Commissioner Deleon to Introduce DC Statehood Resolution

At ANC 5C’s next regularly scheduled meeting, Commissioner Deleon will introduce several resolutions, including one in support of DC Statehood. The Resolution, which is poised to pass, will be sent to Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and House Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Both committees oversee the District of Columbia. The full text of the Resolution can be seen below:

• Whereas, the District of Columbia is the only political and geographical entity within the United States of America whose citizens bear the responsibilities of citizenship, including taxation and Selective Service registration, without sharing in the full rights and privileges of citizenship; and
• Whereas, over 192,000 citizens of the District have fought in our armed forces in service to our nation in every war and foreign conflict; and
• Whereas, in Fiscal Year 2012, District residents and businesses paid $20.7 billion in federal taxes; more than the taxes collected from 19 states and the highest federal taxes per capita; and
• Whereas, the District balanced its budget every year since Fiscal Year 1997; and
• Whereas, the Congress has recklessly fomented repeated fiscal crises, and a federal government shutdown would force the government of the District to close despite having a balanced budget; and
• Whereas, the Congress and the President have restricted the District from spending local tax dollars as our Council and Mayor have directed; and
• Whereas, the District government receives less federal funds as a percentage of its budget than Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, and North Dakota; and is on par with Alabama, Montana, Vermont, and West Virginia; and eight states receive as much or more aid than the District; and
• Whereas, the continuous intrusions of the United States Congress into the local municipal affairs of the District are affronts to a republican and federal form of government that occur nowhere else in the country; and
• Whereas, the Congress has final approval on all District laws, unlike any other jurisdiction in the country; and
• Whereas, District residents are subject to all of the laws of the United States, as well as treaties made with foreign governments, without ever having consented through Congressional representation to such laws; and
• Whereas, the District has a population of more than 660,000 people, which is a larger population than Wyoming and Vermont; and
• Whereas, the District has a larger population than most states when they joined the United States, which needed only 60,000 people under the Enabling Act of 1802; and
• Whereas, the Congress has bartered our freedoms and constrained our liberty through numerous appropriations bills, riders, and like instruments; and
• Whereas, the Congress can repeal the Home Rule Act of 1973 and our limited self-governance, but cannot redefine or repeal Statehood; and
• Whereas, in the only public referendum on the issue, the majority of District residents voted overwhelmingly in 1980 in favor of Statehood; and
• Whereas, Statehood is the only way to guarantee the citizens of the District our irrevocable and inalienable right to full citizenship;

• THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5C demands Statehood for the residential and commercial portions of the District of Columbia, in order that our second-class citizen status be permanently abolished.