Today a bill will be introduced in the U.S. Senate by a senator from Delaware, obtain a number, be referred to a committee or whatever the Byzantine process in the Capitol Building entails, and then mercifully die neglected. It would carve out a small area of what is currently Washington, D.C., that is currently only Federal buildings, the White House, Capitol Building, etc., and the remainder would be constituted as the 51st State, inanely titled "New Columbia" (hint to the good Senator: have you got another idea for a name that doesn't mess up the USPS abbreviations?).
As I always ask,
(1) What are we trying to accomplish here?
(2) Is this really the best way to do it?
Of course, as with anything conceived in Washington, the answer to #2 is "No", so let's look at #1. If you are to believe its proponents, this has nothing to do with trying to stuff the Senate with two more Democrats, and nothing to do with getting another Democrat in the House. That would be, well, politics. The real, honest-to-God reason for doing this is to achieve representation for the half million residents of D.C. who currently do not have a voting House member and are not represented in the Senate at all, and whose city government is subject to specific oversight by Congress.
I am absolutely sympathetic to that fact, as I suppose everyone of both parties is. Americans should have representation in their Congress wherever they live, and although it is the law, the residents of the District should be able to pass their own laws, however stupid they be.
And so ... what we should be trying to do is to achieve that end -- representation on a par with other Americans -- in the least intrusive and least expensive and complex manner possible. Now, that latter clause will not appear in the bill, and shows nowhere in the articles in the Washington Post on the topic, because its advocates are not looking for simplicity and representation; they're looking for political advantage and more government.
Were they not looking for political advantage and more government, they would immediately see the least intrusive, least expensive and least complex manner available: take the remainder of D.C. that is left after the Federal district as proposed in the bill is excised, form a new Congressional district and return the whole kit and kaboodle to the great State of Maryland whence it came, and add an offsetting congressional seat in Idaho or Utah or somewhere else reliably Republican.
Everyone without an agenda can see the benefits:
(1) All the residential citizens of "Washington, Maryland", or whatever they call it, get their congressman -- with a vote
(2) They get two sitting senators with some seniority
(3) The "representation" problem and the political balance problem are solved
(4) The new city in Maryland no longer has congressional oversight
(5) The citizens of the new city have only to create a city-level government, which exists already
(6) No massive tax needs to be passed to create all the agencies and bureaucracy a state requires
And let me add one other item. The new congressional district is residential and has no industry to speak of, meaning no tax base other than property and income taxes. If it were to be a state, its residents would have to be taxed so heavily that they would soon flee to neighboring Maryland (and some to Virginia). The costs of government would be immense for such an area precisely because it is so Democratic; Democrats believe in government and they believe in entitlement. That's a combination that leads to high budgets and taxes -- and high taxes without an industrial base to support them are a recipe for flight.
So here's the thing. If the actual reason is only about representation and apolitical (and, dear Lord, we know it is not), the desired outcome should be the simplest, i.e., annexation by Maryland. That what is proposed is probably the most complex, expensive, most burdensome on the residents, tells you that the proponents couldn't care less about the enfranchisement of the citizens, and are only in a Senate-stuffing frenzy.
We see through you. We truly do.
Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton
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