Taxation Without Representation

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Saturday is Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia. It marks the day, April 16, 1862, when 3,100 slaves in the District of Columbia led the way to freedom, securing their freedom 9 months before the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves nationwide.

Isn't it ironic that, because Emancipation Day comes on a Saturday, the American people are going to have 3 extra days to file your income taxes?

Even though it is not a national holiday, it is a very special day for those of us who live in the District of Columbia because we are trying to get our full rights, the same rights as every other American.

While I vote in committee representing the people of the District of Columbia, I cannot vote on this floor. Others can vote on this floor on matters affecting my district and my district only, yet the District has more residents than two States and as many residents as about seven States in the United States. We outnumber Vermont and Wyoming.

There on this poster you see the District, Vermont, and Wyoming, yet Vermont, Wyoming, and every other State in the United States have two Senators and at least one Representative.

About seven States have one Representative who votes on this House floor. I do not vote on this House floor. The people I represent have earned every single right that every other American has.

Here on this poster are D.C.'s casualties in the major 20th-century wars, where the District of Columbia outpaced many States in casualties during those wars: World War I, more casualties than three States; World War II, more casualties than four States; the Korean war, more casualties than eight States; and the Vietnam war, more casualties than ten States.

These are American citizens who went to war for their country, died without a vote, did not come home, and their relatives today still do not have the vote on this House floor and have no vote in the Senate of the United States.

The largest irony of all, however, is shown on this poster. The people I represent here in the Nation's Capital pay more taxes per capita--more--than any residents of any State in the United States. They pay the highest taxes--$12,000 per person--and there are almost 700,000 people here. Who pays the lowest taxes in the United States per capita? It turns out to be Mississippi.

But wherever they come from, American citizens pay fewer taxes, less in taxes, than the people who live in their Nation's Capital, even though the people who live in the Nation's Capital live in a city that is among the oldest American cities, whose citizens still do not have their full rights as American citizens.

This is in violation of a treaty the United States signed in 1992, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The United States has been found to be in violation of that treaty because the U.S. does not give the residents of the District of Columbia the same rights as other Americans.

Ours is the only capital city in the world where those who live in their capital do not have the same rights as others, yet, as you saw in the District's casualties, this city has given and then given again.

The District wants to become the 51st State of the United States of America. That is the only way we can keep the Congress from interfering in our local affairs.

The District has to bring its own local budget to the Congress. We raise $7 billion in the District of Columbia. Our budget has to come here for the Congress to sign off so that we can spend our own money. What kind of autocracy is this?

Of course, what is most frustrating to us is that most Americans think that we who live in your Nation's Capital have the same rights as every other American. After all, they see me on the House floor and they see me vote in committee.

The greatest frustration, of course, to us is that most Americans do not know we do not have the same rights as they, and they would not countenance for a moment that there are in our country any Americans who are treated as unequal citizens.

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