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“House Democrats approved a bill Friday afternoon to make the District of Columbia the nation's 51st state. The vote was 232-180 largely along party [lines] and the legislation is expected to go no further in the face of opposition by Republicans in the Senate.” NPR
The right opposes DC statehood, arguing that it would be contrary to the founders’ vision and that Democrats support it in a partisan attempt to gain additional Senate seats.
“It’s not by accident or oversight that the nation’s capital isn’t a state: The Founding Fathers wrote it into the Constitution. Article I, Section 8 provides explicitly for a national capital that would not be part of a state nor treated as a state, but rather a unique enclave under the exclusive authority of Congress — a neutral ‘district’ in which representatives of all the states could meet on an equal footing to conduct the nation’s business… Congress cannot change the status of the capital district simply by redefining it…
“Reasonable people can disagree on the wisdom or fairness of the framers’ plan, but the only way to change it is to amend the Constitution. That’s exactly what happened in 1961, when the 23rd Amendment was ratified and D.C. residents were granted the right to vote in presidential elections and participate in the Electoral College… [Moreover] A Gallup survey last summer found that 64 percent of Americans opposed D.C. statehood vs. just 29 percent in favor. Previous polls on the question have had similar results… Most Americans don’t see a problem with [the current] arrangement, and they’ve got the Constitution on their side.”
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
“DC’s median household income varied from 95.6 percent to 107 percent of the national average between 1990 and 2007. Today, it is 136.9 percent, higher than that of any state. There is nearly one federal job for every four residents in D.C., and much of the District’s private employment is in satellites of federal power. D.C.’s suburbs are now the wealthiest places in the nation, and uniquely recession-proof. The District was more than 70 percent African American as recently as 1980, and racial justice is often cited as a reason to grant it statehood. In the past decade, however, it has ceased to be majority-black…
“It is difficult to see how the people of D.C. are oppressed, easy to see how their influence is already disproportionate, and easier than ever to see why the federal government would be imperiled by subjecting its physical security to District authorities. True, the Founding Fathers did not anticipate a time when the federal district would have more residents than Vermont. But early Americans also never conceived a time when the federal government would spend 4.5 trillion dollars a year and employ more people in D.C. alone than the entire populations of Syracuse or Dayton.”
The Editors, National Review
“If admitted to the Union as a state in its own right, [DC] would not only be far and away the smallest state in geographical terms; it would have the third lowest population but the highest median household income and unprecedented influence over the workings of the federal government… It would also be the only state with no rural population. It would be, constitutionally speaking, a freak, an arbitrary creation that would forever alter the meaning of statehood itself…
“Moreover, it would leave us with no answer to the question of why we should not grant statehood to New York City or Los Angeles or Houston, with their vast GDPs and enormous, ever-expanding populations. Surely in a strict utilitarian sense these municipalities have more of a right to direct federal representation than North Dakota or Wyoming. It would lead us inexorably to the conclusion that regions of the United States without economic influence or dense concentration of citizens should be denied power on precisely these grounds.”
Matthew Walther, The Week
“The renewed push for Washington, D.C., to become a state is couched in the language of enfranchising voters, but the primary objective is adding two safe Democratic Senate seats… If Democrats were serious about the representation of D.C. residents, then the conversation would be about the retrocession of the city back to Maryland. Democrats know Republicans will resist D.C. statehood, and this compromise would solve the problem they claim they are fighting — but it’s the senators that Democrats really want…
“In their desire to centralize government power, Democrats have our federalist system backward. Rather than view the country as a collection of states who delegate a few select powers to the federal government, they see states only as outposts for the federal government to delegate to. Therefore, you see a wealth of nonsensical arguments such as Frum’s about population numbers that are completely irrelevant to the point of the Senate and have been since the Constitution went into effect. D.C. statehood isn’t about enfranchising voters. It’s a cynical play for power in an institution that they claim is illegitimate because it hasn’t given them power yet.”
Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner
The left supports DC statehood, arguing that its residents deserve Congressional representation and that it would help redress the anti-democratic nature of the Senate.
The left supports DC statehood, arguing that its residents deserve Congressional representation and that it would help redress the anti-democratic nature of the Senate.
“The GOP tends to define its opposition to the idea as being a matter of hewing to the Constitution, which created a federal district as the seat of government. Not every Republican argument has feinted such high-mindedness, however. In his speech, [Sen. Tom] Cotton [R-AR] questioned whether current Mayor Muriel Bowser or controversial former Mayor Marion Barry—both Black—could be trusted with the powers of a governor. And he contrasted D.C. with Wyoming, noting that while the Western state has a smaller population, it is a ‘well-rounded working-class state.’…
“[D.C. reporter Tom Sherwood notes that] Wyoming is 93 percent white. It virtually has no Black people. That’s not well-rounded… [Moreover] It’s not a matter of how many people we have. If we just went by population, then California could be three states. New York City could be its own state. It’s not the total number of people—it’s whether we are a sustained independent territory. Do we have the economic wherewithal to sustain ourselves? Yes, we do. Do we have the voting population to qualify for representation in the House? Yes, we do. Do we pay taxes, do we fight in wars? Yes, we do. Why aren’t we a state?”
Joshua Keating, Slate
“[Wyoming] is a ‘well-rounded working-class state,’ because it has both cattle and coal, Cotton said. But Washington, DC—a booming and diverse city with large education, government, military, service, and construction sectors—has no ‘vital industry’ to speak of, he claimed…
“The contention that places with large non-white populations would be too inept—or would lack the proper values—to govern themselves and others has been used to block statehood and home rule repeatedly in the nation’s history… A similar dynamic played out with respect to Alaska and Hawaii following the Second World War. Although the moral case for statehood seemed clear, opponents believed that residents of those territories simply weren’t as worthy of statehood, by virtue of who they were.”
Tim Murphy, Mother Jones
“D.C.’s population is larger than that of Wyoming or Vermont; it pays more federal taxes than 22 states; its budget is bigger than those of 12 states; its Triple-A bond rating is higher than those of 35 states; and its sons and daughters willingly go off to serve and fight for their country. Yet it has no voice in Congress… Republicans framed statehood as a blatant power grab, a way to bolster Democratic power in Congress. Since when is party affiliation relevant to American citizens securing their rights?”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“There has long been talk of retroceding the District to Maryland, the state out of which it was carved. That would, theoretically, take D.C. from having no voice to having a minor voice in a state with an already established political base. But reincorporating the District into Maryland would usher its residents into a different kind of second-class citizenship. They would be like the new kids who transferred into high school halfway through and have no say in the existing power structure.”
Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times
“If and when Democrats get rid of the filibuster (assuming they control the Senate), D.C. statehood should be right near the top of their agenda. All it takes to add a state is a vote in Congress, not, as many assume, a constitutional amendment. But oh, that’s merciless hardball politics! How dreadful! Yes it is. And it’s exactly what Democrats should do. Democrats need to get over their fear that voters will punish them for being ruthless, and embrace their inner McConnell. What do you think he would do if there were two guaranteed Republican Senate seats just waiting to be created?”
Paul Waldman, Washington Post
“In 1864, Republican President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation admitting Nevada, then a barely populated desert with a few thousand residents, into the union as a state. Nevada didn’t have many people, but the few people who did live there were overwhelmingly Republican…
“After Republicans defeated Democratic President Grover Cleveland in the 1888 election, they celebrated by splitting the GOP-dominated Dakota into two territories and admitting both of them as states. Today, there are still two Dakotas because Gilded Age Republicans wanted four senators instead of just two… These sorts of tactics are the kind of constitutional hardball that political parties have freely embraced in a nation that, nonsensically, gives two senators to every state regardless of population.”
Ian Millhiser, Vox
