Senate Commitee To Consider Statehood For Washington DC

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First of all, D.C. is only 61.4 square miles. That's smaller than the ego of the average Congressman.

Second of all, much of the economic basis of D.C. is owed to the presence of federal institutions of government.

According to Bureau of Labour statistics, more than 1 out of 4 employees (27,4%) in Washington D.C. (203,500 out of 742,500) is employed by the Federal Government, almost 5 times higher than the 2nd highest federal employer, Maryland.
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/feder ... state.html

Also note that the total number of employees in Washington D.C. is higher than the *population* of Washington D.C. at approx. 650,000, suggesting that the city is highly dependent on citizens from other states for its economy, and that it is a highly artificial city.


Red herring.


This problem would be corrected by retrocession to the State of Maryland. Furthermore, Washington D.C is just the 23rd largest city in the US. The 22 cities larger than it do not have a state on their own. These cities do not have their own Representatives on Capitol Hill. They do not have their own Senators on Capitol Hill. They are represented in Congress through their respective state ballots.


This problem would also be corrected by retrocession to the state of Maryland.

And while it is easy to point fingers at Republicans for resisting statehood, one ought to remember that granting D.C. two seats in the Senate would contribute further to the massive lack of representativeness in the institution. This is especially egregious when the 2 D.C. senators would likely represent the interests of a highly artificial community (as shown above) in a legislative body with jurisdiction over 315 million US citizens.

If we look at the two smallest states in the US (Wyoming and Vermont), the average voter of each state gets 65.8 and 61.2 times as much influence in the Senate compared to the average voter in the largest state, California.

If D.C. was admitted as a state and got 2 Senate seats, the average D.C voter would get 59.3 times as much say in the Senate compared to the average California voter, almost as skewed as Wyoming and Vermont.

And even if D.C was retroceded to Maryland, the average D.C voter would still get 5.8 times as much say in the Senate as the average Californian voter.

In fact, a State of Maryland with Washington D.C. included would be almost perfectly representative compared to the US as a whole, only surpassed by Indiana and Tennessee. Maryland currently has 94 percent of the population of the average US state (6.3 million), and would have 104 percent if Washington D.C. was included.

From a perspective of ensuring representativeness, retrocession to the State of Maryland is thus an almost perfect solution.

The constitution and our founders were pretty clear on the seat of government being a federal city and not a state. Even retrocession is somewhat dubious constitutionally but has precedence with the Virginia side of the district being returned in 1846. Congress, the president, and the state of Maryland would need to approve. For statehood to be possible you would need a constitutional amendment authorizing it and the repeal of the 23rd amendment.

What do you think of the proposal to exempt D.C. residents from federal taxes until they gain meaningful representation on Capitol Hill (whether through statehood, retrocession, or other means) ?

DC was never a state, and it can never become one.

A state has to be able to operate autonomously without needed federal support.

What does DC have to fund its one executive, legislative and judicial branches and provide services to every citizen?

They don't. They are too small and consist essentially of federal buildings, a few museums and local residents. The federal government would have to start paying them big time rent on top of what it costs now AND hand over control of any money that comes to the federal government from what is generated in DC.

If you're already deadlocked in your views on statehood, then there's no point in discussing it here. It's not a productive use of our time.

I think we can all agree on the important underlying issue here: granting American citizens their right to representation as soon as possible.

Retrocession and statehood have been attempted and have failed repeatedly. Even if a plan looks good on paper, there are a great many reasons why it's difficult in practice. We should be discussing these problems.

Since many of you are interested in retrocession, I suggest looking into the details of its history and the reasons why it's unattractive to Maryland and D.C. residents.

Then consider the following:

What can be changed in the plan to attract more support from residents?

What are some alternative solutions to retrocession and statehood that would grant D.C. residents representation?

BTW, here is a fresh poll illustrating US public opinion on the D.C. statehood question:



Source:
https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/09/2 ... tehood-dc/
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/d ... 140919.pdf

It would have been nice to see a similar poll on the alternative of retroceding D.C. to Maryland, but such a question was unfortunately not included.

Rasmussen Reports recently did a poll on the Maryland option (15 September), but their poll is unfortunately behind a paywall, and I can only see that 24 percent expressed support of D.C: statehood.

Source: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... _statehood

However, an earlier open-access poll from 2009 on the same question found that:

Source: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... rch_1_2009

Assuming that not much has changed from 2009 to 2014, it would thus seem that there is significantly higher public support in the US for retrocession of Washington D.C. to Maryland than for D.C. to become a state of its own.

Last edited by GGPViper on 25 Sep 2014, 5:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

1. There is no "meaningful" representation in Congress. You think what the states want is really getting any traction or do the politicians do what their special interest handlers want them to do?

2. Those in DC know the score. It's been that way since DC came into existence. Don't like it, move into a state...but be free to start paying taxes on your income to the state you choose (VA or MD impose state income taxation).

DC has higher taxes than MD and VA so there might a tax savings too to merge with MD.

I thought they would have a "progressive tax" and not tax people at 40,000 the same as 350,000.

DC
8.5 percent on taxable income between $40,001 and $350,000.
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/s ... n-d-c.aspx

Maryland
4.75 percent on taxable income between $3,001 and $100,000.
5.75 percent on taxable income of $250,001 and more.
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/s ... yland.aspx

Virginia
5.75 percent on taxable income of $17,001 and above.
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/s ... ginia.aspx

Man, you've talked me into it.

D.C. can keep their speed cameras and parking tickets.

I'm packing my bags and moving to the Old Dominion. Representation, guns, wine, and beaches!



I'm okay with the idea of retroceding to Maryland. I want to see the district get its representation, and the fighting between Republicans and Democrats is getting us nowhere. Unfortunately, I doubt that MD and D.C. will agree to it.

But does D.C. truly have to become a state or return to Maryland to gain voting rights?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_o ... _Amendment

"The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would have given the District of Columbia full representation in the United States Congress, full representation in the Electoral College system, and full participation in the process by which the Constitution is amended."

"Section 1. For purposes of representation in the Congress, election of the President and Vice President, and article V of this Constitution, the District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall be treated as though it were a State."

"The amendment would neither have made Washington, D.C. a state, nor affected the Congress' authority over it."

"The United States House of Representatives passed it on March 2, 1978, by a 289?127 vote, with 18 not voting. The United States Senate passed it on August 22, 1978, by a 67?32 vote, with 1 not voting. With that, the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment was submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. The Congress, via Section 4 of the proposed amendment, required ratification by three-fourths of the states to be completed within seven years following its passage by the Congress (i.e., August 22, 1985) in order for the proposed amendment to become part of the Constitution."

"During the seven-year period specified by Congress it was ratified by only 16 states and so failed to be adopted."

More recent:

"A proposal related to retrocession was the "District of Columbia Voting Rights Restoration Act of 2004" (H.R. 3709), which would have treated the residents of the District as residents of Maryland for the purposes of congressional representation. Maryland's congressional delegation would then be apportioned accordingly to include the population of the District."

"From the foundation of the District in 1790 until the passage of the Organic Act of 1801, citizens living in D.C. continued to vote for members of Congress in Maryland or Virginia; legal scholars therefore propose that the Congress has the power to restore those voting rights while maintaining the integrity of the federal district. However, the proposed legislation never made it out of committee."

What is it going to take to finally get these guys to agree on something?