When American colonists rebelled against the British Empire, they complained of “taxation without representation” because the British Parliament was levying taxes to gain additional revenue from its American subjects without giving them any say or a vote on the issue.
The next time you visit Washington, DC, check out the license plates. Residents have adopted the revolutionary slogan as part of their long battle to gain the representation in Congress that other Americans enjoy.
In 1789, the U.S. Constitution authorized Congress to “exercise exclusive legislation” over the future U.S. capitol. This was so the federal government would be on neutral territory rather than part of a particular state. After Maryland and Virginia agreed to give up land for the federal district (Virginia later regained its territory in 1847), Congress moved there in 1800 and Washington, DC’s residents have since had no representation in Congress and could not even vote for president until 1961.
As DC has grown into a densely populated city, more are questioning the district’s founding arrangement. About 600,000 DC residents pay taxes and serve in the military but lack a vote in Congress. Congress also reviews and modifies their local budget and annuls any local laws it does not agree with.
So why not simply give DC voting representation? Politics is partly to blame. It is all but assured that any DC representative would be a Democrat, and Republicans are well aware of that. A compromise worked out over the past few years to simultaneously allocate a safe Republican seat in the House of Representatives fell apart April 20 over objections to an amendment that would have repealed DC’s gun control laws. Utah, who would have gained the additional Republican, will get its new seat anyway, thanks to the 2010 Federal Census that will document its increased population. The solution also denied DC residents voting representation in the Senate. (Consider that Wyoming, population 544,000, has a Representative and two Senators.)
Another proposal is DC’s retrocession to Maryland, which gives them Maryland’s two Senators and their own Representative. However this would require a U.S. constitutional amendment and Maryland is reluctant to take on the responsibility and costs of governance, considering its own budget constraints and because it already has a huge metropolis (Baltimore). Some advocate full statehood, but along with needing an amendment, detractors says this undermines the original neutral territory idea for the nation’s capitol.
There’s much more to this, but I’m out of space. What do you think is a fair solution?