Bowser will make case for D.C. statehood at congressional hearing next month
2 min read
After the social justice demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd, the disputed 2020 election and the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, Democrats are pushing the statehood issue as a top civil rights and voting rights priority this session.
Norton (D-D.C.), the District’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, has proposed shrinking the federal district to a two-square-mile enclave of federal buildings — including the Capitol and the White House. The rest of the District would become the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, to honor abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
A spokeswoman for Norton said the hearing will include testimony on whether the District would be financially self-sufficient as a state, as well how the separation of the rest of the city from the federal enclave would work.
Because the federal government funds and provides some services to the District — mostly within its criminal justice and penal system — questions remain about how the District would re-engineer and pay for those functions. Norton and Bowser have insisted that the District, with a population of about 700,000, is financially prepared.
“The fact that more than half a million Americans living in the District of Columbia are denied representation in Congress is a historic wrong that flies in the face of the democratic values on which our nation was founded,” panel chair Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “This hearing will make that clear.”
In addition to Bowser, witnesses called by the Democrats will include D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson; the acting D.C. chief financial officer; Wade Henderson, the interim CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; a legislative attorney with the Congressional Research Service; and a military veteran. Republicans, who strongly oppose D.C. statehood, are also expected to call witnesses.
Republicans have long argued that a constitutional amendment would be required to make the District a state.
They took that position during the last hearing on D.C. statehood, in 2019, which preceded the statehood bill’s historic passage in the House in June.
