Taxation Without Representation, Indeed

The long suffering, and underrepresented, taxpayers of the District of Columbia are properly worried about their shrinking role in the new Republican-controlled House. Tucked into the changes enacted by Speaker John Boehner is a rule depriving the district of its one bit of token voting power in Congress.

Washington’s 600,000 residents are allowed by law to elect only a watchful delegate. In 2007, the Democratic leadership allowed that delegate to cast some limited committee votes. Now even that has been killed by Republicans, leaving the delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and the city fathers questioning whether they are heading back to the “plantation mentality” days when Congressional committees routinely undermined home rule.

The city came closer to democracy last year until a measure that would have given it a full voting representative was scuttled after the gun lobby attached noxious amendments gutting gun controls in the district. This has long been the fate of Congress’s host city under the pendulum swipes of politics. Democrats enacted limited voting powers for the delegate in 1993, but Republicans killed them two years later only to see them revived when Democrats reclaimed the gavel four years ago.

The District of Columbia isn’t the only target for the Republican leadership. Four territories and Puerto Rico will also lose their committee votes. The District of Columbia’s rallying cry for full Congressional powers — “Taxation Without Representation” — is painfully apt. It is one we thought the self-proclaimed patriots galvanizing the House majority would instantly recognize. Apparently partisan politics, and the district’s large number of registered Democrats, trumps principle every time.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18tue3.html?_r=1

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