The Introduction of the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009

Floor Speech

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOUSE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 2009

Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, today I am introducing, I believe for the last time, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, simultaneously with our Senate partners, Senators JOE LIEBERMAN and ORIN HATCH. The bill we introduce today also will add two permanent House seats, the first increase in 96 years. It therefore carries a triple bonus: the first vote for the District of Columbia after 212 years, an additional seat for Utah, and two new permanent seats for the House of Representatives itself. The citizens of the District of Columbia are deeply grateful for the persistent partnership and a bipartisan dedication that Senator LIEBERMAN and Senator HATCH continue to bring to this bill, and for the continued support of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman.

Because of the importance to the city of achieving the vote after more than two centuries, the D.C. Voting Rights Act is my first bill of the 111th Congress. This year we introduce the bill as members of the armed services from the District of Columbia are again engaged in war abroad. In gratitude for the service of our residents serving today, and of those who have served since our country was founded, I dedicate the bill this year to the first soldier from the District to die for his country in the Iraq War, 21-year-old D.C. National Guard Specialist, Daryl Dent, and to the District's first unknown soldier to die after he picked up arms to fight for liberation on the promise of taxation without representation. Although two centuries apart, the first to die in these wars had in common fighting for the vote. Our first residents here fought in the War for Independence. Specialist Dent gave his life ensuring the vote for Iraqi citizens, a right he did not live to get for himself

Today's bill is the first in the Free and Equal series of bills that I will introduce this session to complete the full roster of citizenship rights the residents of the Nation's capital, that the first soldiers were promised and for which today's soldiers continue to give their lives. There can be no doubt that the revolutionaries who invented America's most quoted national slogan did not create a new nation in order to get the vote, only to turn around and deny the vote to the citizens of their capital.

This bill was passed by the House in the 110th Congress, thanks to Speaker NANCY PELOSI who has long fought for the rights of D.C. residents and personally insisted that this legislation go forward as a bill of historic importance, Majority Leader STENY HOYER, my long-time regional friend, who has been an especially outspoken champion of this bill; Judiciary Chairman JOHN CONYERS, who gave the bill his priority attention, emblematic of the strong support he always has brought to our rights throughout his long service in Congress; and Chairman HENRY WAXMAN, who as ranking member and then as chair of the Oversight and Government Reform committee, also was a central figure in ensuring passage; and many others among my colleagues in both chambers and both parties, who have made special efforts for passage of the D.C. House

Voting Rights Act. My special thanks to Tom Davis, my good friend and strong partner on this bill, who retired at the end of last session. It was Tom's idea to pair the District with Utah after Utah narrowly missed getting a seat following the last census. I will always be grateful to Tom for the unfailing bipartisan spirit that characterized all his work as chair of the Oversight and Government Reform committee, especially his consistent respect for home rule and for affording me every opportunity to fashion this bill when he was in the Republican majority and I was a minority member. I must also thank the two important coalitions of organizations that have led this fight, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, whose leader, Wade Henderson also has been a close advisor throughout the many years of this struggle, and D.C. Vote, and its leader Ilir Zherka, who gave our bill indispensable strength through a superior grassroots organization that led the successful lobbying strategy here and nationwide and singlehandedly raised the funds necessary to take D.C.'s struggle national.

There is every reason to believe that the D.C. bill will finally prevail this year. The bill easily passed in the House in 2007, and now has an estimated 64 votes in the Senate, considerably more than the 60 needed. The addition of seven Democratic senators, who replaced seven Republican opponents of the bill, together with the eight remaining Republicans who supported the bill, should assure that the bill will have significantly more than the 57 Senate votes it received in 2007. We are equally encouraged that President-elect Barack Obama, who was a co-sponsor of the bill in the Senate, will sign the D.C. House Voting Rights Act when it reaches his desk.

My service in Congress has been defined by the search for a way to get full representation for the city where my family has lived since before the Civil War. That search has been guided by the pursuit of the maximum possible, including the two-day debate followed by a vote on statehood more than 10 years ago, the vote I won in the Committee of the Whole during my second term, and the ``No Taxation Without Representation'' Act for votes both in the House and Senate. The struggle has been driven always by what was required but also by what was possible, as with the Committee of the Whole vote on some but not all matters on the House floor and the Home Rule Act, the path-breaking enacted before I came to Congress that gave the city partial self-government.

The Congress which has always been divided by regional and parochial concerns, never does what is clearly right, even granting a vote to American citizens who are second per capita in federal income taxes paid to support their government and have served in every war, including the war that created our country driven by the slogan of ``No Taxation without Representation.'' However, the people of the District of Columbia have never ceased demanding the full measure of their rights, while insisting on all that is possible for each generation. The people of the nation's proud capital will never give up on our full rights as American citizens.

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