The White House recently issued a statement endorsing a bill that would grant statehood to Washington, D.C. It said, âFor far too long, the more than 700,000 people of Washington DC have been deprived of full representation in the US Congress. This taxation without representation and denial of self-governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our nation was founded.â
The bill, H.R. 51, takes a scalpel to D.C. and cuts away certain federal buildings such as The Capitol, The White House and the Supreme Court, as well as other federal buildings and monuments, and sets those areas aside as âthe seat of government.â
Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly have boldly gone where few Arizonans from their party have gone before.Â
Their joint membership in the âWorldâs Most Exclusive Clubâ marks the first time since 1953 that the Grand Canyon State has been represented in the Senate by a pair of Democrats.
Senator Sinemaâs unconventional fashion choices began a âbuzzâ upon her arrival, but she followed a conventional political path to the Upper Chamber.Â
Thatâs not the case for her new Arizona colleague.
Like John Glenn and Jack Schmitt before him, Mark Kellyâs path to the Senate was âout of this world:â to stay there, Historyâs third astronaut-turned-senator must continue to defy political gravity.
Letters to the Editor Thursday, May 6 | The Daily Gazette
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Statehood for D.C. is unconstitutional
Regarding legislation shrinking Washington, D.C., to a handful of federal buildings and creating a 51st state from the remaining area, Democrats are using an unconstitutional scheme to rig congressional elections and gain two additional U.S. senators from a constituency which voted 92% for Biden.
Granting statehood violates the U.S. Constitution’s Article IV, Section 3, which says that any new state created from the territory of an existing state requires that state’s permission to come into existence.
Since D.C. was created from Maryland, a change in its status also requires Maryland’s permission, which hasn’t happened.
(AP Photo/Raymond Thompson)
There was no real suspense over whether this proposal would die an ugly death in the Senate despite having recently passed the House. D.C. statehood is a non-budgetary matter and thus subject to the filibuster in the Senate, and no Republicans were about to chip in on the push for 60 votes. But for lefties, a faint hope springs eternal that Joe Manchin will see the error of his ways belatedly, decide that it’s time to nuke the filibuster after all, and then join with his party to ram through statehood for Washington, delivering two new Senate votes for his party.
Democrats have been pushing the idea of making DC into a state for decades. They give all kinds of reasons for that, but it really comes down to the fact that it would add two new Senate seats that would forevermore be filled by Democrats. Of course, since Democrats want to make DC a state for purely partisan reasons, it makes perfect sense that Republicans should oppose it for purely partisan reasons. If you live in a Republican state, why would you want to see the value of your state’s Senate seats diluted that way? However, getting beyond that, some people might be looking for a better reason than that or wondering why DC isn’t already a state. Well, there is an answer.