Still No DC Voting Rights
As most of you probably already realized (especially Vivian Paige who’s a CPA), today is tax day. Joe Sudbay, who lives in DC, had this to say when he started off an open thread over at AMERICAblog.
It’s tax day. I’ll be sending mine shorty — even though I have no congressional representation.
With residents of the District of Columbia filing their tax reports with the IRS today, I think it serves as a perfect reminder that they have to pay the same taxes as everyone else living in the United States but they still don’t have voting representation in Congress.
The lack of voting rights for DC has been the topic of discussion in recent years and it often seemed like there was a chance DC would actually get a voting member of the House of Representatives. While the bill that brought that hope unfortunately collapsed, the topic seems to be getting attention through stories such as the controversy over what the “DC Quarter” would say. As many DC residents are submitting their taxes today, I think it’s about time we have a legitimate conversation about obtaining proper representation for the residents of our nation’s capital.
D.C. runs a close second to New Orleans as America’s most corrupt city.
The best way to address the voting rights issue for District residents is to dissolve the City of Washington D.C. and return most of the area to Maryland to be divided among the surrounding counties.
A very small portion of what is now D.C. where the Capitol and the White House are located (and a few blocks in either direction where most of the other federal buildings are), could be turned over to the National Park service for administration and maintenance.
This was all proposed to JoAnn Davis about ten years ago along with a proposal to spread out federal agencies (making them be no closer than 180 miles to D.C.) so that congestion in D.C. would be reduced and to eliminate the tempting target of having all of our agency heads in one easy bomb target. The bill would have been called GASRA - Government Agency Strategic Relocation Act.
I don’t think GASRA ever made it to a House sub-committee. It should be resurrected, given the current traffic issue and especially as a remedy for our targeting problem. D.C. is like a second Pearl Harbor, waiting to happen.
No deal until they get Senate reps too…
That’s an interesting view on the whole situation, Tyler, but I don’t think it has any real chances of being passed. Relocating all of the Federal institutions would cost a good chunk of change. With all the troubles we already have balancing the budget I don’t think we can really afford to make those changes anyways.
Moving agency sections has been done in the past. Part of the “Pentagon” has actually been in New Orleans (off and on) for decades.
What could be workable is for the cabinet secretaries to keep an office and one EA in D.C. while the rest of the bureaucrats are moved on a phase basis out to places where many of them might actually be able to afford to live. The navy moved its Personnel Command to Millington, TN (Memphis) and the employees seem to really love that they have good schools and affordable houses, with no traffic jams.
Not mentioned in the earlier post, when the agencies are moved away, of course all of those blood sucking contractors, consultants and lobbyists will likely move all or part of their staff, too. Eventually, Washington D.C. would return to being a sleepy little town that only got a little busier when the Congress was in session.
For Kevin: If the surrounding parts of what is now D.C. are reverted back to the various counties in Maryland, then the citizens who live there will be represented by Maryland’s typically shady politicians. Ideally, all that would be left of “the District” would be the small area around where the White House and Congress are located. I think the only residential property inside the neighborhood where the Capitol building is, at least in accord with recent reports, are just whorehouses, anyway.