Largely divided, House votes to grant statehood to Washington, D.C.
After last year’s statehood bill died in the Senate, the House has once again passed a bill to grant statehood to Washington, D.C. Unsplash
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill April 22 to grant Washington, D.C., statehood, despite a clear divide on political lines. The legislation was approved in a party-line vote of 216 to 208, but still faces obstacles in the Senate.
If passed, the legislation, titled H.R. 51, would establish Washington, D.C., as the 51st state — the newest admission to the U.S. since Hawaii in 1959. If approved in the Senate, this would add a representative to the House and two Senators to Congress. This state would be renamed the “State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth,” after activist and social reformer Frederick Douglass. Federal property such as the National Mall and the White House would still remain under congressional control.
“For far too long, the more than 700,000 people of Washington, D.C., have been deprived of full representation in the U.S. Congress,” announced President Joe Biden’s executive office in an April 20 policy statement. “This taxation without representation and denial of self governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded.”
Advocates of the bill argue that the statehood of Washington, D.C., is a moral issue. The capital currently has a population of more than 700,000, and although they have representation in the Electoral College with three electoral votes, citizens of Washington, D.C., have no congressional representation.
“They have a non-voting delegate in the House and they have no representation in the Senate, so from a perspective of just Democratic fairness, it's pretty outrageous that you have that many American citizens without representation in Congress,” said John Compton, the chair of Chapman University’s political science department.
The House approved a similar bill June 2020 by a vote of 232 to 180, but it was struck down in the Republican-controlled Senate.
“DC should be a state. Pass it on,” urged Biden in a June 25 tweet, the day before the House voted on the bill.
Although the Senate now has a Democratic majority, the bill still needs support from at least 10 Republicans to pass, an unlikely feat for the Democratic Party.
Joy Joukhadar, the social chair of Chapman Democrats, told The Panther that Republicans are only opposed to the legislation because they feel that making Washington, D.C., a state is only a political power move to gain two more Democratic representatives.
“Though it's an issue of disenfranchisement and the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are left without representation, the other side of the aisle is convinced it's just a way to grab more blue votes,” Joukhadar said.
Compton told The Panther that Republicans often argue that no one lives in D.C. except rich bureaucrats and lobbyists, yet he said a majority of these lobbyists live in neighboring states like Maryland and Virginia.
Additionally, Republicans have fiercely disapproved of the legislation, insisting that the bill is a move for Democrats to gain more representation in Congress.
“They never wanted the seat of our government to be a state, and they specifically framed the Constitution to say so,” said Rep. Jody B. Hice (R-GA). “And yet, what the Democrats really are trying to do, that they will not admit, is gaining even more representation by creating a city-state whereby they get two more senators.”
Washington, D.C.’s population is currently 46% Black and majority non-white. If H.R. 51 passes in the Senate, this would create the first state made up of a majority Black population.
“Republicans, for understandable reasons, are talking like this would totally flip the balance of power and allow Democrats to run everything, but I think the balance of power will remain pretty close to what is now, because the Senate is heavily tilted in the Republicans’ favor,” Compton said. “Adding D.C. doesn't begin to counterbalance that.”