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.
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.
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.
