Anyone whose traveled to the District of Columbia has spotted license plates with the slogan: "Taxation Without Representation." That has been a rallying cry by the district's politicians who seek statehood for the 68.3-square mile stretch of concrete that's 17 times smaller than Rhode Island.
After decades of lobbying, the District of Columbia's Democrats may get their wish. The House of Representatives, under the iron thumb of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, approved a bill (HR 51) to make the district the nation's 51st state. The legislation will now proceed to the Senate for a make-or-break vote.
Pelosi's political strategy is clear: permanent Democrat control of the Senate. Statehood would grant the district two senators and one representative. That would be tantamount to giving Democrats control of the Senate because less than 7% of all registered voters in D.C. are Republicans.
No Republican has ever been elected mayor of the District of Columbia since home rule began in 1975. The GOP has no representation on the D.C. council. The last Republican to serve left office in 2009. This is the deepest blue area in the entire country.
If approved, this wouldn't be the first time politics played a role in statehood. Eight days before the 1864 presidential election, Nevada was admitted to the union. The newly minted state cast its electoral votes for Abraham Lincoln, whose re-election was anything but certain in the midst of the Civil War.
However, that's where the similarities end between 1864 and today's drive for 51. The district's founding in 1790 was a compromise ironed out between Northern and Southern states to set aside a federal district to serve as the seat of government. The founders never intended to operate the capital as a state.
The founding leaders felt so passionate about giving the district freedom-from-state-influence that they enshrined its unique status in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17:
"The Congress shall have power to....exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and acceptance of Congress, become the state of the Government of the United States."
For good reason, the founders feared that if the capital was a state, members of the state government would be indebted to federal power. James Madison believed that if the District of Columbia was a state, it would also disrupt the proceeding of the federal government because of the influence of state politics.
In 1961, three-fourths of the states ratified the 23rd Amendment, which allows citizens residing in the district to send representatives to vote in the Electoral College for president and Vice President. Prior to the amendment, district citizens could not vote for those offices, unless registered in a state.
That background should be a factor in legislators debate over the statehood proposal, which would shrink the federal district to a two-mile square consisting of the White House, Capitol, Supreme Court and the Mall. The remainder of the area would encompass a new state, home to 700,000 people.
Democrats consider the path to statehood straight forward. Under the Constitution, the party contends Congress has the authority to approve the district's request to become a state. In support of the proposal, they claim a new state can be carved from one that already exists, which is a contradiction in terms.
That's the problem for Democrats. The District of Columbia is not a state territory. The Democrats' bill would divvy up an area that was never intended to become a state. But that matters little to the partisans who consider the founders racists and the Constitution a quaint, outdated document.
Republicans argue that states historically have been admitted to the union under the Admission Clause of Article IV of the Constitution. It is not applicable since the district doesn't qualify as a territory, contend Constitutional experts. Others disagree, focusing on the original "ten-miles square" wording.
Since the district clearly has expanded, Democrats have seized on that fact to claim the founders did not set a minimum size for the district, so shriveling the capital to two-miles should pass Constitutional muster. If the bill is rubber stamped, the issue will likely wind up before the Supreme Court.
For 200 years, the seat of America's government has been D.C. Arbitrarily constricting the capital to a tiny plot of buildings does not meet the test of a reasonable interpretation of the founders' intent, Republicans point out. A Constitutional Amendment should be required to grant D.C. statehood.
Granting the District of Columbia statehood is a naked political ploy that should be given short shrift by the Senate. But with Democrats holding the deciding vote in cases of a tie, don't discount the party's will power on this issue. If successful, the founders worst fears with be realized.
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