DC Residents Deserve Representation, Henderson Tells Committee
Feature Story by Katie Drake - 5/29/2002
The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs held a hearing May 23, 2002, on what Committee Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) called a "stain on the fabric of our Democracy": the lack of congressional voting representation for residents of the District of Columbia.The hearing came exactly one year after the introduction of the No Taxation Without Representation Act of 2001 by Sen. Lieberman and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.). The bill, S.603, demands voting representation for District residents or their exemption from Federal income taxation. DC residents pay the second highest per capita Federal income tax in the nation, but have no voting representation in the U.S. Congress.
In attendance at the hearing were longtime voting rights advocates Congresswoman Eleanor Norton (D-DC), DC Mayor Anthony Williams, DC City Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp, and many others who expressed consternation at the continued denial of voting representation for residents of the District.
Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), was among the distinguished witnesses who testified before the Committee. Henderson called the denial of representation for District residents a violation of fundamental civil rights and pledged the full support of LCCR, announcing that this issue is now a top priority on the organization’s legislative agenda.
The message, ‘no taxation without representation,’ is used to highlight the fact that residents of the District of Columbia are the only United States citizens who are both taxed by the federal government and denied voting representation in Congress. Territories, which are also denied voting representation, do not pay federal taxes. District residents have no interest in eliminating their taxes, but demand the fundamental right of representation that they have earned by participating fully as U.S. citizens.
Henderson urged the Senators to view District residents not so much as citizens of DC but as citizens of the United States. He argued that a constitutional amendment should be the last resort and that the No Taxation Without Representation Act was needed urgently as a first step in bringing to light that fact that almost 600,000 United States’ citizens are continually denied the fundamental right of voting representation. The bill now has 13 co-sponsors.
