Norton Releases Remarks from Ceremony Unveiling D.C.’s Second Statue in the Capitol
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, and D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson unveiled D.C.'s second statue in the U.S. Capitol. The statue is of Pierre L'Enfant, which D.C. commissioned more than a decade ago with the hope that it would one day be displayed in the Capitol. Because each state is entitled to two statues in the Capitol, Norton said today is a symbolic step toward statehood for the almost 700,000 residents of the nation's capital.
Norton's remarks from the ceremony, as prepared for delivery, follow.
Statement of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
Unveiling of the District of Columbia's Pierre L'Enfant Statute
February 28, 2022
I am so pleased to be here today with Speaker Pelosi, Whip Clyburn, Mayor Bowser and Council Chairman Mendelson. I would like to express my gratitude to Speaker Pelosi and House Committee on Administration Chair Zoe Lofgren for making today possible.
The District of Columbia also owes a debt of gratitude to Speaker Pelosi, Leader Hoyer and Whip Clyburn for their leadership in passing the D.C. statehood bill, in 2020 and 2021. Those were the first and second times in history either chamber of Congress had ever passed the bill.
Today's unveiling was 20 years in the making. In 2002, I first introduced a bill to give D.C. two statues in the Capitol, as states are entitled to have. D.C. commissioned statues of Frederick Douglass and Pierre L'Enfant in the hope that they would one day join the state statues in the Capitol. However, Republicans fought my bill, calling it tantamount to granting D.C. statehood. It took us 11 years to get D.C.'s first statue in the Capitol, of Frederick Douglass, which is displayed in Emancipation Hall. Today, nine years later, D.C. takes its rightful place among the states in the Capitol with the unveiling of the Pierre L'Enfant statue.
Pierre L'Enfant fought in the Revolutionary War, which was launched to end taxation without representation and to give consent to the governed. Yet, the nearly 700,000 D.C. residents are taxed without voting representation in Congress and Congress has complete authority over D.C.'s local affairs. Statehood is the remedy to this denial of democracy.
D.C. has a larger population than two states. D.C. pays more federal taxes per capita than any state and more in federal taxes than 21 states. D.C. residents have served in every American war since the Revolutionary War. Thirty-thousand current D.C. residents are veterans.
In 2020, the House passed the D.C. statehood bill. Last year, the House passed the bill again, and the Senate held its second-ever hearing on the bill. The bill has a record 45 Senate cosponsors. Today, 54 percent of Americans support statehood for the residents of our nation's capital.
The unveiling of this statue is a milestone in our ongoing march to make D.C. the 51st state. D.C. residents have more than earned it.
Thank you.
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