Norton Calls on House Republicans for Delegate Vote in 114th Congress
WASHINGTON, DC – Before the 114th Congress convenes, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) has begun the fight to restore an equal citizenship right District of Columbia residents once had, but was taken away by House Republicans on the first day of the 112th Congress. Norton will be joined by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Kerwin Miller, a D.C. veteran and former director of Veterans Affairs for the city, at a press conference on Monday, January 5, at 10:30 a.m., in Cannon 421 to call on House Republicans to restore the District's vote on the House floor in the Committee of the Whole in the rules of the 114th Congress.
WHO:
-Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
-D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser
-Kerwin Miller, D.C. Veteran
WHEN: Monday, January 5, 2015, 10:30 a.m.
WHERE: Cannon 421
BACKGROUND:
The Committee of the Whole vote allows the Delegate representing the District to vote on amendments on the House floor. Although a revote would occur if such a vote were decisive, that almost never occurs.
The Congresswoman had first secured D.C. a vote in the Committee of the Whole during the 103rd Congress, when Democrats were in the majority. Norton, shortly after becoming a Member of the House, proposed the Committee of the Whole vote in a legal memorandum to House Democratic leaders, who, after vetting it with outside counsel, agreed that the vote was constitutional. A federal district court and a federal appeals court upheld its constitutionality after Republicans challenged it in court. When House Republicans regained the majority in the 104th Congress, however, they eliminated D.C.'s vote in the Committee of the Whole. In the 110th Congress, Democrats regained control of the House and restored the vote. On the first day as the new majority, House Republicans adopted rules for the 112th Congress that stripped D.C. residents of their vote on the House floor in the Committee of the Whole.
Earlier this month, Norton sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX) requesting that the House rules for the 114th Congress permit the District of Columbia delegate to vote on the House floor in the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union.
In September, Norton testified at a Senate committee hearing on her bill to make D.C. the 51st state, a bill which has a record number of House and Senate cosponsors. The hearing was the first congressional hearing on D.C. statehood in more than 20 years. Two days later, she testified at the House Rules Committee to try to retrieve the vote in the Committee of the Whole, a vote she won shortly after being elected to Congress.