I just watched on C-SPAN as the House passed a bill giving the District of Columbia a representative with full voting rights in the House. The Legislation also gives Utah an additional Congressional seat as part of a bi-partisan compromise, thus raising the total number of House members from 435 to 437.
Despite this show of good will and the obvious merits of giving the more than half a million D.C. residents full representation in our government, the majority of Republicans in Congress voted against the bill. Jerks.
The last time this issue came up, they succeeded in defeating it by tying the bill down with an NRA-backed measure to undermine D.C.'s ban on semi-automatic weapons.
I’m not sure what happens next - whether the bill faces a Republican filibuster in the Senate or a veto threat from our illustrious Commander-in-Chief. But hopefully this will mark the long overdue culmination of an effort to grant D.C. citizens their full rights under the Constitution.
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