DC is on the road to getting their voting Representative in Congress. Today the Senate Government Relations Committee voted 11-1 in support of a plan to give the District of Columbia and Utah an extra voting Member of the House of Representatives.
To be plainspoken: This is total and complete bullshit.
Our Founders made it very simple:
Clause 1: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.Clause 2: No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
Last I checked, ‘Districts’ didn’t count as ‘States’, nor do territories, regions, counties, townships, parks, cities, basements or other such locations.
Plain and simple, this is a power grab. An effort to increase the Democrat majority in Congress. Now, as Republicans we’re supposed to look away because Utah was awarded the extra seat in Congress, and that seat will most assuredly be a Republican. Unfortunately, this extra seat was awarded because Utah “is the next state in line to receive an additional seat based on 2000 census figures.”
Great. So what happens when the new figures come out after the 2010 census? Who knows where that seat will go?
No matter who gets the seat, forsaking the intent of the founders and abandoning principle just to satisfy the whiny federal bureaucrats who populate DC isn’t acceptable. We can’t simply pick and choose what we want to enforce in the US Constitution. Now, if DC wants to allow itself to be annexed by Maryland or Virginia, fine. But until then, quit bitching.
