[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 7, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E29-E30]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




THE INTRODUCTION OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOUSE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 
                                  2009

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, January 7, 2009

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, today I am introducing, I believe for the 
last time, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, 
simultaneously with our Senate partners, Senators Joe Lieberman and 
Orin Hatch. The bill we introduce today also will add two permanent 
House seats, the first increase in 96 years. It therefore carries a 
triple bonus: the first vote for the District of Columbia after 212 
years, an additional seat for Utah, and two new permanent seats for the 
House of Representatives itself. The citizens of the District of 
Columbia are deeply grateful for the persistent partnership and a 
bipartisan dedication that Senator Lieberman and Senator Hatch continue 
to bring to this bill, and for the continued support of Utah Governor 
Jon Huntsman.
  Because of the importance to the city of achieving the vote after 
more than two centuries, the D.C. Voting Rights Act is my first bill of 
the 111th Congress. This year we introduce the bill as members of the 
armed services from the District of Columbia are again engaged in war 
abroad. In gratitude for the service of our residents serving today, 
and of those who have served since our country was founded, I dedicate 
the bill this year to the first soldier from the District to die for 
his country in the Iraq War, 21-year-old D.C. National Guard 
Specialist, Daryl Dent, and to the District's first unknown soldier to 
die after he picked up arms to fight for liberation on the promise of 
taxation without representation. Although two centuries apart, the 
first to die in these wars had in common fighting for the vote. Our 
first residents here fought in the War for Independence. Specialist 
Dent gave his life ensuring the vote for Iraqi citizens, a right he did 
not live to get for himself
  Today's bill is the first in the Free and Equal series of bills that 
I will introduce this session to complete the full roster of 
citizenship rights the residents of the Nation's capital, that the 
first soldiers were promised and for which today's soldiers continue to 
give their lives. There can be no doubt that the revolutionaries who 
invented America's most quoted national slogan did not create a new 
nation in order to get the vote, only to turn around and deny the vote 
to the citizens of their capital.
  This bill was passed by the House in the 110th Congress, thanks to 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has long fought for the rights of D.C. 
residents and personally insisted that this legislation go forward as a 
bill of historic importance, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, my long-time 
regional friend, who has been an especially outspoken champion of this 
bill; Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, who gave the bill his priority 
attention, emblematic of the strong support he always has brought to 
our rights throughout his long service in Congress; and Chairman Henry 
Waxman, who as ranking member and then as chair of the Oversight and 
Government Reform committee, also was a central figure in ensuring 
passage; and many others among my colleagues in both chambers and both 
parties, who have made special efforts for passage of the D.C. House

[[Page E30]]

Voting Rights Act. My special thanks to Tom Davis, my good friend and 
strong partner on this bill, who retired at the end of last session. It 
was Tom's idea to pair the District with Utah after Utah narrowly 
missed getting a seat following the last census. I will always be 
grateful to Tom for the unfailing bipartisan spirit that characterized 
all his work as chair of the Oversight and Government Reform committee, 
especially his consistent respect for home rule and for affording me 
every opportunity to fashion this bill when he was in the Republican 
majority and I was a minority member. I must also thank the two 
important coalitions of organizations that have led this fight, the 
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, whose leader, Wade Henderson 
also has been a close advisor throughout the many years of this 
struggle, and D.C. Vote, and its leader Ilir Zherka, who gave our bill 
indispensable strength through a superior grassroots organization that 
led the successful lobbying strategy here and nationwide and 
singlehandedly raised the funds necessary to take D.C.'s struggle 
national.
  There is every reason to believe that the D.C. bill will finally 
prevail this year. The bill easily passed in the House in 2007, and now 
has an estimated 64 votes in the Senate, considerably more than the 60 
needed. The addition of seven Democratic senators, who replaced seven 
Republican opponents of the bill, together with the eight remaining 
Republicans who supported the bill, should assure that the bill will 
have significantly more than the 57 Senate votes it received in 2007. 
We are equally encouraged that President-elect Barack Obama, who was a 
co-sponsor of the bill in the Senate, will sign the D.C. House Voting 
Rights Act when it reaches his desk.
  My service in Congress has been defined by the search for a way to 
get full representation for the city where my family has lived since 
before the Civil War. That search has been guided by the pursuit of the 
maximum possible, including the two-day debate followed by a vote on 
statehood more than 10 years ago, the vote I won in the Committee of 
the Whole during my second term, and the ``No Taxation Without 
Representation'' Act for votes both in the House and Senate. The 
struggle has been driven always by what was required but also by what 
was possible, as with the Committee of the Whole vote on some but not 
all matters on the House floor and the Home Rule Act, the path-breaking 
enacted before I came to Congress that gave the city partial self-
government.
  The Congress which has always been divided by regional and parochial 
concerns, never does what is clearly right, even granting a vote to 
American citizens who are second per capita in federal income taxes 
paid to support their government and have served in every war, 
including the war that created our country driven by the slogan of ``No 
Taxation without Representation.'' However, the people of the District 
of Columbia have never ceased demanding the full measure of their 
rights, while insisting on all that is possible for each generation. 
The people of the nation's proud capital will never give up on our full 
rights as American citizens.

                          ____________________