March 22, 2007
Live Blogging Debate on Voting Rights
OK, we're going to try live blogging debate on the House floor as much as we can. Acting speaker right now is Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D- CA). Floor manager Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Judiciary Chairman, has just finished introducing the legislation and expressing his belief that the District Clause allows the Congress to make any laws for D.C. it sees fit.
12:27 p.m.: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is currently making the case on behalf of the bill's detractors that because D.C. is not a state, this bill is unconstitutional. He began by stating his opinion that this bill was one of the most pre-meditated unconstitutional acts ever taken on by the House of Representatives. Smith proposes that D.C. be retrocessed into Maryland in order to give its residents representation in Congress.
12:35 p.m.: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has now taken the floor, and makes the point that D.C. is the only capital city in the world that provides no representation for its citizens in their parliament. He says residents of the District of Columbia are not second class citizens, but the geographical area where they live is treated as such. Ohh, zing! Hoyer just called out Republicans for voting for countless other bills with questionable constitutionality. Everyone at DCist is sharing a little bit of a crush on Hoyer right now. He's kind of a silver fox, ain't he?
12:48 p.m. Republicans on the floor have now claimed that this bill is the "wrong way to go about" achieving representation for the District. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) says constitutional amendments are too difficult to pass and will take too long. He also seems to have found picking out an attractive tie for TV too difficult.
1:03 p.m. Oh no he didn't! Rep. Charles Boustany (R-TXLA), waving a giant poster of a blown up constitution, claimed that the District of Columbia is the only city in the country that each and every representative in the United States Congress has a vested interest in. So like, since all the congressmen are looking out for us because they spend some time here for work, we totally don't need our own. Forgive us while we guffaw for several minutes, and begin drafting a new post calling for all citizens of the District of Columbia to show up in person on the doorstep of Rep. Boustany's office, demanding that he represent our interests.
1:25 p.m. Where is Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.)? So far this debate has been split entirely along party lines. Not that we're all that surprised to see Republicans lining up to fall in line behind the continuation of a historic disenfranchisment of American voters. But we're still hoping for a little hot Pence action.
1:37 p.m. Here's the Big Guns. Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "For more than 200 years the people of the District of Columbia have been denied representation ... The effort to politicize this issue disrespects democracy." And now here's Eleanor Holmes Norton, expressing incredulity that the signers of the Constitution who were from this region actually meant for D.C. to be disenfranchised.
Pence in the House! "The single overarching principle of the constitution is that laws should be based on the consent of the governed." Pence also says that if the people of D.C. want two representatives in the Senate, we'll have to become a state, but that one representative in the House makes sense and is constitutional.
1:54 p.m. Closing remarks now from Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), we should expect a vote to begin in just a few minutes. He says: In four years he's found no evidence that any member of the House has any plans to pursue a constitutional amendment or retrocession into Maryland, because neither of those options are politically viable. If D.C. were not able to be treated like a state, it wouldn't be able to be taxed or have jury trials.
2:06 p.m. Wow, we can't believe we didn't see this coming. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) says that if we're for District Voting Rights, we have to be for repealing the District's handgun ban. In a motion to recommit with instructions, he suggests the potential for a political trade! Let the people have guns, and we'll let you have voting representation. The instructions to the committee direct changes to the text of the bill. If adopted, the chairman of the named committee immediately stands and reports the change back to the House. The next step is the House vote on final passage of the bill. Eleanor Holmes Norton is now pleading with the members not to allow this move to effectively kill this bill.
2:40 p.m. Coming in from the AP Wire: WASHINGTON (AP) -
Legislation to give the District of Columbia voting representation in the House stalled short of passage Thursday when Republicans unexpectedly injected the volatile issue of gun control into the debate.We called both Eleanor Holmes Norton's office and House Cloak Room, and neither had information on when the bill might be taken back up, so it has yet to be determined. We'll keep you posted when we get word.Apparently fearful they might lose control of the proceedings, Democrats decided to postpone action on the voting rights measure, which had appeared to be moving methodically toward passage.
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only 21 minutes until it gets catty. haha
From yesterdays WHPB.
Q Tony, two questions. Republican Congressman Tom Davis said, "The President spent billions of dollars to bring democracy to Baghdad, and threatens to veto a bill bringing democracy to the free world." And my question, does the White House know of any Tom Davis effort to obtain House votes for Puerto Rico, which has so many more people than Washington, D.C.?
MR. SNOW: I'm unaware. It's an intriguing question. (Laughter.)
Q Thank you. How does the President believe that any member of Congress can vote for a full congressional seat for D.C., but none for Puerto Rico, without being reasonably adjudged as anti-Hispanic American?
MR. SNOW: You know, the President has a very fertile mind. I'm not sure that that's something that would naturally occur while he's thinking about other issues.
As much as I love DC and hate the injustice of no representation, the Democrats' bill is blatantly unconstitutional. Retrocession or statehood are the only ways to go on this.
It is probably just some political cover, but I just can't understand Mike Pence's point here..."if the people of D.C. want two representatives in the Senate, we'll have to become a state, but that one representative in the House makes sense and is constitutional"
Either Congress can make any laws it wants for DC or it can't. There doesn't seem to be much grey area on this...
as a person who is very interested in getting the district to be able to participate on its own in the Olympics, I am torn on this issue. I also like having this blatant hypocracy in our capitol.
oh, and isn't Rep. Charles Boustany (R-TX)'s argument laughable? It is disturbingly similar to an argument for Virtual Representation that I heard back in the 1770s.
As a resident of DC and someone who has worked on the Hill, i am a firm believer that complete autonomus rule by the council, freedom from Federal Tax, the ability to tax commuters and the ability to tax the Federal government on the land it owns are much more important than having voting representation in congress.
Meh. Eleanor Holmes Norton can take her incredulity and shove it. Back in the day the thinking on capital cities was that the seat of power should not be a population center so that governments would not be inordinately beholden to local interests. There are some rare exceptions (Boston, Atlanta, etc.), but generally you're looking at places like Sacramento, Albany, Harrisburg, etc. So yes, I do think the Founders had every intention of treating DC more as a seat of power than a place to live, thus explaining the root cause of this whole debacle. The number of people needed to support our modern age's monstrosity of a government was not a consideration at the time, nor that people would otherwise have reason to live here year-round.
And anyway, it's still unconstitutional. Which reminds me, given how much cheerleading DCist has been doing for Pence for being principled and breaking rank, is there anyone on the DCist staff who actually disagrees with the general consensus that this legislation is all fine and well? Speak now or forever hold your peace!
If we don't get voting rights, we don't pay federal taxes and we should be able to do the things bribri notes is his/her comment. If the republicans don't agree than the constitution should be amended so we can vote. What's the problem here? If DC was full of Republicans this wouldn't be an issue for the current administration. This is strictly political, not "unconstitutional" as many of you keep saying. The constitution had to be amended to abolish slavery. Let's amend it again. End of story.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but for someone to test the Constitutionality of the notion that District residents need not pay Federal taxes, a District resident just needs to stop paying their taxes and sue the IRS in Federal Court. All we need is someone who's willing to avoid paying taxes and go to court for a cause.
Why can't Eleanor just give Marion a call and see if he'd be willing? He's got half the plan down...
rather than showing up on boustany's doorstep, why not just call his office every single time you have an issue with mail delivery, trash pickup, etc? thanks for looking out for us, big guy.
To the people arguing that this bill is unconstitutional. Could you please point me to the part of the constitution that permits Congress to levy taxes on people who are not residents of states?
If you live by the "among the several states" language of Art.1 Sec.2 you have to die by it.
The intent of the framers to limit representation to states is just as obvious as thier desire to limit taxation to the states. Nowhere in the constitution is congress authorized to direct taxation of citizens.
Amendment XVI doesn't delagte the power of DIRECT taxation of people either. It simply means they can tax among the states without apportionment.
Dakota, just to be clear, I do think that taxation without representation is unconstitutional, but I also think that, short of some truly valiant person willing to bear the legal costs and troubles associated with boycotting the IRS (and even then I'm skeptical), the best way to solve DC's problems is through a constitutional amendment to once and for all clarify our status. I don't like the idea of us as the 51st state (it'll fuck up the flag, fer chrissakes!), so for me I'd be happy with language that simply puts us on that same level. "For the purposes of Congressional representation the District of Columbia shall bear the same status as the several states." A one-liner would do it, literally. I think that what is going on now is a lot of smoke and mirrors, whereas the real solution lies in an amendment.
"Back in the day the thinking on capital cities was that the seat of power should not be a population center so that governments would not be inordinately beholden to local interests."
"The number of people needed to support our modern age's monstrosity of a government was not a consideration at the time, nor that people would otherwise have reason to live here year-round."
That's exactly why this Bill is constitutional. Why should we bind the democratically elected Congress of the United States because of the language of the Constitution when it is clear that the Framers never foresaw the modern expansion of the capital city? Why should we bound by the mere words of some (albeit, incredibly intelligent) dead guys 225 years ago, when they did not even consider this situation at all? We got some really intelligent people today who think it's a great idea, and they now seem to be in the majority.
All this blustering about the unconstitutionality of this Bill strikes as very disingenuous. Republicans don't want the District to vote. They hide behind langauge in the Constitution that in no way says what they want it to say. It's a political ploy from top to bottom.
-Chris
I should've clarified. I attempted to place the situation in historical context to show that Eleanor Holmes Norton's "incredulity" was misplaced. The Founders, as I see it, did mean for DC to be a seat of power rather than anything else, and therefore were perfectly cognizant of denying it representation. It's not like five years later Madison smacked his forehead and said, "Oops, guys, you won't believe this... but we totally screwed a bunch of people out of their fair and democratic representation!" It was intentional. I tried to juxtapose that argument with the reality that, yes, today people do actually live here, despite what the Founders may have intented, but apparently it came off poorly. The second tier of my argument against this bill is that it can easily be overturned, which, if you do believe the Republicans are nefariously antagonistic to it, should concern you, but primarily I'm concerned with its questionable constitutionality.
Oops, "intended." Can't get it right all the time.
As Thomas Jefferson said:
"The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed."
First, let's bracket off my contention that the Republicans are doing this political purposes. I shouldn't have brought that into the discussion.
My contention is that the denial of a significant part of the electorate was not an intentional act of the Framers and their generation. During the debate on the Constitution, the controversy surrounding the District was not concerning it's voting rights, but whether we ought to have a capital or not. The Federalists' desire for a nation's capital came from a worry that placing the capital in one of the state's would hamper the federal government's independence. Surely we can note that in modern times, these worries are irrelevent.
Even more to the point, there is no way the Framers and their generation could have grasped this issue in any manner that remains relevant. The Federal District did not become the year-round populated city it is today until the growth of the modern adminstrative state during the New Deal and the Second World War. For many decades, the District was abandoned for months at a time by government officers who left the rather horrid summertime conditions to go home. We no longer just have Congressmen and inner-staff in the city. We have hundred of thousands of workers, living in the town full-time, many dependant, but many not-at-all dependent, on the federal government for their day-to-day life. This is something that in no way could have been foreseen by the Framer's generation, where State's were the prominant institutions of government.
Contrast this to something like the First Amendment, which was something that was highly salient at the time of the Constitution's ratification. The debates surrounding free speech and free exercise maintain their relevance in the modern era. The debate surrounding the District, however, does not inform our modern understanding of the District's role at all. (One influential Anti-Federalist publicly displayed concerns that the Congress would use the District to fortify their military strength and submit the rest of the continent to their autocratic power, for just one example).
Going beyond the specific interpretation of the text, I think it is hard to consider the meaning of the Constitution without giving rise to the purposes behind the document. The legislature, according to the document, was to be the very embodiment of the people's will. For all the downsides of the Constitution (silence on slavery, woman's sufferage, etc.) the document is one of the greatest victories for democracy and citizen participation in human history.
When determining whether we should continue to deny more than 600,000 people a voice in their government, we should take heed of these great purposes the Constitution was trying to achieve. That's why I feel the Republicans invokation of the Constitution for their opposition to be badly misplaced.
-Chris
Christine,
I think we agree all around. I just want to point out that the way people seem to be interpreting Art.1 Sec.2 phasing is a nose of wax.
So, lemme get this straight. The District's argument for gun control is that DC ISN'T a State so the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to DC. But their argument here is that the Feds treat DC AS a State for purposes of taxation, so DC deserves a vote on the House floor. Seems like either you are a State or you aren't. So if DC wants the vote, they gotta lose the gun ban. Doesn't mean they can't regulate the hell out of them, but the ban is as unconstitutional as the this vote bill.