Political Quotes

“I want to say a word in response to my colleague about the national political logic of statehood. There is both powerful constitutional principle and national political logic that infuses every statehood admission going back to the very beginning of the Republic. The constitutional principle is simply that of no taxation without representation and the consent of the governed. People who are part of the American Nation should be able to participate equally as complete citizens. That is why Thomas Jefferson set out in the Northwest Ordinance that once a community got to be of a certain size--60,000, which, of course, is less than 10 percent of the size of Washington, D.C., today--that it would be eligible to come into statehood, to petition for statehood. The only real constitutional prerequisite is a republican form of government, that is the Republican Guarantee Clause. That is the high-minded political ideal of constitutional principle, but it is also the case, as I have tried to argue with my colleagues across the aisle, that there is a hardcore political logic that is operated, and we see it in their arguments that they don't want to admit two Democratic Senators to the Republic, which is what former President Trump said in objection to D.C. statehood. He said there is no way we would accept two new Democrat Senators.…”