DC Statehood Bill Introduced In US Senate

On Wednesday, Democrats once again reintroduced legislation in the House and Senate that would make Washington, D.C., the 51st state. The measure was reintroduced in the House after it died in the 116th Congress when the then-Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold a vote on the bill after it passed the house by Washington, D.C., Democratic Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a nonvoting delegate representing the district in Congress, and in the Senate by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del.

The set of bills, titled H.R. 51 and S.51 in the House and Senate respectively, have garnered considerable support from Democrats. In the House, there are 209 cosponsors, while there are 38 cosponsors in the Senate, all of whom were Democrats. The bill, if passed, would admit Washington, D.C., to the United States as the 51st state, reducing the size of the constitutionally-mandated federal district to just the areas surrounding the Capitol, White House, National Mall, and the Supreme Court, to ensure those federal buildings maintain independence from any state.

Currently, any American living inside the district gets no representation in the houses of Congress, except for one nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. Although a similar arrangement exists for America’s other five inhabited overseas territories, namely Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa, the situation is different because residents of Washington, D.C., must pay federal taxes, while residents residing in the territories do not. 705,000 Americans live in the district, more so than live in Wyoming (586,000 people) and Vermont (626,000 people).

This is ironic because despite housing the federal government’s most important buildings, including Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the National Mall, and the headquarters of many federal agencies, the residents here do not get any representation. In fact, even acts passed by the D.C. City Council, which functions as the legislature for the district, is subject to the whims of Congress, of which D.C. residents are not represented in, which can overturn any acts passed by the council. The budget of the district is also dependent on Congress. However, residents of the district can vote for president since the ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961, which granted it three electors.

The issue of D.C. statehood also came into the spotlight again after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which saw massively delayed mobilizations of law enforcement units and took hours for the Department of Defense to authorize the deployment of the D.C. National Guard. Unlike in other states, the D.C. National Guard cannot be deployed by any local authority, such as the mayor of the district. Instead, only the federal government, namely the Pentagon, can authorize the mobilization of the district’s guard. Had the district been in control of its guard from the onset, the insurrection could have been avoided, as the National Guard would have been able to step in and intervene quickly.

This, along with the idea of “no taxation without representation” (ironically, a reason the American colonists stated for gaining independence from Britain), has been the main reason for pushing for allowing D.C. to become a state.

Granted, the main reason as to why Democrats are so eager for and Republicans so against D.C. statehood is because Washington, D.C. is one of the most left-leaning parts of the country. Since it gained electoral votes in 1964, it has never voted for Republicans ever. Even in Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984, where every state except for Minnesota went for him, D.C. voted for the Democratic nominee Walter Mondale by a 71-point margin. In the 2020 election, Donald Trump won just five percent of the vote in this district (Biden won 92 percent of the vote share—a larger vote-share than in any county equivalent). Should D.C. become a state, the Democrats would gain two safe Senate seats and one safe House seat, which is all but certain to remain in the staunchly Democratic camp for the foreseeable future.

For the Democrats, admitting D.C. as a state would also expand their Senate majority, meaning that they would be able to push a more liberal agenda through the Senate which conservative Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia might not agree to. (As of now, the Democrats’ 50-seat majority means that every single Senate Democrat must vote party-line for anything to pass.) It would also take the pressure off their shoulders to vote party-line in every vote—the Democrats could still pass major agenda even if they lost up to two Democrat votes in the event that D.C. was a state and had senators.

However, the partisan lean of a certain U.S. territory should not be the reason why a region should or should not be admitted as a state. The fact is, no American living in the United States and who pays federal taxes should be denied a voice in government simply because it isn’t a state. It is not partisan to say that all people should be given a voice in Congress. There is practically no other reason against why D.C. should be a state. As discussed, the federal government wouldn’t be part of the new state, so there would still be a constitutionally-mandated “federal district”—it would just be greatly shrunk in size to only cover the areas around the National Mall. Therefore, it wouldn’t be unconstitutional to admit the rest of D.C. as a state.

Major organizations, including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, Neighbors United, Demand Justice, and the American Federation of Teachers have backed D.C. statehood.

Unfortunately, ramming a bill to make D.C. a state won’t come easy in the Senate. Though the bill is certain to pass the House, Senate Republicans could filibuster the bill, preventing the bill from advancing onto a floor vote. To break the filibuster, 60 votes are needed, meaning Democrats would need to find 10 Republicans to agree to make D.C. a state, an impossibility given the partisanship in Congress.

However, the Democrats could, in theory, amend the floor rules to make it so the filibuster doesn’t apply to admitting new states. When the Republicans were in power, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., amended the rules so judicial nominations couldn’t be filibustered, thereby allowing former President Trump to pack the courts with conservative judges. This would not only allow D.C. to become a state without removing the filibuster (something which Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have been opposed to). With the two extra Democrats, the party could then eliminate the filibuster if they wanted to, even without Manchin and Sinema agreeing.

If the Democrats succeed in making D.C. a state, it could also open up the pathway into allowing Puerto Rico, which has 3.2 million Americans living on it (a population which is greater than 20 other states), and even smaller overseas territories into becoming states, finally ensuring all Americans living anywhere in the universe (yes, astronauts can vote from space) will be represented in the government. (As of right now, as long as you don’t live in D.C. or one of the territories, you can vote. This creates a conundrum that Americans living outside America can vote, yet Americans living in America cannot.)