Would put an end to taxation without representation.
June 26 has been set as the date for HR51 to receive a floor vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The measure, sponsored by D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and co-sponsored by 24 other members of Congress would admit Washington, D.C. as the 51st state.
In a press conference, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “We are the only nation – free nation – in the world whose capital does not have voting members of their parliament.”
“If D.C. were a state it could not be shortchanged as it was under the CARES Act, and its residents would be protected from the kind of civil rights violations we saw in Lafayette Square,” Hoyer said, referencing the CARES Act’s treatment of D.C. as a territory instead of a state, as well as a clash between protesters and officers.
Holmes Norton said D.C. statehood is personal for her because “three generations of my family have yet to attain rights other Americans take for granted,” going back to her great-grandfather Richard Holmes who escaped slavery, leaving a Virginia plantation and making it to Washington, D.C. “A walk to freedom, but not to equal citizenship,” she said.
Holmes Norton, who noted that her bill already has enough co-sponsors for it to pass, lamented that residents of D.C. pay higher federal taxes per capita than the rest of the country. “Statehood will put an end to our oldest slogan: taxation without representation.”
As the Lord Leads, Pray with Us…
- For members of the House of Representatives to weigh carefully the advantages and disadvantages of granting statehood to Washington, D.C.
- About how statehood would change the governance of the District of Columbia away from the U.S. Executive Branch.
Sources: CNN, Fox News
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