Senate Votes Tuesday: D.C. Voting Bill is Unconstitutional!
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D.C. Voting Bill is Unconstitutional!
Senate Votes Tuesday: D.C. Voting Bill is Unconstitutional!
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Tell your Senators to Vote NO on S. 160
February 23, 2009
The Presidents' Day Recess is over and Congress is back in session ready to wreak more havoc. First up on this week's Senate agenda is a piece of legislation which may be more accurately described as an unconstitutional power-grab. Sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 (S. 160), would establish full House of Representatives voting rights for the District of Columbia while adding an additional seat to Utah, a traditionally Republican stronghold and the next state in line to pick up a Congressional seat in reapportionment. However, there is one small problem: D.C. is NOT a congressional district or a state!
The D.C. House Voting Rights Act aims to accomplish the following:
* Subvert the District Clause of the U.S. Constitution - Article I, Section 8, clause 17 - which makes clear that D.C. is a federal city, not a state, with final governing authority resting with Congress. The U.S. Constitution states that the House shall be composed of "Members chosen...by the People of the several States," not delegates representing non-state territories.
* Silence critics of D.C. voting rights by buying them off with a "sure Republican" seat because they know the D.C. seat will be a solid Democrat. In the last 12 elections since D.C. was granted the right to cast presidential electoral votes, it has never cast less than 74.8 percent of its popular vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. This move is simply a partisan trade-off by the congressional liberal Majority wanting to add a permanent Democrat vote to their tallies.
* Bribe Republicans to favor the idea by including a provision to increase the number of House Members from 435 to 437 and give the extra Representative to Utah.
* Lay the first step for achieving the ultimate goal of establishing two permanent Democrat Senate seats for the District. If the initial inclination is for D.C. to be "considered a Congressional district for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives," then the idea for D.C. to be "considered a state for the purposes of representation in the U.S. Senate," will not be far down the road.
Simply introducing a bill such as this is unconstitutional! D.C. cannot be "treated as though it were a state," unless it were formally made a state via a constitutional amendment, which would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress as well as three-fourths of the states to ratify it.
This is nothing new, as congressional liberals have been trying to grant full voting rights to the District of Columbia since the 1980s. The maiden attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution through the "D.C. Representation" Amendment, which passed Congress but was rejected by the American people and died on August 22, 1985 after a decisive majority of 34 of the 50 states refused to ratify it, was unsuccessful. Now, Members of Congress are attempting to forgo the constitutional process and slip one past the American people in order to accommodate their political agenda!
The Senate is scheduled to vote to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to debate of S. 160 tomorrow, Tuesday, February 24th at 11am! Please begin calling and emailing your Senators and tell them to vote NO on this openly unconstitutional bill! Be sure to focus your calls on Republicans and Democrats alike, as various Republican "moderates" have been known to support this attempted scheme in the past and some Democrat "moderates" have opposed it. Senators to target:
* Voinovich (R-OH)
* Specter (R-PA)
* Snowe (R-ME)
* Lugar (R-IN)
* Bennett (R-UT)
* Hatch (R-UT)
* Collins (R-ME)
* Tester (D-MT)
* Baucus (D-MT)
* Risch (R-ID) freshman Senator
* Johanns (R-NE) freshman Senator
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121
Further Reading:
* Liberal Plans to Subvert the U.S. Constitution
* DC is Not a Congressional District The Unconstitutional Compromise, by George Will.
* Dems' Unconstitutional Plot to Invent New Congressmen
