Senate Panel Hears String of Impassioned Appeals
Bill Has Growing List of Co-Sponsors Despite Fears of Filibuster, Presidential Veto

By Yolanda Woodlee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) argued yesterday on behalf of giving the District a full vote in the House, telling a Senate committee that the city's voters deserve their long-sought voice in Congress.

"They pay taxes, vote in presidential elections and serve in the military. Yet more than a half a million Americans do not have a full voting representative in Congress," said Hatch, whose support is viewed by D.C. activists as crucial in winning the House seat.

Hatch and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) are co-sponsoring legislation that would give a House seat to the heavily Democratic District and another seat to the state next in line to pick up a representative. That state is Hatch's -- Republican-leaning Utah.

A similar version of the bill passed the House last month.

"This is a historic time for the citizens of the District of Columbia and a unique opportunity for Utah to receive a long overdue fourth congressional seat," Hatch said. "I intend to make the most of it and hope that my fellow Senate colleagues will support me."

Hatch made his remarks at a hearing before the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The panel is chaired by Lieberman, who said he plans to have the committee move forward with the bill by early next month.

"Giving the residents of D.C. voting representation in the House is not only the right and just thing to do -- it has popular support," Lieberman said. "Nonetheless, we do not have an easy road ahead of us in Congress."

The bill faces a potential filibuster in the Senate and the threat of a White House veto. Critics of the legislation say it violates the constitutional requirement that House members come from states.

D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) also appeared before the committee, along with Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District's nonvoting House delegate, and others.

Fenty said the framers of the Constitution did not intend "to deprive residents of the nation's capital of their fundamental right to vote. It goes beyond good sense that our lack of democracy continues more than 200 years later."

Democrats and Republicans alike said that District residents, who pay about $6 billion in federal taxes -- the second-highest per capita -- should be granted a House vote.

Former Republican congressman Jack Kemp also spoke in favor of the bill and said his party has "a chance to be recorded on the right side of a civil rights issue."

Advocates for D.C. voting rights expressed optimism, particularly after two more senators signed onto the legislation, which now has 12 co-sponsors. Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) added their names to a list that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"I am ashamed of our country that we have not fixed this," said McCaskill, adding that she has supported voting rights in the House for D.C. residents since she was a state lawmaker in 1983.

"This was a victory for the voting-rights movement," said Ilir Zherka, executive director of DC Vote, a nonprofit advocacy group. "Senator Orrin Hatch made a very strong case why this bill is constitutional."

During her appearance before the committee, Norton tied the voting-rights issue to her experience fighting for civil rights in the 1960s. She became emotional, saying the bill means "a great deal to me personally."

She said her great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, an early District resident, "came searching not for a vote but for freedom."

Now, she said, the District's residents deserve to have a vote as well. She rebuffed the argument that it is unconstitutional. "Don't hang it around the neck of the framers of the Constitution," she said.