[philwelch]

That's true. Now what do we do about it?

The option that gets the most traction is DC statehood, but understandably, the overwhelming force behind DC statehood is Democrats who want to automatically get another 2 Senators out of the deal. And the whole point of the District of Columbia was to keep the federal government neutral by not putting it in any state.

A more sensible alternative, which has less traction, is to reducing the District to merely encompass the core government buildings and ceding the rest to the state of Maryland, just as the parts of DC south of the Potomac were ceded to Virginia to form Arlington County. If this were done, Maryland would have to agree to it and the 23rd Amendment, which gives DC three electors in the Electoral College, would probably need to be repealed, or else the land surrounding the Capitol, White House, and Supreme Court buildings would have three electors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocessi...

It's an important issue for sure, but it's a tough nut to crack and the notion of statehood means any resolution to the problem will have a direct partisan effect.

[eli]

The neutrality of the federal government is a nonissue. Federal buildings and parks are already outside city jurisdiction. They have their own police force and they pay no DC taxes. The founders certainly did not intend for 700,000 Americans to live without representation.

Retrocession is a neat idea aside from the fact that none of the people it would affect actually want it.

Statehood is the only option that makes sense. It is unfortunate that DC happens to have demographics that favor one party over the other only because it makes it hard to get things done. But it doesn't change the basic unfairness of the situation. It's not a partisan issue any more than women's suffrage is a partisan issue.

There was a decent plan a few years ago to give a voting member of the House and also granting an additional member to the next state in line based on census data (conveniently a heavily Republican district in Utah, I believe). Unfortunately it fell apart when Republicans added poison pill amendements to alter gun ownership and abortion laws in the District. It was also probably unconstitutional.

[philwelch]

> The neutrality of the federal government is a nonissue.

The White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court should not be placed in any state. Either statehood or retrocession would be best suited by carving those buildings, and the area immediately surrounding them, out of the ceded area and retaining them in a federal district.

> The founders certainly did not intend for 700,000 Americans to live without representation.

The founders created the District of Columbia in the first place; did they not intend anyone to live there?

> There was a decent plan a few years ago to give a voting member of the House and also granting an additional member to the next state in line based on census data (conveniently a heavily Republican district in Utah, I believe).

Statehood would still create 2 new Democratic senators out of 102, so giving the Republicans 1 extra Representative out of over 400 is hardly a "decent plan". You'd have to make up the 2 senators somehow. For instance, if you split the state of Washington in half at the Cascades, Eastern Washington would make a state much, much larger than DC in both area and population with 2 Republican senators.

If representation were the issue then retrocession would be an acceptable solution. The fact that people don't accept retrocession just shows that people really want more Democrats in the Senate.

[eli]

> The White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court should not be placed in any state.

Yes, that's what I was saying. You don't need to change anything; they are already carved out. The White House, Capitol, Supreme Court, along with most of the museums, monuments and parks are already in federal jurisdiction.

> The founders created the District of Columbia in the first place; did they not intend anyone to live there?

Eh, it's complicated. Congress was in a reactionary mood, having recently been chased out of Pennsylvania by an angry armed militia.

> Statehood would still create 2 new Democratic senators out of 102, so giving the Republicans 1 extra Representative out of over 400 is hardly a "decent plan".

Well, it wasn't a plan for statehood. It did not award the district any Senators. It was just for a single voting member of the House.

> You'd have to make up the 2 senators somehow.

This is the part that drives me nuts. No. You really don't. For the same reason that you don't need to offset the end of Jim Crow laws by giving white people extra votes.

First, not everyone in DC is a Democrat. But even if they were, giving them a voice in Congress is not a gift to the DNC -- these are seats that should have been there all along.

> The fact that people don't accept retrocession just shows that people really want more Democrats in the Senate.

That's totally false. We're talking about local politics here and there are local political reasons why DC would not want to be in MD or VA and why VA and MD would not want DC. Here's a fun fact: the DC Republican Party supports statehood. And of course the DC Green/Statehood Party does. (Also consider that adding another chunk of DC residents to VA would likely turn that state from purple to blue.) This is not a partisan issue; it's about basic fairness.

[philwelch]

> This is the part that drives me nuts. No. You really don't. For the same reason that you don't need to offset the end of Jim Crow laws by giving white people extra votes.

That's only true if you compare statehood to the status quo, not if you compare statehood to retrocession. DC would be one of the smallest states in the union; it would go from zero representation to massively disproportionate representation on a similar scale to Wyoming or Alaska.

But, while I'm probably also right from the perspective of justice, I was just talking about the practical politics of getting it done.

> But even if they were, giving them a voice in Congress is not a gift to the DNC -- these are seats that should have been there all along.

"All along"? The land DC is now built on was originally part of Maryland. So "all along", DC residents should have been Maryland residents. If you want to carve out an entirely new blue state where there's never been one before, it's only fair to carve out an entirely new red state where there's never been one before. Eastern Washington has greater area and population than DC and it's as reliably Republican as DC is Democratic; it's a fair swap.