Eleanor Holmes Norton: “This week was, for all intents and purposes, D.C. Statehood Week in the Capital. I am pleased that, today, Senator…”

“This week was, for all intents and purposes, D.C. Statehood Week in the Capital. I am pleased that, today, Senator Carper has announced that he is introducing the Washington, D.C. Admission Act to make the District of Columbia the 51st State. I am grateful to Senator Carper, who garnered a record number of Senate cosponsors last year and has been a most vigorous champion of statehood for the District of Columbia. I come to the floor for my first time this session to discuss D.C. statehood because we have many new Members who may be under the mistaken impression that the 700,000 people who live in your Nation's Capital are treated in the same rights that your own residents are. I beg to differ. In this city, the citizens do not have each and every right in this Congress. To be sure, we have what is called home rule, and I will later indicate that even that is limited. The reasons for this unique place, for our Capital, left without the full rights of other citizens, has to do with a quirk, an accident, where the Framers came to believe that the Capital should not be part of a State because they were, in the beginning, parts of various States, and they felt that they could not then control what the Capital would do. Well, of course, they don't want a Capital to be part of a State, but they didn't really envision statehood, the Capital as a State, because they were thinking of the Thirteen Colonies.…”