| James N. Markels | ||||
|
|
Personal
Information Constitutionalist
Party Political/Policy
Writing Creative
Writing Resume |
by
James N. Markels If you live in the Washington, D.C. area, you’re
familiar with inscription on the license plates borne by the cars of
D.C. inhabitants: “Taxation Without Representation.” D.C. residents are taxed like anybody else in America, but
they don’t have representatives in Congress petitioning their
interests. This situation
cuts against the underlying principle of democracy that this nation was
founded upon, and many D.C. residents campaign for D.C. to be made the
51st state in the union, complete with two Senators and a
Representative, to rectify this anomaly.
But many concerns compel against this solution. First, there’s the Constitution, which empowers
Congress with “exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over
such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may . . . become the
Seat of the Government of the United States.”
There is a good reason for this power.
As James Madison argued in the 1788 Virginia Ratifying Convention
for the Constitution, “If
any state had the power of legislation over the place where Congress
should fix the general government, this would impair the dignity, and
hazard the safety, of Congress. If
the safety of the Union were under the control of any particular state,
would not foreign corruption probably prevail, in such a state, to
induce it to exert its controlling influence over the members of the
general government?” In other words, the federal government needs to
ensure complete control over its environment so that it can be free from
the interests of individual states, outside of the representative
politicians themselves. This
also gives the federal government a small area with which to provide
itself with the necessary infrastructure to do its job without having to
dicker with local interests. If,
say, a new building for the Department of Homeland Security is needed,
the federal government can make it happen.
It doesn’t have to haggle with the local government over where
to put it or whether the locals want a new building at all. This realization of the needs of a federal government
feeds into the concept of D.C. as the nation’s capital.
As Madison noted in Federalist #43, the nation’s capital is
“too great a public pledge to be left in the hands of a single
state.” D.C. is the home
to our national monuments, museums, and federal buildings. All Americans have a stake in these things.
Congress, as the repository of the will of the people, can
properly direct the care, creation, and maintenance of those organs that
make a national capital. Not to mention that efforts at representative home
rule in D.C. have generally not met with much success.
Starting with Sayles Bowen, elected mayor of D.C. in 1866 (there
were elected mayors in D.C. from 1820 to 1871, despite the recent
popularization of the late Walter Washington as the first D.C. mayor),
and re-emphasized by the likes of Marion Barry, there has been an earned
lack of trust between Congress and elected D.C. officials that prevents
Congress from giving up the reins to the management of the capital. So, from a policy perspective, the nation’s capital
is a reasonable place for Congress to have complete dominion, even over
the interests of its residents. But
why shouldn’t those residents have some representation in Congress
itself if they’re being made to pay the same taxes everyone else pays? There’s the obvious issue that Republicans don’t
want to give D.C. representation as if it was a state because the
current population tips heavily Democratic.
But more relevantly, making D.C. a state necessarily raises the
question of why we shouldn’t make larger cities, like New York, Los
Angeles, or Chicago, states in and of themselves as well.
Where would it end? It would make more sense to allow D.C. residents to
vote in Maryland’s elections, like they did back before 1800.
In fact, a resident of Georgetown, Uriah Forrest, served as a
congressional representative for Maryland in 1793-94.
But Maryland doesn’t want that anymore.
The concerns of upscale and rural Marylanders don’t sync well
with the problems faced by D.C. residents, and it would throw their
state politics out of whack. Virginia
doesn’t want D.C. voters either, being a more politically conservative
state that has already taken back Arlington and Alexandria from the
original District. So without a state willing to take D.C. voters and no
practical reason to give the city itself statehood, there’s only one
remaining option: Let D.C. residents be exempt from paying federal
taxes. That would certainly
answer the “no taxation without representation” plea, and you’d
think that D.C. residents would jump at the chance to not pay taxes.
So why don’t we hear more about this? I will guess it’s because the poorer D.C. residents
are worried that if D.C. becomes a shelter from taxes, the city would
gentrify at an astounding rate. Money
would come pouring in, buying up all the low-income housing and sending
the poor, predominantly black inner-city population elsewhere. While that might be great for D.C. as a city, tax breaks
don’t mean much to those who don’t pay much taxes in the first
place. They would rather
stay put and push for a vote that the system and existing political
realities won’t allow. And
that’s why they only have a license plate motto to show for it. |
||
