Saturday, 20 September 2014 00:00

Norton Says First Senate Hearing in Twenty Years Takes DC Statehood to a New Level

Written by Jon Amar | Comm Director for Congresswoman Eleanor Norton

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said today that Senator Thomas Carper’s (D-DE) announcement of the first District of Columbia statehood hearing in more than two decades highlights “a season of unusual progress for D.C. statehood.” Senator Carper, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is one of the cosponsors of the Senate companion bill to Norton’s D.C. statehood bill, the New Columbia Admission Act.

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), who as Senate Majority Leader rarely cosponsors bills, made an enthusiastic public announcement of his cosponsorship at the unveiling of D.C.’s Frederick Douglass in June of 2013. The top three other Democratic Senate leaders, Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA), are also cosponsors. There are 99 cosponsors of the House version of the bill, close to the record of 101 House cosponsors for the bill since it was first introduced in 1983. The Senate version of the bill is only one cosponsor away from a record 17 cosponsors since it was first introduced in 1984. The hearing, entitled “Equality for the District of Columbia: Discussing the Implications of S. 132, the New Columbia Admission Act of 2013,” will be held on Monday, September 15, 2014 at 3:00 p.m.

“As chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Carper has a great many responsibilities, but the statehood hearing he announced today shows how seriously he has taken his District of Columbia jurisdiction. The Carper statehood hearing, the President’s endorsement of statehood in July, and Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement of his cosponsorship show a troika of leadership that demonstrates the growing strength of equal citizenship for D.C. residents.”

When Norton came to Congress in 1991, her first bill was the New Columbia Admission Act. She got the only House vote on statehood in 1993. Almost two-thirds of the Democrats voted for the bill and one Republican voted for it, giving the bill a strong start, but the Democrats lost the majority in the next Congress. Since that vote, Norton, while in the minority, was able to get the D.C. House Voting Rights Act through the House in 2007 and the Senate in 2009, which would have given D.C. a voting House member, had it not been derailed by a National Rifle Association-backed amendment that would have wiped out D.C.’s gun safety laws.

Link

Read 26717 times Last modified on Tuesday, 28 October 2014 19:55

Sen. Warren on TPP

TPP Calls

Feed not found.

Latest News

  • Trump administration's voter suppression attempts ahead of midterms are not only 'morally wrong,' they're illegal +

    Trump administration's voter suppression attempts ahead of midterms are not only 'morally wrong,' they're illegal Imagine going to the polls on Election Day and discovering that your ballot could be collected and reviewed by the Read More
  • ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' +

    ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' Read More
  • As Florence Makes Landfall, Poorest Once More Likely to Suffer Most From Storm's Destruction +

    As Florence Makes Landfall, Poorest Once More Likely to Suffer Most From Storm's Destruction "These disasters drag into the light exactly who is already being thrown away," notes Naomi Klein Read More
  • How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. +

    How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. Read More
  • How One Dying Man Changed The Debate About The Tax Bill +

    How One Dying Man Changed The Debate About The Tax Bill What mattered was that he showed up — that he put himself in front of the people whose opinions on Read More
  • Democrats Just Won a Major Victory in Virginia +

    Democrats Just Won a Major Victory in Virginia On a night of Democratic victories, one of the most significant wins came in Virginia, where the party held onto Read More
  • Repealing the Jim Crow law that keeps 1.5 million Floridians from voting. +

    Repealing the Jim Crow law that keeps 1.5 million Floridians from voting. A seismic political battle that could send shockwaves all the way to the White House was launched last week in Read More
  • Nuclear Weapons: Who Pays, Who Profits? +

    Nuclear Weapons: Who Pays, Who Profits? In an interview with Reuters conducted a month after he took office, Donald Trump asserted that the U.S. had “fallen Read More
  • Sessions issues sweeping new criminal charging policy +

    Sessions issues sweeping new criminal charging policy Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the sweeping criminal charging policy of former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. and directed Read More
  • 1
  • 2

Featured TPP, TITIP and TISA News

  • Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch on the Demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Lame-Duck Session of Congress +

    Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch on the Demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Lame-Duck Session of Congress The news that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have given up on passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is Read More
  • No, Trump Didn’t Kill the TPP — Progressives Did +

    No, Trump Didn’t Kill the TPP — Progressives Did If you read the headlines, Donald Trump’s election has killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The headlines have it wrong. Read More
  • "It's About Letting Giant Corporations Rig the Rules": Warren Skewers TPP +

    Democratic senator from Massachusetts offers fresh criticism of trade deal in new video Read More
  • WTO Authorizes Over $1 Billion in Sanctions Unless U.S. Guts Popular Country-of-Origin Meat Labels, Disproving Obama Claim That Trade Pacts Can’t Undermine Public Interest Policies +

    WTO Authorizes Over $1 Billion in Sanctions Unless U.S. Guts Popular Country-of-Origin Meat Labels, Disproving Obama Claim That Trade Pacts Can’t Undermine Public Interest Policies Today’s World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against the U.S. country-of-origin meat labels (COOL) that consumers rely on to make informed Read More
  • Trans-Pacific Partnership: Exporting U.S. Meat, Dairy, and Disease +

    Trans-Pacific Partnership: Exporting U.S. Meat, Dairy, and Disease Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade agreement between 12 nations—ended earlier this week. The likely passage of the agreement means Read More
  • Protesting Big Pharma 'Death Sentence,' Cancer Patient Arrested Outside TPP Talks +

    Protesting Big Pharma 'Death Sentence,' Cancer Patient Arrested Outside TPP Talks 'For thousands of women to die unnecessary of breast cancer because of the TPP is a horrible, cruel, premeditated, and Read More
  • Obama trade agenda inches toward passage with Senate vote on ‘fast track’ +

    Obama trade agenda inches toward passage with Senate vote on ‘fast track’ A razor-thin Senate vote Tuesday put President Obama on the cusp of claiming victory for his ambitious international trade agenda, Read More
  • Fast Track Down +

    Fast Track Down The Fast Track trade authority package was rejected Friday because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the Read More
  • Shock: Congress Plots to Pay for Reviled TPP Deal by Raiding Medicare +

    Shock: Congress Plots to Pay for Reviled TPP Deal by Raiding Medicare It just doesn't get more cynical than this. Note that we're talking about a bipartisan trade deal, thanks to 14 Read More
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

Put Trade in the Spotlight

CWA devised a simple plan for which they were united suited: drag TPP out of the shadows and into the light - one city at a time - using a medium they understand intimately: Daily Newspapers!

Two CWA members - Dave Felice in Denver, CO and Madelyn Elder in Portland, OR have started the ball rolling. We just need to keep up the momentum.

Button-ShareTPPWithNewspaper