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[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 7, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E26-E27]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

  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

                        Tuesday, January 6, 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 
Orrin 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 
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. House 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 picking up arms to fight for liberation on the promise of no 
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 for residents of the Nation's capital that the first 
soldiers were promised and for which today's soldiers continue to give 
their lives and their service for our country. 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 has always 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 
Voting Rights Act. My special thanks to Tom Davis, my good friend and a 
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 a member of 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 
a big quantum leap in strength it never had before through a superior 
indispensable grassroots organization that was born to lead the 
successful lobbying strategy here and nationwide and that 
singlehandedly raised the funds necessary to make D.C.'s struggle a 
national campaign.
  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

[[Page E27]]

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 our 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 ways 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 that was possible, including the two-day debate followed by the 
first and only 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 in both the House and 
Senate. Our struggle has always been driven by what was required but we 
also have insisted on all that was possible, as with the District's 
first floor vote, the Committee of the Whole vote on some but not all 
matters on the House floor and the Home Rule Act, the path-breaking 
bill 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, virtually never does all that is required at one time, even 
granting a vote to American citizens who are second per capita in 
Federal income taxes paid to support their Government and served in 
every war, including the war that created our country. 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 until achieving their full rights as American citizens. Today's 
bill is another big step to achieve full and equal citizenship.

                          ____________________
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