Posted on 02/11/2009 8:58:36 AM PST by Perdogg
A Senate committee approved a bill today that would give the District its first full seat in the House of Representatives, setting up a crucial vote by the full chamber sometime in coming months.
The Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee passed the legislation 11 to 1 at its first business meeting in the new Congress. The lone "no" vote was cast by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.
It's not clear when the legislation will reach the Senate floor for what is likely to be the key vote on the measure. In 2007, a similar bill died in the Senate after falling three votes short of the 60 needed to head off a filibuster. But proponents believe they are now in better shape thanks to Democratic gains in the last election.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Lieberman and Hatch are the sponsors of the bill. Orrin felt that UT was cheated out of the 2000 Census. The RATS assured him that Utah will get an extra seat in the 2010 Census.
Don't bother.
Flagrantly, facially unconstitutional. The action here is in the courts.
And, BTW, I have a solution to this problem.
I favor the establishment of the 51st state of New Columbia, to include all residential areas of the District, PLUS Prince Georges and Montgomery County, Maryland and Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudon County, Virginia.
This can turn VA and MD red, while letting every RAT vote count.
What do you think?
They set us up for the cancers that followed.
No we wouldn’t have been better off if Al Gore had been elected. That’s utter nonsense.
I doubt spending would have been as bad.
Imagine you fell into a coma and woke up in 4 years. Think you would be in for a big shock?
The Rats are going to go for broke. Everything they can get according to their world view and vision for the US. The GOP sat on their hands and burped a lot when they ran congress and the WH.
So, the Govt will get to vote for itself??
Domestic spending would have been worse. Less spending on military and Iraq with more 9/11’s and increased terrorism. yeah it would have just great.
Depends. If we were spending enough domestically, then no need for more 9/11s.
“nobody has to live in DC right now” But since it has a fun young central city lots of people want to. Also, the housing prices in DC are pretty stable.
It isn’t a naked power grab, because the new voting DC delegate is to be balanced by a new voting Utah delegate who will probably be Republican, or at least conservative. Furthermore, the Virginia part of DC was returned to them years ago. When was the last time you looked at a map? There are some in DC who favor becoming part of Maryland except for a small Federal enclave, but then Utah would have to wait until the 2010 census to get its extra representative.
Highest amount of money spent on public schools.
Lowest test scores.
What the RATs wanted was for DC to get a vote in this Congress (which is unconstitutional), and fished for GOP votes by promising that there would also be a 437th House member in the Congress that would be given to the state that was next in line for a House seat after the 2000 Census (which was Utah, which got robbed of the 435th seat by NC because the Census wouldn’t count Utah residents temporarily out of the country on Mormon missions and used a form of statistical sampling called “hot-deck imputation” to assume that apartments and houses where they don’t answer the Census, are never there when Census workers visit, and the neighbors don’t know who if anyone lives there should be credited with having as many residents as the neighborhood average) to be elected at-large (which is also unconstitutional). Orrin Hatch has absolutely *nothing* to worry about regarding the 2010 Census, since Utah will easily gain a fourth CD to be first elected in 2012.
Woah! They slid this in under the radar!
You know what’s even scarier? Lets say we have an election where no one gets a majority of electoral votes. That means the House of Representatives chooses the President. But it isn’t done by individual vote, but by polling each state’s delegation, with each state having one vote.
Does DC get a vote under this bill, as if it were a state? Does the DC rep vote with another delegation like MD or VA? Does he have no vote? I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t addressed at all in the bill. I’m definitely going to give it a read as soon as I have time.
Does anyone here actually have a Republican senator? If so, I’d write to suggest that any land in DC where residential housing is be deeded back to an adjoining state so that those people have proper representation. Just limit the District where the government offices are. That should take care of it.
What??? Lindsey did not vote the same as McCain? Are they having a b!tch fight????
huh? First of all domestic spending would have been greater under Al Gore. But in any case domestic spending is irrelevant here. With a liberal like Al Gore as President there would have been multiple 9/11s. The terrorists would not have had anything to fear.
Now, DC has as much population as several small states.
DC has more population than Wyoming and the others rank above DC or as of 2006 figures.
What would be fair from a Federal elective standpoint is to allocate the 600,000 or so residents among say VA and MD so that they could be included in a vote for Presidential Electors and Congressional Representatives/Senators. Keep them local for City Gov. under the Feds.
I don't know if that's true. Bush spent like a drunken sailor, aided and abetted by a Congress of his own party. Would a GOP Congress have allowed a President Gore to do that?
Plus, as OBL pointed out, he could cause us to damage ourselves through spending (remember the USSR) with a very small investment himself. There wouldn't have been the need for many 9/11s if Gore spent as badly as Pres. Bush.
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