Norton to Lay Out Case for D.C. Statehood on House Floor, This Afternoon

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As another lead up to the District of Columbia statehood hearing in the Senate on Monday, September 15, the Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today announced that Norton has gotten special time to speak about District of Columbia statehood, and the reasons for the Monday Senate hearing, during the second special order hour around 2:00 p.m. today after the last House votes of the week. Yesterday, Norton announced that her D.C. statehood bill, the New Columbia Admission Act, set a record of 104 House cosponsors, the most since the bill was first introduced in the House, in 1983, by her predecessor, Congressman Walter E. Fauntroy, who set the previous record of 101 House cosponsors for the bill, in 1987. The number is now 105. This past Monday, Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and sponsor of the Senate companion bill, announced the first District of Columbia statehood hearing in more than two decades. Yesterday, the Senate version of the bill tied the record of 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. Norton will testify at the hearing. Her special order hour today can be viewed live on www.cspan.org/live.

"I'll be taking my case to the House floor to build on the tremendous progress made on D.C. statehood this week alone," Norton said. "My hope is that I will be able to stir up even more activism in Congress for equal rights for D.C. residents."

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), who as Senate Majority Leader rarely cosponsors bills, made an enthusiastic public announcement of his cosponsorship of the statehood bill at the unveiling of D.C.'s Frederick Douglass statue in the Capitol in June 2013. The other top three Democratic Senate leaders, Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA), are also cosponsors. In July, President Obama announced his support for D.C. statehood at a My Brother's Keeper event.

Norton got the only House vote on statehood, in 1993, not long after being elected to Congress. 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 House majority in the next Congress. Since that vote, Norton 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.