Taxation without Representation

A House committee has now approved a bill proposing to give the District of Columbia a real vote in the House of Representatives.

What a great idea. District residents (including me, I should disclose) are U.S. citizens. We pay taxes, serve in the armed forces, do our jury duty, and fulfill all the other obligations of citizenship. But we have no representation in Congress. It's a national scandal. Giving us a vote in the House is only a half-measure -- we need Senators, too -- but at least it would be a half-measure in the right direction. We should have representation like anyone else.

There's just one, small problem. The bill is blatantly unconstitutional.

Article I, section 2 of the Constitution provides that "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States." D.C. is not a state. So it can't have representation in the House. End of story.

Sorry. No one wants the District to have full voting rights more than I do, but it can't be done in an unconstitutional way.

Congress is relying on opinions from some big legal guns, including Ken Starr, Viet Dinh, and my favorite former federal judge, Patricia M. Wald (I clerked for her). Their opinions point out that courts have approved treating the District as a state in some other contexts. But I just can't believe the Supreme Court would go for it in this context. Representation is basic. The Constitution says that Congress is made up of representatives of the states. D.C. is not a state.

The best solution, as I wrote years ago, is to give the District back to Maryland. The Virginia part of the District was given back to Virginia in the 19th century. If we reunited the District with Maryland, then the city government could handle the city-level functions, the state government could do the state-level functions, and Congress could do the national stuff. The District would be represented at every level. We'd be like any other city in the nation. It works everywhere else, why not here?

That would probably require a constitutional amendment too. But I say, first let's figure out the right structure for the District, and then we can overcome the obstacles to getting there.