The fight for DC statehood gets its best chance yet
It’s difficult to walk around Washington, DC, without spotting at least one car with a license plate reading “taxation without representation.” The callback to the American Revolution’s rallying cry is also a reference to the reality that the roughly 700,000 people who reside in the nation’s capital have no representation in Congress despite paying federal taxes.
Now, in a party-line vote, House Democrats have approved DC statehood, sending the bill to the Democrat-controlled Senate — where even a party-line vote would not be sufficient to send the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk. And that itself isn’t guaranteed; according to reporting by Politico, not all 50 Democratic senators have signaled their support for the bill (the five outstanding are Sens. Angus King (ME), Joe Manchin (WV), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Mark Kelly (AZ), and Jeanne Shaheen (NH)).