Washington, D.C. Admission Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong support of this legislation.

I want to just briefly respond to the remarks of the gentleman who preceded me about retrocession. Retrocession is an interesting idea that my Republican colleagues have. It has to do with the issue of two United States Senators. One could say that has to do with both sides of the aisle, two United States Senators.

The history of adding States has been a history where focus is on those two United States Senators that would be added, and the party that wanted them and the party that didn't want them. But retrocession, frankly, is an interesting idea, except for the fact the gentleman talked about the Founding Fathers and James Madison and the Federalist Papers.

One of the articles of debate was, if you had a State, i.e. Maryland, whose land, of course, the Federal city is located on--Virginia gave some, but they took it back--you would have a State surrounding the Federal enclave. No difference, except for it would be Maryland and not Washington, Douglass Commonwealth. So that argument limps. It fails because you are suggesting the same thing that some have said is of concern to them. So the only difference is two Senators.

So this is about politics. Throughout history people have guessed as to what the new States are going to be. Now some knew absolutely. We have North and South Dakota. I don't know whether any of you know why we have North and South Dakota; two Senators versus four Senators. And the Republicans who were in charge wanted to have four Senators to assure their majority in the Senate as opposed to the Democrats in the South. Ironic how things change.

So if you are voting on politics, I get it. But on principle, Nevada was added and taken from Utah, by the way, because the Republicans who were then in charge back in the day wanted to have two additional Senators. And they got them, with less than 10,000 people living in the area that was taken from Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, and formed Nevada.

So let's not get mired in these principled votes, because this is about two Senators. We get it. It is not about principle because there are over 700,000 people--712,000, to be exact, maybe more when we get the Census report--who are unequal citizens in America.

I want to thank the incomparable Eleanor Holmes Norton for her hard work and tireless advocacy for so many years as the leader of this cause on behalf of equal rights for the citizens she represents without a vote. Why, are they lesser citizens? Is she a lesser Representative? Surely not.

If a President of the United States, Republican or Democrat, asked somebody to come to the District of Columbia and work for the U.S. Government, bring your talents, your energy, and your focus to work for your country in Washington, D.C., but, oh, by the way, you have to give up your vote in the Congress of the United States through your Representative. In no other democracy are residents of the National Capital excluded from representation. None.

Frankly, I think the Founders had no concept of how big this city would become, how vibrant it would become. None. Yet, nearly 700,000 Americans are denied full representation.

The Founders of our Union of States set forth a simple process for the admission of new States to that Union. They believed, the 13 of them, that adding new States would be positive for the country and that they would want people represented in the territories in the Congress when they became States and qualified to be such. They saw that process of expansion as both healthy and workable, and they believed that it would strengthen our democracy.

Through the years, however, the admission of new States has been a very contentious process on both sides of the aisle. And there was a time in our history in the latter half of the 19th century when Republicans affected the admission of a number of new States in order to increase the numbers in the Senate. They accomplished that objective in some respects.

In one noteworthy example, which I have just mentioned, Nevada in 1864, less than 10,000 people. The criteria at that point in time, theoretically, was 60,000, but it was ignored. It was ignored. Two Senators. That is what this issue is about. Two Senators.

It is not about whether, on a principled basis, we ought to give to 712,000 of our citizens the right to be equally represented in the Congress of the United States. No, if they live here, we ask them to give up that right.

That same process, as I mentioned, was repeated in the admission of North and South Dakota. They had hardly any people living there. They could hardly qualify if you put all of the Dakota territory together. But what the Republicans did was--they were in charge at that point in time--they divided it, North and South Dakota. What happened? Two extra Senators. It wasn't about principle, about how many people, what the economic status was. It was about how many Senators.

My friends across the aisle complain that this bill would lead to the election of two additional Democratic Senators. So what?

Is that the criteria, the political judgment of the citizens of some entity seeking to become a State? There is nothing in the Constitution about that. Zero. It is the politics of it. I get it. But it is not the principle.

I hope people vote on principle, that they believe that their fellow citizens who happen to live within this, what used to be a square, but a square minus that to the south of the Potomac.

This legislation is very different than the acts that admitted those States in the 19th century. It is different because it is based on the demonstrable need to provide representation to hundreds of thousands of Americans who deserve to have their voices heard in our democracy. And they have determined they want to be a part.

Our Founders were offended, indeed outraged that they were forced to pay taxes, but were afforded no representation in the body that set those taxes. Wouldn't all of us have been there at the Tea Party saying, ``You cannot tax us, England, without us having representation in the Parliament''?

I am sure you have heard the argument from many people on this floor--I won't repeat them--about the level of taxation that is paid by the citizens of the District of Columbia. But they have no say in the level of those taxes which so outraged our Founders.

Moreover, this legislation would end the unjust practice of treating D.C. residents differently than their fellow citizens in the 50 States when it comes to allocating resources or providing COVID-19 relief under the CARES Act last year.

Mr. Speaker, when President Eisenhower--a Republican President, but not a very partisan President, unlike today, where we have seen a very partisan President, no longer there--addressed the question of admitting Hawaii as a State in the 1950s, he said the following--and by the way, I think all of you probably know that when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted not too far apart in time, Alaska was perceived to be a Democratic State and Hawaii was perceived to be a Republican State.

So the assumption that somehow the District of Columbia will automatically elect two Democrats--which may be accurate, but it may not always be the case--the principle is what Eisenhower articulated, and he said this:

You have an economy that is self-supporting. There is a large population, and I would like to see the case handled clearly and specifically on its merits.

By that metric, Washington, D.C., earned its right to statehood a long time ago. And today, we can take a major step toward that goal when we pass this bill, which we passed last Congress as well.

As to retrocession, again, I wonder if Nevada would like to be back to Utah or to Wyoming or to Colorado or whether Wyoming, that has 200,000 less citizens approximately than the District of Columbia, would like to be subsumed by one of the surrounding States because of the few numbers? Vermont as well, which was taken from another State, as was West Virginia, which was part of Virginia.

I hope the Senate will then take up this bill when we pass it and consider the question of D.C. statehood on its merits, not on politics. Maybe that is too much to ask.

This is not a partisan math problem or electoral prediction, which, as we have seen, may or may not come to pass. But on the merits alone, on the conviction that taxation without representation is not fair now as it was not fair in 1776, the people of this city, our Nation's Capital, deserve full and equal representation in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that this bill will pass with bipartisan support. It is going to pass, but I hope we have some bipartisan support based upon the principle that every citizen in our country ought to enjoy the same representation in the Congress of the United States as every other citizen.

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