Press Releases
Pingree Votes to End Washington D.C.'s Taxation Without RepresentationMaine’s 1st District Congresswoman Helps to Pass Bill Making District of Columbia Nation’s 51st State
Washington,
June 26, 2020
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) today voted for H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, which would make the District of Columbia America’s 51st state and ensure the city’s more than 702,000 residents are finally fully represented in the U.S. Congress. “Washington, D.C. has more residents than the states of Vermont and Wyoming, who pay more federal taxes than the residents of 22 individual states. Yet they do not enjoy equal political rights, as we saw with the President’s orders to deploy the military on city streets. It’s time to finally give Washington D.C.’s taxpaying residents a vote in Congress and make it our 51st state,” said Pingree, who is an original co-sponsor of H.R. 51. “It has been 27 years since Congress considered D.C. Statehood. In nearly three decades, the city’s population and its contributions to the U.S. Treasury have continued to grow. Washington D.C.’s residents have waited long enough to be fully enfranchised.” H.R. 51 was introduced by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton’s D.C. non-voting Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. If signed into law, D.C.’s eight wards would become a state called Douglass Commonwealth. The State of Douglass Commonwealth would have two U.S. senators and one U.S. House member to represent its population.
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