Hoyer: D.C. voting rights bill likely dead for this session

Wapo ^ | 04/20/10

[freespirited]

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has announced that a D.C. voting rights bill will not come up this session, in part because of opposition to an amendment that would have eliminated most of the District's gun-control laws.

D.C. has long sought a vote in the House, but many city leaders have expressed concerns about the gun amendment, and Hoyer blamed the amendment for preventing the measure from advancing.

The D.C. Council planned to reaffirm their opposition to the amendment today. Council member Phil Mendelson, chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, will introduce a resolution at the council meeting stating that Congress "must not adopt" the gun amendment if the bill advances.

A year ago, the Senate passed a D.C. voting rights bill for the first time since 1978, but lawmakers attached language that would wipe out most local gun laws and restrict the D.C. Council's power to enact new ones. House leaders shelved the legislation when it became clear it would be difficult to block the gun amendment.

Under the voting measure, the House would add two members: one to the overwhelmingly Democratic District and the other, temporarily, to Republican-leaning Utah. That seat would then go to the state next in line for a representative based on the 2010 Census.

Hoyer said the bill was felled by a "combination of issues." In addition to divisions over provisions concerning the District's gun laws, the measure was also hurt by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch's (R) declaration that he would oppose it because his state would be granted an at large congressional seat, rather than a new district whose lines the state's leaders could draw on their own.

But while Hoyer alluded to the Utah dispute, he made clear that the gun control language was the biggest stumbling block.

[freespirited]

Will these people ever understand that DC is not a state and therefore not entitled to voting rights?

[a fool in paradise]

DC thinks that the Constitution does not apply either.

[Oldpuppymax]

I wonder how anxious the democrat party would be to provide “voting rights” for DC if it were an all WHITE, republican area?

[Vision]

No it's gimme gimme gimme and you're a hateful right wing extremest otherwise.

[Cheerio]

I wonder how anxious the democrat party would be to provide “voting rights” for DC if it were an all WHITE, republican area?

That has to be a rhetorical question of the blackest of all US urban areas.

[Brad from Tennessee]

The Washington bureaucracy needs to be severely downsized then decentralized. Congress should stay at home and caucus, vote, and windbag via an Electronic Capitol. D.C. should be given back to Virginia and Maryland. The White House can become a museum and the president can live in a double-wide in the Missouri Bootheel, within walking distance of a Dairy Queen for entertaining visitors.

[Jim Ralls]

Part of what was Dc was given back to Virginia back in the early 1800s. It is now Arlington and part of Alexandria. The rest, north of the Potomac River was part of Maryland - it could go back to Maryland rather than being considered a separate entity.

[chris_bdba]

Yes that is the way it should work. I view DC as any other city in the USA. No other city has their own voting rights so DC should not either.

[freespirited]

Maryland can have all of it! We Virginians will pass.