On the recordApril 22, 2010
This week a historic vote to give the 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia here in the Nation's capital voting representation in the House was due on the floor and had to be pulled down but only for now. I come to thank the majority of Members of Congress, of this House, who have voted for the right of the people of the District to have a vote on this floor, especially the 22 Republicans and the 219 Democrats, who gave the D.C. House Voting Rights Act a straight-up vote in 2007 when it passed 241-177. I thank Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer for their invaluable and unfailing support until the very end. I thank Majority Leader Harry Reid for bringing a historic first-time vote for the bill where it passed the Senate. I thank Chairman John Conyers for his unyielding support of D.C. voting rights. I thank former Representative Tom Davis whose idea it was to pair Democratic D.C. with Republican Utah, the most perfect example of a bipartisan bill ever to hit this floor where each side benefits equally. I thank Ilir Zherka of D.C. Vote and the coalition he put together and Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights, who were steadfast and creative throughout this process. The Senate for the first time, in fact, enacted the bill, but it had a gun amendment that took down the District's gun safety laws, yet the District's gun safety laws have been held to be constitutional now by the courts.
