happen because this would almost definitely mean more votes for Democrats in both chambers (Washington DC, like most other major cities, goes heavily for Democrats). Of course, they don't admit this, which you can interpret however you would like.
Anyway, I wanted to link to an article giving the arguments for and against DC statehood, as presented at this committee.
Personally, I think that DC should be granted statehood, mainly because I think that it's unfair that 650,000 people don't have proper representation in Congress. I think that the objections to DC statehood that are being put forth are good examples of red herrings. A red herring is a something meant to mislead the public or distract them from getting to an issue. The Republicans are trying to come up with arguments against statehood (many of which are pretty faulty) in order to hide their true reasons for not supporting it: concerns that Democrats will gain representation in the House and Senate.
Questions:
- Do you think Washington DC should be granted statehood? Check out the article for arguments for and against.
- Support your answer with reasons why/why not.
2 comments:
I agree that Washington DC should become a state. It is not fair for the people of the District of Columbia to have to follow all the laws Congress creates when it does not get actual votes. Residents are part of this country; therefore they deserve to have their representatives vote, just like the rest of the country. In addition, the District of Columbia has over 630,000 residents, while Wyoming only has around 575,000. Therefore, it should have at least as much representation as Wyoming, including the ability to vote and number of votes. Lastly, according to Article IV Section 3 of the Constitution, it meets the requirements for becoming a state because it is a separate district and does not want to combine with another state.
Thanks for brining up some nice specifics to back up your assertion, Catherine! I definitely agree that it should become a state. On the topic of representation, some people have said that the state of DC would serve the interests of a strong federal government because the federal government would be its largest employer. While this is a reasonable concern, I think that the fact that DC has become such a large city with major industry outside of government makes this point less important. Furthermore, some rural states think that DC -- as an entirely urban state -- would ignore rural issues in Congress. To them, I say that rural states already get too much representation compared to how much of the country's population they take up, so they can't really complain.
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