Photo by Erin Kelly.
The entire D.C. Council signed a letter that thanks Sen. Thomas Carper for holding a hearing on a statehood bill next week and asks the “Senate as a whole to move expeditiously to secure rights for over half a million citizens disenfranchised by their own government.”
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs is scheduled to hold a hearing monday on the New Columbia Admission Act of 2013, which Carper helped introduce. The bill currently has 16 co-sponsors in the Senate and 104 in the House.
In the letter, first reported by the Post’s Mike DeBonis, the Council compares D.C.’s quest for statehood to the women’s suffrage movement. The Councilmembers note that it took decades for a suffrage amendment to be enacted. “In the modern era, the residents of the District of Columbia have already waited 21 years on the same piece of legislation: the New Columbia Admission Act last recieved a hearing on July 26, 2993. Nothing came of that effort. Out most fundamental right demands more than a simple hearing.”
The letter ends with a call for the Senate to mark up the bill, move it to the floor and hold a vote before the midterm elections in November. “If we are not to have voting rights, we at least deserve to know who opposes our inalienable right.”
