I almost never write about bills that pass in the House of Representatives which have no prospect of being taken up by the Senate, let alone signed into law by the president. I’m making an exception for the vote on Thursday to make the District of Columbia into a state.
[Del. Eleanor Holmes] Norton’s bill, H.R. 51, would shrink the seat of the federal government to a two-square-mile enclave, including the White House, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court and other federal buildings, which would remain under congressional control.
The rest of the District would become known as the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was born a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and later lived in Anacostia.
I guess people would still call it “DC” to distinguish it from Washington State on the Pacific coast, but the “DC” would no longer stand for “District of Columbia”. It’s a cool idea even if it kind of reminds be of the way that the Los Angeles Angels become the California Angels before they turned into the Anaheim Angels and finally became the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Every Democrat voted for the bill with the exception of Collin Peterson of Minnesota, who represents a decidedly pro-Trump district on the Canadian border. No Republicans voted for it because they know it would mean two extra Democratic votes in the Senate, probably in perpetuity. I understand that political parties are not organized to do deliberate political harm to themselves, but there is a compelling moral case that the citizens of our nation’s capital should have the same representation in Congress as the citizens our fifty states.
Unfortunately, if this bill is ever to become law, it’s going to have to be done through brute force, not bipartisan consensus.
If the filibuster is removed , what are the chances that this can actually happen?
I’m open to compromise with the republicans. They can have their choice. Either DC becomes a state, or ND and SD get combined back into “Dakota”, which they were originally intended to be. Either way, they lose 2 senators.
On a broader note, the undemocratic nature of the Senate is a travesty. We can’t get rid of it without completely abrogating the constitution, so we need to look for ways to minimize the damage. One way is to add new states to redress the partisan balance. Ultimately, I would like the see the senate go the way of the House of Lords–still existing as an advisory body, but with less and less real power.
The division of Dakota changed the result of the 2000 election.