The vote to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives will face it’s first test on the Senate floor on Tuesday:
The Senate will decide Tuesday whether to take up the D.C. voting rights bill, holding a technical vote that could determine the measure’s fate, officials said yesterday.
The vote will be a key gauge of the bill’s support. If its backers can line up the 60 senators necessary to proceed, they would put the measure on track for a floor vote. They would also show they might be able to fend off delaying tactics by opponents as the legislation moves forward.
But if they can’t reach that threshold, the bill would stall. It would be the latest disappointment in decades of efforts to gain a congressional vote for the nation’s capital.
The bill was crafted as a political compromise. It would add two seats to the House, one for the heavily Democratic District and the other for the next state in line to pick up a seat. That is Utah, which leans Republican.
“The votes are very close,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said at a news conference yesterday. “I think this is something the District of Columbia and Utah deserve,” he added, pledging “to see if I can get 60 votes.”
But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) strongly opposes the legislation, saying it violates the Constitution’s instructions that House members come from states. “Senator McConnell’s Constitution is getting worn out from showing it to reporters,” said his spokesman, Don Stewart.
The White House has criticized the legislation and threatened to veto it. Even if it were to become law, it almost certainly would face a court challenge. Legal scholars are divided on whether it is constitutional, with some maintaining that Congress has the power to treat the District as a state for some purposes.
This, as they say, is crunch time.
