Providing for Consideration of H.R. Washington, D.C. Admission Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Access to Counsel Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants Act; and for Other Purposes
Floor Speech
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 330 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 330
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 51) to provide for the admission of the State of Washington, D.C. into the Union. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Oversight and Reform now printed in the bill shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 2. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 1573) to clarify the rights of all persons who are held or detained at a port of entry or at any detention facility overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary now printed in the bill shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 3. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 1333) to transfer and limit Executive Branch authority to suspend or restrict the entry of a class of aliens. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary now printed in the bill shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 4. House Resolution 316 is hereby adopted.
Sec. 5. House Resolution 188, agreed to March 8, 2021, is amended--
(1) in section 11, by striking ``April 22, 2021'' and inserting ``May 20, 2021'';
(2) in section 16, by striking ``calendar day of April 22, 2021'' and inserting ``legislative day of May 20, 2021''; and
(3) in section 17, by striking ``April 22, 2021'' and inserting ``May 20, 2021''.
Sec. 6. (a) At any time through the legislative day of Thursday, April 22, 2021, the Speaker may entertain motions offered by the Majority Leader or a designee that the House suspend the rules as though under clause 1 of rule XV with respect to multiple measures described in subsection (b), and the Chair shall put the question on any such motion without debate or intervening motion.
(b) A measure referred to in subsection (a) includes any measure that was the object of a motion to suspend the rules on the legislative day of April 19, 2021, or April 20, 2021, on which the yeas and nays were ordered and further proceedings postponed pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX.
(c) Upon the offering of a motion pursuant to subsection (a) concerning multiple measures, the ordering of the yeas and nays on postponed motions to suspend the rules with respect to such measures is vacated to the end that all such motions are considered as withdrawn.
Sec. 7. (a) House Concurrent Resolution 30 is hereby adopted.
(b) For purposes of the joint session to receive the President of the United States on April 28, 2021, former Members, Delegates, and Resident Commissioners shall not be admitted to the Hall of the House or rooms leading thereto.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reschenthaler), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, today the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 330, providing for three measures.
First, the rule provides for consideration of H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, under a closed rule. It provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform and provides for one motion to recommit.
The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 1333, the NO BAN Act, and H.R. 1573, the Access to Counsel Act of 2021, both under closed rules. The rule provides an hour of debate on each bill equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary and provides one motion to recommit on each bill.
The rule deems as passed H.R. 316, providing for the expenses of certain committees, and H. Con. Res. 30, providing for a joint session of Congress to receive a message from the President of the United States. The rule also restricts former Members' access to the House floor during the joint session.
Additionally, the rule provides authority through April 22 for the majority leader or his designee to move to en bloc postponed votes on any suspension bill considered on April 19 or 20 on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
Finally, the rule provides for recess instructions, same day, and suspension authority through May 20.
Madam Speaker, Tocqueville wrote in ``Democracy in America'' that in our country voting rights and democracy are always either contracting and retreating and shriveling away or voting rights and democracy are growing and expanding.
What a proud day for the United States Congress when we get to keep the trajectory of American democracy moving forward by voting to admit a new State to our beloved Union.
America began with 13 original States, and we in Congress have exercised our powers under Article IV, Section 3 37 different times to admit 37 new States to the Union, which means that nearly 75 percent of the States in America today were admitted after the original 13.
Today, we can keep the dynamics of democratic political growth and inclusion going in America by beginning the process of admitting Washington, Douglass Commonwealth to the Union by passing H.R. 51.
We have the opportunity to do something that hasn't happened here since 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in January and in August of that year.
We can vote to admit a new State to the Union, and what a State it will be: A community of 712,000 taxable, draftable, law-abiding American citizens who actually pay more Federal taxes per capita now than do the people of any State, more in hard dollars than the people of 22 States combined. It is a community of people who have fought in every war that the Union has ever fought, going all the way back to the American Revolution.
And it was a community, significantly, that came to the aid of democracy, that came to the aid of the Union, that came to the aid of this Congress when we called on January 6, 2021.
More than 850 officers in the Metropolitan Police Department came and fought shoulder to shoulder with our Capitol officers in what has been described as waves of medieval violence by insurrectionists and Fascists attacking them with bats and sticks and American flagpoles and Confederate flagpoles and Trump flagpoles. They sent more than 150 National Guardsmen from Washington, D.C., 154 D.C. National Guard, 850 Metropolitan Police Department to come and defend a democracy that they are not yet a part of.
Now think about that. We had people who came and stormed the Capitol, laid siege to the Congress of the United States with fictionalized claims about a denial of their right to vote, and right in this city there are 712,000 American citizens who we know have their voting rights denied every single day, their rights to representation denied every single day, and they came to defend us against those who would have torn down the very citadel of democracy.
Think about that when we are deciding how to vote on H.R. 51.
The current status of the people in Washington, D.C., subjects them to two different forms of political domination and exclusion.
On the one hand, all of their locally adopted laws ultimately can be overturned by a Congress which they are excluded from, and it has happened many times throughout the history of the District of Columbia, as Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting Delegate, will tell you. Congress has tampered with the laws of adoption, laws of marriage, criminal justice laws, and voting laws in the District of Columbia.
But it is not just that. It is not just that the rights of democratic self-government are subject to the will of other people. It is also that this community of taxpaying, draftable American citizens is excluded from participating in Federal legislation because they don't have voting representatives in the House and in the Senate.
That means on matters relating to war and peace, the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justices and other Federal judges, the development of Federal budgets, the regulation of commerce domestically and internationally, Federal criminal law, and Federal civil law, the people of Washington, D.C., are dealt out. They are excluded. And they want in. They want to enter the Union.
Most of us in Congress represent communities that were not part of the original 13 but then came in later. Now, I come from Maryland, which was one of the original 13, but most of the people in Congress represent States that came in later.
So, this is an act of fundamental democratic and civic self-respect on their part to be asking for equality and inclusion, and it is a matter of basic constitutional patriotism and democratic respect that we vote to admit them today.
I am very happy that we are kicking this process off by bringing this rule to the floor.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Let me address a couple of the specious constitutional objections that have been raised by our colleagues on the other side.
To begin with, it would be unconstitutional to turn the District of Columbia into a State. It would almost certainly be that, but that is not what the proposal is. The proposal is to redraw the boundaries of the District of Columbia to cede the residential lands to the new State to admit it. For that, there is both sound constitutional and historical precedent.
For one thing, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 says that Congress shall ``exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever'' over the district that is to become the seat of government, meaning that Congress has the authority to modify the boundaries of the District of Columbia, which it has done.
It did that, actually, in 1791. Not long after the original boundaries were set, James Madison and 13 other Founders themselves voted to alter the boundaries. But our colleagues seem to believe that the boundaries of the District can't be altered by Congress.
In 1846, most significantly, Congress gave one-third of the District of Columbia to the Commonwealth of Virginia at the behest of slave masters, who correctly anticipated that the slave traffic would be abolished within the District of Columbia. It was given back, demonstrating that the authority of Congress to change the boundaries of the District exists.
If Congress can alter the boundaries of the District of Columbia in 1846 in order to serve the slave masters and to protect their institution, surely the Congress in 2021 can modify the boundaries of the District of Columbia in order to admit a new State and empower hundreds of thousands of people to live in political equality in the country.
My distinguished colleague from Pennsylvania invites us to believe that the 23rd Amendment is a constitutional impediment to adopting statehood for Washington, D.C. He doesn't explain why it is unconstitutional. He just asserts it would be unconstitutional.
The 23rd Amendment was adopted in order to give people living within the seat of government the possibility of voting for President and to have electoral college votes in a manner decided by Congress and then, in Section 2, requiring Congress to act in order to organize the electoral college in the manner of a State legislature organizing the electoral college for the State.
As I understand H.R. 51, introduced by Congresswoman Norton, this problem is taken care of at the moment of statehood admission because it repeals the statute which organizes the electoral college for the District of Columbia.
In other words, the moment the new State comes into being, the current statute that organizes the Presidential electors is repealed, so there is nothing to worry about. I agree that there is a certain kind of messiness in still having the 23rd Amendment on the books, but Congresswoman Norton has said she will be the first to introduce a formal constitutional amendment to repeal the 23rd, and who would oppose it?
Our colleagues have not been able to find a single person who would oppose it. Everybody would agree it would be simply nonsensical to keep it within the Constitution once the 712,000 people have negotiated an exodus from the Federal seat of government in order to become their own State.
So, I think that that is a red herring. It is an irrelevant distraction to this journey toward statehood and political equality that we are on.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia an additional 1 minute.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I thank the gentlewoman very much for her comments, and I want to reemphasize the point that she made at the end, which is that Congress has the exclusive authority to admit new States.
Congress has admitted 37 new States. None of them have ever been struck down by a court, despite serious constitutional objections being raised against almost every State.
Everyone knew that Hawaii and Alaska could not be admitted because they were not contiguous. Everyone knew that Texas couldn't be admitted because it was a separate republic, and there was no authority to admit a republic to the Union. It was said Utah couldn't be admitted because they were practicing polygamy there. And so on.
There have always been constitutional objections made, but the courts have always deemed this to be a political question, which means that, in the juridical context, it is up to Congress to decide. And Congress has always been guided, in the final analysis, by the overriding dynamic of American political history, which is democracy has to govern for people who live here.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I want to say a word in response to my colleague about the national political logic of statehood.
There is both powerful constitutional principle and national political logic that infuses every statehood admission going back to the very beginning of the Republic.
The constitutional principle is simply that of no taxation without representation and the consent of the governed. People who are part of the American Nation should be able to participate equally as complete citizens.
That is why Thomas Jefferson set out in the Northwest Ordinance that once a community got to be of a certain size--60,000, which, of course, is less than 10 percent of the size of Washington, D.C., today--that it would be eligible to come into statehood, to petition for statehood. The only real constitutional prerequisite is a republican form of government, that is the Republican Guarantee Clause.
That is the high-minded political ideal of constitutional principle, but it is also the case, as I have tried to argue with my colleagues across the aisle, that there is a hardcore political logic that is operated, and we see it in their arguments that they don't want to admit two Democratic Senators to the Republic, which is what former President Trump said in objection to D.C. statehood. He said there is no way we would accept two new Democrat Senators.
Actually, although I consider it a degradation of the process and a sort of tawdry form of argument, nonetheless, it has been very much part of American political history, which is why States have tended to enter the Union in pairs, like animals boarding Noah's Ark together.
That was the situation with Kansas and Nebraska, in the Kansas- Nebraska Act; that was the situation of Missouri and Maine in the Missouri Compromise; that was Vermont and Kentucky; that was Alaska and Hawaii back in 1959.
So, I say to my friends, okay, they don't see the problem of taxation without representation in Washington. They don't see the problem of governance without representation. They don't see the irony or the paradox or the contradiction of people putting their lives on the line to defend this Congress, this Union, on January 6 who don't get to vote for voting representatives in Congress.
They don't want to see that, fine. But they can at least see this: It has been in the Republican platform since 1940 that Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State. Every 4 years, they have said that the millions of people, American citizens, who live in Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State. It was in the platform in 2016. It would have been in 2020 if they had had a platform. They decided not to have a platform for the American people in 2020. But in any event, they have taken a very strong position--Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, you name it.
In fact, the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico is a Republican who has introduced statehood legislation in this Congress, who is fighting for statehood.
So, fine, there is the basis for common ground. Let's get together. The Democrats have been arguing for statehood for Washington, D.C., for a long time. The Republicans have been arguing for statehood for Puerto Rico for a long time. I assume everybody means it. Let's get together and do it the way this has happened periodically, systematically, throughout American history. That is the national political logic of allowing both of these states to come in together.
Not everybody gets everything that they want, and I do think that it is antithetical to the democratic form of government to say you don't want people to be represented because you don't like the way they are going to vote because they disagree with you on issues. I think that is fundamentally undemocratic and un-American.
Madam Speaker, in any event, we have the grounds for a compromise, and I am still looking for some colleagues across the aisle to stand up and say they will stand for the position that they have embraced for decades, to say these two states should come in together.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon).
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman invites us to return the District of Columbia to Maryland, which, of course, debunks the argument that Congress cannot modify the boundaries of the District of Columbia.
But, in any event, that is not what the people of Washington, D.C. have asked for. They have used their rights as American citizens under the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution to organize a new State and to petition Congress for admission to the Union. Neither has the Maryland General Assembly asked for a return of the land to Maryland. So that certainly answers a set of political conditions that don't exist in the real world.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for yielding. And I particularly thank the gentlewoman from Washington, D.C., the 51st State, the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton for her hard work.
Madam Speaker, breaking news: The people of Washington, D.C., pay taxes. Breaking news: They wear the uniform of the United States of America. And, breaking news: The legislation my friends on the other side of the aisle are proposing is to propose a dictation, as usual, from the United States Federal Government on the people of Washington, D.C.
Is anybody in Washington, D.C., raising their hand to be able to participate in the legislation that my friends are offering on this floor, which is to partition--we know what partition means--colored people in dominance and put them wherever the Federal Government thinks that they should belong?
I think they need to think twice about that.
And, really, if this is a country of the people and for the people, if this is a House of Representatives, then the people of Washington, D.C., deserve to be represented, and they deserve to be represented by the four squares of the dictates and vote of the people of the United States Congress.
I am appalled that we would, over the decades, ignore the blood that was shed by those from Washington, D.C., the history that was made by those from Washington, D.C., and the service that was given by those from Washington, D.C.
So I rise to support the legislation that provides for the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, H.R. 51. I thank the leadership for that legislation. In the rule, we have a combination of restoring rights. That is what H.R. 51 does, restoring and igniting rights.
H.R. 1573, Access to Counsel Act, of my friend and colleague from Washington State, is a commonsense initiative.
We are a nation of laws.
Do we not respect the right to counsel?
Yes, these are persons who are noncitizens, but they have the right, if in secondary detention, to call a relative, to call a lawyer, which they pay for.
What about little Ali?
As I rushed to the airport on that fateful day when the President of the United States, President Trump, declared that all Muslims were banned, what an outrageous experience; and an outrageous experience that I have had with other entries that have been detained, where they couldn't call an uncle or aunt, they couldn't call their mother, their father, their wife.
Well, little Ali could not call his relatives that were outside the gate waiting for him.
Where did that 15-year-old Egyptian with documented papers wind up?
He wound up in Chicago, in a children's detention facility.
So I support the right to counsel, H.R. 1573, the Access to Counsel Act.
And, finally, H.R. 1333. Ali came under the Bagram ban by President Trump; let's just say it, an outrageous act. We literally got off the plane, Members of Congress who were flying in from Washington, and rushed to the airport because of what was happening to our constituents.
I support the NO BAN Act under H.R. 1333, and I ask my colleagues to support this legislation. The Constitution reigns.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time to close.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, let me start by saying that the majority leader hardly needs me to defend him, but I know that he was a strong supporter of the D.C. voting rights constitutional amendment where there was actually bipartisan support.
In those days, Republicans understood the grievous injustice being perpetrated against the people of Washington, D.C., and they supported granting people in D.C. two Senators, or what my colleague would call two ultraliberal Senators, as well as the Representatives in the House to which they were due.
There were certainly people who were saying there were other ways of accomplishing it. Now, unfortunately, that bipartisan consensus collapsed even though it passed the Senate and the House back in the day. I don't hear any of my colleagues saying they are for it now.
Mr. Hoyer, the majority leader, is supporting the only viable vehicle for getting equal rights for people in Washington, D.C., that exists today, which is statehood, which is how 37 new States entered the Union with Congress' exercise of its powers under Article IV of the Constitution.
The gentleman waxed eloquent about the vision of a great Capital City, but being a strict textualist, I assume that he wants to pay some attention to the text of the Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, the District Clause, sets a maximum, a ceiling that the District may be no more than 10 miles square, but there is no minimum there. It didn't say it must be at least 6 miles square or 2 miles square or 3 miles. No, that is up to Congress. In other words, it is a political question within congressional power, our plenary power, over the District of Columbia.
Finally, the gentleman, I suppose, gets to the heart of the matter when he says that, for him, it is all about two ultraliberal Senators. I would ask every Member of this body to think about that for a second, reflect on that. In America, I don't think we deny people voting rights based on how they are going to vote. I don't think we deny entire States and political communities representation based on predictions of who they might elect.
In fact, there is a Supreme Court case about that called Carrington v. Rash. When armed services members in Texas were disenfranchised because it was suggested they would vote in a way more identified with the national government than with local cultural values in Texas, the Supreme Court struck it down and said that, in American democracy, we do not allow government to disenfranchise people based on predictions of how they are going to vote or who they are going to elect.
That is precisely what the gentleman invites us to do here, to deny 712,000 taxpaying, draftable U.S. citizens, who came to our aid on January 6, to deny them their equal rights under the Union, under the flag, because he predicts that they are going to elect people whose policy views are contrary to his own.
Madam Speaker, I would suggest that is totally antithetical to the meaning of American constitutional democracy. Everyone should take a walk around Washington. You will see flags in the yards of all the people here, yards that we pass by every day when we come to Washington, and they say, ``D.C. 51.'' They want their statehood. Let's listen to the people of Washington.
If you can't quite stomach that, then read the Republican Party platform itself, which calls for Puerto Rican statehood, and let's see if we can do it together. Let's bring in millions of disenfranchised people in America.
Still, I get radio silence from my colleagues on that. Not a single one will opine about whether or not the people of Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State.
Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule and the previous question.
The material previously referred to by Mr. Reschenthaler is as follows: Amendment to House Resolution 330
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 8. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall resolve into the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 2321) to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a plan to respond to irregular migration surges at the border, to establish an irregular migration surge border response fund, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Homeland Security. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. When the committee rises and reports the bill back to the House with a recommendation that the bill do pass, the previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit. If the Committee of the Whole rises and reports that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then on the next legislative day the House shall, immediately after the third daily order of business under clause 1 of rule XIV, resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further consideration of the bill.
Sec. 9. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H.R. 2321.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
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