![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It seems to me that it is long past time to find a solution to the problem of Congressional Representation for the people who live in the District of Columbia. The House of Representatives is currently considering legislation that would impose limitations on abortions in the District of Columbia. Not only do the residents of DC not have any representatives that can vote on this issue, but during a subcommittee hearing for this bill, their non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, was not even allowed to speak. If that isn’t the antithesis of representative democracy, I don’t know what is. Regardless of your position on the issue of abortion, we should all be outraged that Congress is willing to impose legislation without so much as even considering the views of those upon whom the law will be enforced.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to this problem. The most recent attempt to provide DC with voting representation in Congress, a proposal that would have added two extra voting members to the House of Representatives, one for DC and the other for Utah, failed to pass Congressional muster. But even if it had, there is every chance that it would have been found to be unconstitutional, as the US Constitution only provides for Congressional representation for states, and the District of Columbia is not a state.
The only way for the District of Columbia, as it currently exists, to obtain Congressional representation without a constitutional challenge would be through an amendment to the Constitution. Such an amendment was proposed by Congress in 1978, but expired in 1985 prior to ratification by a sufficient number of states. Given the political reality that any Representatives and Senators from the District would almost certainly be members of the Democratic Party, such an amendment would become a partisan issue because it would significantly impact the balance of power, especially in the Senate.
Short of a constitutional amendment, there seem to only be two ways to provide DC representation that would not raise constitutional issues. The first would be to grant DC statehood status. This raises the same issues as the Voting Rights Amendment, and would also likely spark a fierce partisan battle. The alternative would be to retrocede the District back to Maryland, so that those living in the District would become residents of Maryland, represented by the Maryland delegation to Congress. (There is precedent for this in the retrocession of the portions of DC south of the Potomac River back to Virginia in 1847.) This would not radically shift the balance of power on Capitol Hill, but it would dramatically change the political and economic realities of Maryland, so that Maryland is unlikely to willingly assent to such a plan. In either case, the requirement in the Constitution for a Federal District as the seat of government could be met by shrinking the District to encompass the grounds of the White House and the Capitol as well as the National Mall. Careful drawing of these boundaries could ensure that the population of the District would be limited to the President and his/her family.
In the current political climate, I simply don’t see realistic way to provide DC residents with full representation in Congress. It seems that they will need to continue to make the most of the non-voting representation they are allowed, but for that to be at all meaningful, their elected delegates must be allowed to have a voice in the debates. In the meantime, I have another proposal that would, at a minimum, highlight this issue. The residents of DC are required to pay federal taxes, including income tax, but have no meaningful voice in how that money is spent. If we cannot find a way to give them voting representation in Congress, then I suggest that fairness requires that we exempt them from the federal income tax! If it had to be a choice between voting rights and tax revenue, I think the debate would change pretty significantly.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to this problem. The most recent attempt to provide DC with voting representation in Congress, a proposal that would have added two extra voting members to the House of Representatives, one for DC and the other for Utah, failed to pass Congressional muster. But even if it had, there is every chance that it would have been found to be unconstitutional, as the US Constitution only provides for Congressional representation for states, and the District of Columbia is not a state.
The only way for the District of Columbia, as it currently exists, to obtain Congressional representation without a constitutional challenge would be through an amendment to the Constitution. Such an amendment was proposed by Congress in 1978, but expired in 1985 prior to ratification by a sufficient number of states. Given the political reality that any Representatives and Senators from the District would almost certainly be members of the Democratic Party, such an amendment would become a partisan issue because it would significantly impact the balance of power, especially in the Senate.
Short of a constitutional amendment, there seem to only be two ways to provide DC representation that would not raise constitutional issues. The first would be to grant DC statehood status. This raises the same issues as the Voting Rights Amendment, and would also likely spark a fierce partisan battle. The alternative would be to retrocede the District back to Maryland, so that those living in the District would become residents of Maryland, represented by the Maryland delegation to Congress. (There is precedent for this in the retrocession of the portions of DC south of the Potomac River back to Virginia in 1847.) This would not radically shift the balance of power on Capitol Hill, but it would dramatically change the political and economic realities of Maryland, so that Maryland is unlikely to willingly assent to such a plan. In either case, the requirement in the Constitution for a Federal District as the seat of government could be met by shrinking the District to encompass the grounds of the White House and the Capitol as well as the National Mall. Careful drawing of these boundaries could ensure that the population of the District would be limited to the President and his/her family.
In the current political climate, I simply don’t see realistic way to provide DC residents with full representation in Congress. It seems that they will need to continue to make the most of the non-voting representation they are allowed, but for that to be at all meaningful, their elected delegates must be allowed to have a voice in the debates. In the meantime, I have another proposal that would, at a minimum, highlight this issue. The residents of DC are required to pay federal taxes, including income tax, but have no meaningful voice in how that money is spent. If we cannot find a way to give them voting representation in Congress, then I suggest that fairness requires that we exempt them from the federal income tax! If it had to be a choice between voting rights and tax revenue, I think the debate would change pretty significantly.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-18 01:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-19 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-19 12:13 pm (UTC)http://dcvote.org/events/event.cfm?eventID=645