Norton's First Three Bills Challenge Congress to Give D.C. Full Citizenship Rights

Press Release

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today introduced three bills providing different approaches to congressional representation and full democracy for the more than 600,000 citizens of the District of Columbia who pay income and other taxes to support the federal government, but have no full voting representation in Congress. The three bills, the New Columbia Admission Act (providing for statehood), the District of Columbia Equal Representation Act (authorizing Senate and House seats), and the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act (giving the city a House vote), have all had majority support in the city in the past and emerged from Norton's Community Conversations, held in all eight wards, as approaches residents continue to support.

The elimination of the city's vote in the Committee of the Whole last week by the new Republican majority, despite approval of the city's vote by the federal courts, demonstrates that consideration of any of these bills will not occur at this time. However, Norton said in her statement of introduction that these bills, all embraced by residents during different periods in the past, "lay down a marker of our determination to never relent or retreat until we have obtained each and every right to which we are entitled, whether through the frustration and anguish of the incrementalism that Congress has always forced upon us or with the full and complete set of rights, which, would be achieved through statehood."

In the Community Conversations, residents who embraced each of these bills in the past, depending on which seemed timely and possible, continued to support these approaches. The New Columbia Admissions Act, to make the District the 51st state, New Columbia, got significant support in the House in 1993 in the only vote held by either house on statehood. However, after the city asked the federal government to take over the cost of some state functions and Republicans took control of the House, Norton moved on to introduce a bill to give the city equal voting representation in the House and Senate, introduced today as the District of Columbia Equal Representation Act. With continuing Republican control, she joined with then Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) to introduce the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act. This bill for a vote in the House had large majorities in the House and Senate, and likely would be law now except for a dangerous gun amendment that delayed its passage.

Norton said that she was introducing these three bills at the same time to deliver a direct message to Congress of no retreat and to help continue the momentum achieved here and throughout the country during the past few years, when the D.C. House Voting Rights Act came close to passage. Norton said in her introductory statement, "We accept no imposed limit on our equal rights as American citizens, and we will pursue them all until the day when there is no difference in citizenship between the residents of the District of Columbia and other American citizens."

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