[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 606]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 STATEHOOD FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the House to inform the House that 
I have today filed a bill to give full voting rights in this House to 
the people of the District of Columbia, who are second per capita in 
the Federal income tax they pay to support this government, this House 
and this Senate, and who have fought and died in every war since the 
creation of a Republic, including the outrageous war where we now 
serve.
  I come in gratitude that the House is now governed by my own party, 
which for decades has supported not only what my bill today would 
afford, a vote in the House, but a vote in both Houses, and I come to 
thank my own caucus for that support. But I also come in some 
frustration and with some impatience. I come in frustration that I am 
still a second-class citizen in my own House.
  Until I can represent the people of the District of Columbia as a 
full American citizen, this frustration and impatience will continue.
  I had hoped to be able to vote on the bills we all ran on that are 
now before the House. I came to speak today, but once again, when the 
vote came, I could not vote. I couldn't vote because I was not even 
allowed the vote in the Committee of the Whole that I won when the 
Democrats were last in power.
  My people in the District have chastised me for even trying to get 
the Committee of the Whole vote. They perhaps recognize that it is a 
hubris that I wished at least to vote in this House as we convened, and 
they are perhaps right. They tell me, we are not in any way interested 
in another second-class vote, Eleanor. It is time for first-class 
rights for the people of the District of Columbia.
  So I accept their chastisement and pledge to them that I will not 
rest, now that Democrats are in power, until Democrats do as they have 
always said, that they sought power to do, to give votes to the people 
of the District of Columbia.
  I have tried everything, I have tried statehood, I have tried 
Committee of the Whole. It is time to try the real thing, Mr. Speaker, 
when there are 650,000 people who pay their taxes and have met every 
obligation, and are not recognized as citizens in their own House and 
send somebody to the House that is not even recognized to vote on this 
House, not even in the Committee of the Whole.
  I come to express their frustration, to say I am leaving all that 
behind. I have introduced the bill they want. I accept their 
chastisement. We want our votes. We want it in the 110th Congress, and 
we want it now. I speak for them as a woman who knows what it means to 
be a second-class citizen, and who, once she left the District went to 
law school, said, I shall never again be a second-class citizen. Yes, I 
grew up in segregated schools in this town, in segregated Washington. 
That is what it meant to be a second-class citizen. Now to be a second-
class civics citizen, after 200 years, has become too much to bear.
  So I have introduced a bill to make it absolutely clear, as my people 
have said I must do today, that there is boiling determination among 
the people of the District of Columbia to get this vote. Not in 
January. We have respected the right of the Congress to come forward 
with the bills that are of great importance to the country, but those 
of us who believe that the vote is basic, is basic to Democrats, is 
basic to America, I believe we should move on after January and finally 
keep the promise that at least Democrats have made to the House and 
that I commend Republicans for getting us very close to in the 109th 
Congress.
  This is the 110th, Mr. Speaker. This is the moment of truth. This is 
the moment when the Democrats have not only the opportunity, but the 
obligation to give a vote in the 110th Congress to the people of the 
District of Columbia.

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