Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) As the next session of Congress gets underway Tuesday, the District’s representative to Capitol Hill is asking for her vote to be restored on the House floor. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton has been unable to vote outside of committees since 2010, when Republicans regained control of the House. They still have it, but she said the issue should rise above partisan politics.
“It is a proven way simply to give dignity to the residents whose taxes help fund the federal government, and whose sons and daughters and brothers and sisters are, as I speak, overseas serving their country,” Norton told reporters Tuesday morning.
While the Statehood effort is essentially dead on arrival with both chambers and the White House under Republican control, Norton views her vote as a start to giving District residents full representation.
“We in the District of Columbia have always regarded this vote as a down payment on full voting rights for the 680,000 District residents,” she said.
As the District’s delegate since 1991, Norton said she has found some unlikely allies in her efforts to give voting representation to the District, including House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan, and then-Congressman Mike Pence.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser pointed to the usual figures in arguments for and against giving the District voting representation, including D.C.’s population – more than two other states – and the taxes residents pay – more than 22 states, and the most per capita.
“We’re not begging, we’re not asking for special treatment, we’re asking for equal treatment,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said. “We’re right legally, operationally, and we know that we’re right morally.”
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