House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has said that he’s against allowing D.C. to impose a commuter tax.
Photo by Heather Goss Just like that, it’s over. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has announced that he will not allow the D.C. House Voting Rights Act to come to a vote this year after all. The decision comes after several heated days of posturing among city officials, with some lining up in favor of Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s decision to push forward despite a controversial amendment that would have stripped the District…
Photo by Mark Poblete The Washington Post is reporting the long-stalled bill that would finally grant the District a voting seat in the House of Representatives may be re-introduced as early as next week. According to the Post, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer today indicated that details are still being ironed out, but the bill will likely have some version of the original gun amendment that stalled it last summer. The amendment, supported by various…
Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Tuesday that the reason the D.C. House Voting Rights Act has not been brought to the floor for a vote is because local D.C. political leaders have yet to come to a consensus on a controversial handgun amendment that remains attached to the Senate version of the bill. The most recent version of the voting rights bill passed the Senate almost a year…
David Ferriero has been named the new Archivist of the National Archives, the tenth such figure to hold the position. As such, he must regularly square off against Nicolas Cage, keep an eye out for Tom Hanks, and stay abreast of Ben Stiller’s whereabouts. This sure is the most horrifying story I’ve read in ages. The macaron is the new cupcake. If Metrocurean says so, I will believe it. Then I will continue to…
On Friday afternoon, we reported that House Democratic leaders were thinking about trying something a bit sneaky for D.C. voting rights, by attaching a measure to a defense spending bill that would give the District a House seat. The rationale is obvious — many Republicans and conservative Democrats have complicated passage of the stand-alone voting rights proposal, so tacking it on to a larger bill they won’t want to vote against ensures that it…
MORE 2:28 p.m.: D.C. Vote Executive Director Ilir Zherka just returned our call, and takes issue with our characterization that the D.C. House Voting Rights Act is “dead.” “We’re going to get this done, the question is when,” Zherka said. “We’ve got the time and we’ve got the votes. Any timeline is artificial, and it was artificial from the start,” he said. Despite today’s setback, Zherka said DC Vote is committed to the bill…
Photo by Public Citizen Grim news on the long-delayed D.C. House Voting Rights Act. Roll Call reports (subscription only) from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s regular Tuesday press conference that the congressman is pulling the bill from consideration for the foreseeable future. “As a result of there not being a consensus, I don’t think we’re going to be able to move the bill at this point in time,” Hoyer told reporters at his weekly…
It looks like Congress has once again left District residents without a resolution on voting rights. At the end of March, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he expected the D.C. House Voting Rights Act to come to a vote in some form by the end of May. But the U.S. House left town for its Memorial Day recess last night, making it now impossible for anything to happen until June at the earliest. We’re…
First the issue of guns came to haunt the D.C. voting rights bill, now it seems to be haunting other pieces of legislation Democrats are looking to pass. The Politico reports today that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has all but thrown in the towel, admitting that Republicans have effectively used amendments related to guns to either stall legislation or force conservative Democrats into tough votes. While the voting rights bill has been stuck due…