[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 70 (Thursday, April 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S2138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     WASHINGTON, D.C. ADMISSION ACT

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on DC statehood, another matter, today 
the House of Representatives will pass a bill granting the District of 
Columbia official statehood. I applaud my House Democratic colleagues 
for taking this important step toward recognizing the full citizenship 
of more than 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia.
  This is a matter of just representation. Our system of government is 
designed to give everyone in our country a voice in forging their own 
destiny. Most citizens do that by voting for Members of Congress and 
Senators from their States to represent them in this temple of 
democracy to advocate for their interests and to voice their concerns.
  The District of Columbia has more residents than Vermont and Wyoming 
and nearly the same as Delaware, Alaska, and several other States, and 
they bear the full responsibilities and duties of citizenship, like 
residents in all those other States. DC residents can be summoned for 
jury duty. They have served in every war since the American Revolution. 
They pay Federal income taxes, just like residents from every other 
State. You can learn that from any license plate outside this building. 
Yet they are denied real representation in Congress--in the words DC 
borrowed from the Founding Fathers, ``taxation without 
representation.''
  Sadly, the debate over DC statehood has taken a rather dark turn. 
Some of my colleagues on the other side, rather than fashion any 
argument on the merits, have taken to denigrating the basic worth of 
residents of the District of Columbia--a part of our country that is 47 
percent African American.
  One Member of the minority party went so far as to say lawmakers 
should ``go out to where the real people are across the country and ask 
them what they think [about DC statehood].'' ``[Get] out to where the 
real people are.'' Bigotry, bigotry, bigotry. I shouldn't have to 
remind my colleagues that it is shockingly inappropriate to imply that 
lives and occupations and rights of DC's residents are somehow less 
than their fellow citizens in other ``more real'' and almost always 
more White parts of the country.
  We all know that the minority party opposes DC statehood because it 
fears giving political power and representation to American citizens if 
they might not vote for Republicans. It smacks of the effort going on 
right now in Republican legislatures all across the country to pass 
laws that overwhelmingly make it harder for minorities, poorer 
Americans, and younger Americans to vote.
  The far right, the hard right--which seems to be so dominant in the 
party on the other side--is so afraid of losing political power and so 
unwilling to appeal to anyone who doesn't already agree with them that 
their strategy has become to restrict voting rights and deny equal 
representation in Congress to hundreds of thousands of Americans. So DC 
statehood, unfortunately, is part of a continuing thread of not 
allowing people their right to vote, to representation, that seems to 
be growing in the Republican Party, particularly here in the Senate and 
in legislatures throughout the country, unfortunately.
  Self-government, voting rights: These are not Democratic rights. 
These are not Republican rights. They are American rights. They are 
issues of fairness and democracy. It is not about right and left; it is 
about right and wrong.
  DC statehood is an idea whose time has come

                          ____________________