The House of Representatives approves that Washington DC becomes a State | International

In a vote that will go down in history, the House of Representatives has voted this Friday make Washington DC the 51st State of the Union. Faced with euphoria from Democrats and Washingtonians, the Republican Party called the decision a move to gain more political power from the Democratic party. The final count was 232-180.

“This law allows our country to live on the claim that it is a democracy,” said DC Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democratic member of the House but without the right to vote. “We say we are a democracy that nevertheless denies that same democracy to the residents of its own capital,” declared the policy, the fifth generation of washingtonianos and whose great-grandfather was a slave on a plantation in Virginia.

Although the defenders of statehood are aware that this is a law that is born dead, since it will not be able to pass a vote -of coming to convene- in the Republican-majority Senate and also has the already announced veto of President Donald Trump.

“It is about power, let no one be deceived,” said the representative of Texas Chip Roy, referring to the fact that if DC managed to become a state, the elected senators would undoubtedly be Democrats and the congressmen as well, which would undoubtedly change the balance. of the Capitol. Opponents of the change in status argue that the Founding Fathers wanted the capital to be clearly separated from the rest of the States.

The states of Maryland and Virginia ceded land in the 1780s for the creation of a federal capital along the Potomac River. Washington, the District of Columbia, became the permanent capital of the United States in 1790. The new state would be called Washington Douglass Commonwealth, taking its name from the nation’s first president, George Washington, and the prominent black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

For the city mayor, Muriel Bowser, this is a “historical mistake” that needs to be corrected. I was born here without vote [en el Congreso], but I swear that I will not die here without vote, “he added. Bowser said Washingtonians pay taxes, serve in the military, run businesses and raise children, and yet are deprived of their rights because they have no electoral representation in Congress. Several Democrats in the House, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, wore the masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus to campaign and wear 51, the number the new state would become within the Union.

Defenders of statehood have created a group called 51 for 51 who traveled across the country last year seeking the support of presidential candidates, including the eventual Democratic candidate for the White House, Joe Biden, who tweeted last Thursday in favor of DC becoming a state. 51 for 51 He looks for the future president to support the cause and if the case should come, he would avoid the filibusterism that would occur in the Senate to curb the law on the part of the Republican.

The last time the proposal for DC (short for the acronym for the District of Columbia) to become a state was voted in the House was in 1993 and it failed by 277 votes to 153 (it only had one vote). republican in favor). Back then, the District suffered from a high crime rate and was on the verge of bankruptcy.

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