Conservative columninst George F. Will wrote a piece in The Washington Post today about the recent move by the House of Representatives to give all the five territorial delegates in the body voting powers in the Committee of the Whole. Here’s a link to the op-ed:

Voting Rights Chicanery

The fact that he even cares about this re-affirms my fears about what would happen after the Democrats gave the delegates’ their votes back - it’s now being spun as a partisan power grab and the District of Columbia is lumped together with places like Guam and America Samoa in our struggle for voting rights.

Mr. Will should know that the courts have struck down his arguments before. As Vince Treacy was nice enough to summarize in an email to me:

“House Republicans filed suit in U.S. District Court in 1993, citing a violation of
the Constitution. But Judge Harold H. Greene ruled in favor of Norton and
the other delegates, saying their votes posed no constitutional problems
because they were ’symbolic’ and therefore ‘meaningless.’ That decision was
upheld on appeal.“

The case was Michel v. Anderson, 817 F.Supp. 126, 141 D.D.C. 1993, affirmed
14 F.3d 623 D.C. Cir. 1994 - in case you want to review it yourself.

In his op-ed, Mr. Will also argues that:

“The 58,000 Samoans pay no federal income taxes, but their delegate will be able to participate in raising the taxes of, say, Montanans.”

That’s a bit of a stretch as the delegates can’t vote on final passage - and if their votes do make a difference, the vote can be done again without the delegates’ participation. Therefore a single vote from Guam or Puerto isn’t going to raise (or lower) taxes in the American heartland.

I do wonder what does Mr. Will thinks about the opposite of that situation. What would he say about the citizens of the District of Columbia who do pay federal taxes and are not represented with a real vote in Congress? By his own taxation/representation logic he surely can’t be in favor of that.

As I feared, this delegate vote is becoming a problem in terms of getting (and keeping) bi-partisan support for H.R. 328 - the bill that gives DC a real seat in Congress with an additional seat for Utah which was recently re-introduced by Congresswoman Norton. We need to keep focused on making sure that legislation keeps moving in this Congress. Let’s not get bogged down in this debate with the other Congressional delegates.

We deserve more as we pay Federal taxes and they don’t.

So the House gave the chamber’s delegates (Distirct of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa) the right yesterday to vote on amendments to bills on the House floor, a privilege that really only symbolic. This was also the case for a few years during the time Democrats controlled the House when President Clinton was in office - but the GOP majority took it away in 1995.
While I’m sure they meant well, I think this was handled poorly as it was rammed through Congress in a very partisan way, and will likely cost us some bi-partisan of the bill that really matters — H.R. 328.

Also, this delegate vote in the Committee of the Whole business is going to confuse the issue among Members of Congress who don’t really focus on such matters. I can already hear some of them saying “Didn’t we already to that?” when we ask for a DC Congressional vote later this session.

According to the Post, Delegate Norton was also not happy about the way this went down:

“This debate is extremely heartbreaking for me,” Norton said in an impassioned floor speech, after Republicans assailed the rule change. She questioned why lawmakers were arguing about the constitutionality of the limited measure, when the courts had upheld it in the 1990s. She said Congress should instead be considering the broader bill, which supporters call their best hope in years of getting the District a full vote in the House.

Also, Gary Imhoff at DC Watch had this to say in his “themail” newsletter:

Although the bill to give the DC voting status in the House along with giving Utah a new Congressional district (HR 328) had bipartisan support and would probably pass this year, today the Democratic majority again revised the House rules to give Committee of the Whole voting rights to all five nonvoting delegates. This move imperils, and may doom, bipartisan support for HR 328, and it guarantees that the next time Republicans have a majority in the House they will strip Committee of the Whole voting rights from the DC delegate along with the other four delegates.

What we really need is Nancy Pelosi (and the rest of the Democratic Leadership) to commit to bringing the DC Voting Rights bill (H.R. 328) to the floor, so it the mark-up committee process can begin. You can help make this happen by calling her office at: (202) 225-0100 or contacting her online by clicking here: http://speaker.house.gov/contact/

Here’s a link to the full Post Article:

Delegates Gain Limited Voting Rights
Norton Pushes to Equalize District’s Footing With That of State Representatives

I meant to write about this sooner, but our Mayor stood up for DC today by refusing to sit with the First Lady (as is tradition) during tonight’s state of the union address. Here’s the Post article about it:

Fenty Won’t Sit With Laura Bush At Speech

Instead, he’ll be a guest of Speaker Pelosi. I hope Fenty uses the face time with Pelosi to get her stop dicking us all around and schedule a vote on the DC Voting Rights bill (H.R. 328) and stop just paying it lip service. Our lack of representation is now the DEMOCRAT’S problem, I really hope they “walk the walk” on this one.

The 100 hours are over. It’s time, in the words of Larry the Cable Guy, to ‘Get ‘R Done!”

Update: Nikolas Schiller sent along a clip of the video from Fox 5 news, you have to to see it for yourself!

So there was a press conference in the Wilson Building today about DC’s efforts to secure Congressional voting rights and plan for a lobby day and march. I applaud the effort, but I don’t think everyone had their ducks in a row before going to the media. They (the media) love to pounce on any fractures amongst elected officials, as shown in this Washington Post piece:

“[A]t the news conference, it was clear [Fenty] had not coordinated his plans with the city’s long-serving congressional representative, and the tension between them was evident. Norton told reporters she had not even been informed of the April march until she arrived at the news conference. “

Fenty also announced plans for a lobby day, but Norton didn’t really have his back on that:

“A zillion groups come up to lobby,” she said. The bill “will get attention from Congress when they see those citizens” in the street.

I don’t see why we can’t do both. What I’m focused on is getting contacts into Capitol Hill office from their constituents on this bill. Lobby days and marches are good - but a Representative will more likely be moved by a few letters from his or her district on the issue. (Don’t me wrong; when it comes to marches I’m like the Doobie Brothers!)

My other gripe is a little personal - nobody told me (or other members of the Shadow Delegation) about this event! I found about it about 10 minutes before it started, so I hustled over to see what was going on.

Now, I don’t have a big ego and nor do I expect to be invited to all official city events, to be asked to make remarks, or even to be recognized from the crowd. However, this is the one issue that the voters tasked me to work on — so I was a little upset that I didn’t get a little more of a heads up from the mayor’s people. Maybe next time

On a positive note, I had a nice conversation with Hilary Shelton from the NAACP after the event. I told him that Evan Bayh’s office had told me that the Indiana chapter of the NAACP had come to their office and mentioned that the Davis bill was a priority for them during the last Congress, and I thanked him for making that so. I also told him that that sort of homegrown contact was exactly what we needed to get Members of Congress to support the DC Voting Rights bill. He agreed and told me to contact him if we need to push anyone on the Hill.

At the end of the day, this is all internal DC city government bunk that nobody besides guys like Mark Plotkin really care about. Let’s keep our eyes on the goal line and keep pushing to get voting rights in the House in the short term — and statehood in the long term!

Fenty, Norton Clash Over D.C. Vote in House

There was an article about the Shadow Delegation in the Post on Tuesday. It mostly followed Sen. Paul Strauss around as he made the the rounds on Capitol Hill. I didn’t get much ink, but they ran a photo of me, which was nice.

Shadow Delegation Toils in Obscurity for D.C.’s Day in the Sun

I was worried the article was going to have a “Golly, look at me I’m playing Congressman…” vibe to it, so I might have been a little hesitant with the reporter. Also, she seemed oddly obsessed with watching me getting my phone in my office to work, so I thought she had already written the article and was looking to have “This guy can’t even figure out how to get his phone turned on” sort of angle.

In the end it was limited ink for me, but they spelled my name right and put my photo in…so I got no complaints.