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Aughie and Nia discuss the potential difficulties of adding the District of Columbia as a state to the United States.
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
D.C. Statehood
Announcer: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Morning Nia, how are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm lovely. Thank you. Well, I'm feeling good. I'm not entirely sure I have ever been lovely, but nevertheless, I'm feeling good.
N. Rodgers: I think you're lovely.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. More importantly, I am well caffeinated for our recording this morning.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Where we left off last time, I had said that I wanted to add seven or nine, I wanted to add an odd number of states to the union.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because I started with an even number and I went to odd because it's something you have in your notes about DC and DC becoming a state.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: How that can affect the balance in the south.
J. Aughenbaugh: Political math. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: First of all, I want to start by, before we do anything else, by saying the math of statehood affects the Senate a lot more than it affects the house, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because if a state came in and it's really small then it's only got one representative, but it's got two senators.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the house. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Because all states have two senators. Two out of a 100 is not an insignificant number. Whereas one out of 435, you can't even pick out of a lineup. Unless that happens to be Frankenstein. When they take that giant picture on the front of it, every year they do the giant picture of Congress and they have as many people as are there that day and I don't know whether it's picture day at school, they have to show up and have their pictures taken.
J. Aughenbaugh: It looks like a large high school graduation.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Except they're all way too old for that, but yeah. But to find the one person you have to get out a microscope and scan over the picture trying to figure out which person is yours.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like taking out your high school, graduating year book and you're showing it to a friend.
N. Rodgers: They say, where are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They're like, where are you in there? I'm like well, I'm in the third row in the middle.
N. Rodgers: You picked me out of my 700 person graduating class. Many high schools have larger graduating classes and there are house of representatives.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, but I mean, your point about the Senate really does inform so much of the current debate about whether or not the District of Columbia should be made a 51st state. Actually, if you break it down Nia. I mean, so the previous podcast episode listeners, Nia and I talked about the basic process for Congress admitting a new state. In terms of processes, what's written is pretty simple. Congress made it more complicated over the years.
N. Rodgers: Because they're congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because it is Congress. But the situation, the case for DC becoming a state is extremely complicated because you're looking at a number of variables here Nia. You're talking about politics and the political balance within the Senate. You're also talking about politics within the political parties. But then you're also talking about some significant constitutional law obstacles that if I had to venture a guess, will more than likely be decided by who?
N. Rodgers: I would say the Supremes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the Supreme Court.
N. Rodgers: At this point, the relatively conservative Supreme Court. I don't think Jay Robs going to leave out there and start saying, DC looks like a state to me. I'm not sure he's going to break 200 rules of tradition.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm pretty sure that Chief Justice Jay Roberts does not have a DC license plate that says taxation without representation.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. I doubt he's got a bumper sticker, you know, DC 51st state or whatever. That seems totally unlike him. Although, we don't know what he has under that robe. But what I'm curious about is, first of all, doesn't this come up pretty often?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Pretty regularly, DC says we want to be a state and then there are some discussion and then it goes away.
J. Aughenbaugh: In 1961, the 23rd Amendment to the US Constitution was passed. That gave the residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for president, starting in the 1964 presidential election.
N. Rodgers: Also before that, if you lived in the capital city, you did not vote for the president.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That would be a reason not to live in the capital city.
J. Aughenbaugh: But since the 23rd Amendment.
N. Rodgers: Wait. The president lives in the White House. The president couldn't vote in the presidential elections.
J. Aughenbaugh: But most presidents go ahead and maintain a legal domicile in another state.
N. Rodgers: That's cheating. What you're telling me is that all DC residents need to get a P.O Box somewhere else.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, remember the infamous West Wing episode where Bartlett's re-election. He had to fly back to New Hampshire to go and vote. I mean, that's what most presidents did.
N. Rodgers: I think Donald Trump cast his vote in Florida.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, he did it in Florida.
N. Rodgers: I know Biden cast his vote in Maryland, Delaware. Maryland?
J. Aughenbaugh: Delaware.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, Maryland.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, you Southerner.
N. Rodgers: I'm [inaudible 00:06:59] from Delaware. Everything above the Mason-Dixon is all one state to me. It's called the North. Where are you from? The North. Just don't even bother to tell me which state because they all seem like they're the same to me especially the North East.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, particularly when you go north and east of New York and Pennsylvania. I mean those states.
N. Rodgers: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Massachusetts.
N. Rodgers: What's the difference really?
J. Aughenbaugh: Rhode Island, Delaware.
N. Rodgers: Now we've offended seven or eight states at this point. Well done to us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hey, by the end of this podcast episode, we may end up upsetting a handful or more
N. Rodgers: Let's assume for all 50. At that point they can vote.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your question was, as a DC statehood then considered by Congress with some regularity or some frequency, and yes. After the amendment was passed, you had an effort in 1985, 1993. My research is also demonstrated twice in the last two years, June 2020 and then earlier this year, you saw proposed amendments to the US Constitution to give the District of Columbia statehood. I mean, you're talking about four proposed amendments since the 23rd was enacted in the 1960s.
N. Rodgers: Roughly 60 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: To the case if you've given into, you take a mile. They got the vote and they were like, "Well, now that you mention it, since we got to vote, you ought to make us a state."
J. Aughenbaugh: What's interesting to me and what I think of many Americans don't understand is that according to the US Constitution, the District of Columbia is still controlled by the United States Congress. In 1974, Congress gave the District of Columbia the authority to have its own council and mayor, and it can pass a budget, but the budget has to be approved by the United States Congress. Because a significant part of DC's revenue comes from an annual appropriation from the United States Congress.
N. Rodgers: Because it doesn't have a state government in order to raise state taxes in order to run itself.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Any revenue that the District of Columbia generates has to be approved by the Congress.
N. Rodgers: One could argue that the District of Columbia, almost is an agency of the federal government.
J. Aughenbaugh: I tend to compare it most to a territory like Puerto Rico or Guam. Because with both of those territories, The United States Congress, has given them the authority to manage their daily governmental operations. But Congress could, in both instances, pass laws that over term whatever Puerto Rico or Guam did.
N. Rodgers: Wow. I didn't think about that. That would be though complicated politically. You'd want to not do that unless you really felt your back was against the wall.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I remind students who ask this question. I said, "The District of Columbia, since it was given this self rule authority from the Congress in '74, has had periods to where it was run poorly, and the Congress, had to step in to bail out the District of Columbia."
N. Rodgers: I know that he was much beloved. But Mayor Marion Barry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Was notorious. He wasn't just an example of a little bit of public corruption, he was Blagojevich levels of corruption.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, sure. He had his own personal demons in regards to drug use, and cavorting with prostitutes. He was much beloved in the district.
N. Rodgers: Re-elected.
J. Aughenbaugh: He got re-elected after he spent some time in prison. But there was one point where the District of Columbia financially was bordering on bankruptcy, and the United States Congress appointed Alice Rivlin, a former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to actually run their finances for like a five-year period.
N. Rodgers: Oh, okay. Well, I would DC would have a lot of expenses for certain things like the Metro. The Metro is expensive, and maintaining something like that would be expensive. Also, I'm assuming that they are responsible for the grounds around federal buildings and things like that. DC is a weird mixture of regular businesses and homes and all that other stuff, and then things like embassies and federal buildings and federal properties.
J. Aughenbaugh: Those buildings that you just mentioned, embassies, monuments, federal government buildings, cannot be taxed by DC. They don't get any property tax.
N. Rodgers: That's a lot of property that doesn't get taxed.
J. Aughenbaugh: A good analogy is think about cities with colleges and universities.
N. Rodgers: I was just going to say, doesn't Richmond have a similar problem with VCU? We take up quite a footprint.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: In the city of Richmond. But we don't pay taxes on that.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, because we're state buildings. The infamous town gown relations.
N. Rodgers: But any city with a large infrastructure like Chicago probably has a lot of state and agency buildings that are in the City of Chicago, that the City Of Chicago can't tax either.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you have for instance, religious institutions and property.
N. Rodgers: Lot of churches in Richmond.
J. Aughenbaugh: Think about it in DC. You've got the National Cathedral.
N. Rodgers: Which is huge.
J. Aughenbaugh: The last time I looked it as easily well over 20 well known historical church buildings and property. Historically, governments don't tax church property.
N. Rodgers: That makes me feel a little sympathetic for cities.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it also makes me very sympathetic for DC. It's a difficult governing task, particularly because many of those who work in the federal government, don't live in DC.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: They don't live in DC.
N. Rodgers: Because they can't afford it. They live out in the suburbs.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're talking about the suburbs in Maryland and in Virginia. It has come up twice. Last year, The House of Representatives approved a resolution to grant DC statehood. It went nowhere in the Senate, didn't even get a vote in large part, and this is where the politics comes into play. At that point, before the fall of 2020 elections, the Republicans had a narrow majority in the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it very clear, United States Senate was not going to vote on that legislation.
N. Rodgers: Did he just stash it in a committee somewhere?
J. Aughenbaugh: It got assigned to a committee. But the committee never even held hearings on it. Let's face it. If you were a Republican Committee Chair, well Mitch McConnell has been Senate Majority Leader, unless you want to have a very short career in the Senate, you basically do what Mitch McConnell says you're going to do.
N. Rodgers: He's like stash this somewhere in your desk and they said, "Okay."
J. Aughenbaugh: Right now among the Republicans in the Senate, the only three that are willing to go ahead and ignore, he's now Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell.
N. Rodgers: Let me guess.
J. Aughenbaugh: Go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Mitt Romney.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yep.
N. Rodgers: Lisa Murkowski.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yep.
N. Rodgers: Susan Collins.
J. Aughenbaugh: Those are the three.
N. Rodgers: That is Utah, Alaska, and Maine. Is she? Susan Collins is from Maine, isn't she?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yep.
N. Rodgers: Respectively?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Let us keep in mind, just as a side note that by buck, one could say that they don't vote with him a 100 percent of the time, they vote with him 85 percent of the time. Bucking in Republican sense of bucking is very different than it is.
J. Aughenbaugh:Actually, Nia, according to those organizations that actually tabulate votes of members of Congress, those three vote the Republican party line almost 95 percent of the time.
N. Rodgers: Is it 95? When they say their mavericky I'm like "Well, I suppose in one definition of maverick you are."
J. Aughenbaugh: Our definition of a moderate Republican, a moderate Democrat, a maverick member of the party has changed dramatically in the last 20-25 years. I mean, we've talked about this on the podcast. That's the case for both political parties but certainly the Republican Party. You get nowhere fast if you're a Republican senator by ignoring the wishes of now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
N. Rodgers: It seems to be easier for you if you're a member of the house and you want to go all offerings or whatever. You get away with a lot more because the house is, I suspect in part, because it's bigger and because Kevin McCarthy, who is the minority leader in the house, just doesn't run as tight a ship as Mitch McConnell does. I don't know if it's because Mitch McConnell knows where every single body is buried in the Senate. He's been there a long time.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's the master of the rules of the Senate.
N. Rodgers: Robert's Rules are Mitch's rules really.
J. Aughenbaugh: But also to your point in the house, even Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, at times, doesn't have control over the Democratic Party caucus in the House. We saw that this week when a couple of members of the Democratic Party criticized what's been going on in Israel, and other Democratic members criticized their criticism. The Democratic leadership team in the house issued a statement that tried to walk a fine line between both of those camps and ended up upsetting both of them. It's far more difficult because of the sheer numbers, but also because you're talking about wide diversity across the country in house of representative districts. A Democrat from Central Virginia is different than a Democrat from Southside LA.
N. Rodgers: Very different concerns, very different constituencies. Diversity is a good thing, but it also can be like herding cats, I assume. I imagine that there are times when Nancy Pelosi thinks, "I don't know why I wanted this job." Do you what I mean? She's got to sit occasionally in her office and think, "You know what, fine. If you think you can do it better, go ahead and try, good luck with that." I think that that's what John Boehner thought at the end, "All right, fine. See if you can do it better." He seems much more relaxed now that he's just playing golf and writing books.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've actually read his book. It's pretty clear one, Boehner had reservations about becoming the Speaker of the House. But two, he could not wait to step down as speaker the house.
N. Rodgers: Then you're trying to decide huge issues like statehood for something like DC, which could throw the numbers off enormously in, at least, the Senate. But also, if DC is a state, let's just take the imaginary train here for a minute into imaginary land of DC actually being a state. One, it's tiny.
J. Aughenbaugh: It would be the smallest state.
N. Rodgers: Two, a huge amount of its property would still be federal property. It wouldn't be state property. I don't even know how it could function as a state. Other states would have to give land up, and say, "Here's some land where you can actually tax the people who live there and you can do things."
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one of the constitutional issues. First, according to the Constitution, the District of Columbia was graded as the nation's capital because two states, primarily Maryland, gave up property to the federal government for that purpose. According to some constitutional law scholars, the amendment to create DC as a state would require Maryland to officially seed the property to another state because we talked about this last week. One state cannot annex property of another state.
N. Rodgers: They can have that war. "We've shown up to annex this part. " "No, you're not." "Okay, well, then I guess we're having a war." "Oh, okay." Although, I don't like Maryland's odds in that fight.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, I don't like Maryland's odds in that fight. On the other hand, Maryland, because it's so overwhelmingly controlled by the Democratic Party, might be willing to do so.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's true, just give it over. But you think Virginia would?
N. Rodgers: Virginia politics are so interesting to me because we're a very purple state in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways, Virginia is still very conservative.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you would basically be looking at, Nia, giving up the cities of Arlington or Alexandria.
N. Rodgers: I think what would happen is Virginia might be fine with that, but Arlington and Alexandria wouldn't. You what I mean? They will be like, "No, that's not where we live. We live in Virginia," and Virginia would say, "No, not anymore." I don't know. I also think that it would still be really small and weirdly shaped. You know what I mean? We did a marvelous job out West of making everything with edges and squared off and really pleasantly shaped.
J. Aughenbaugh: But here's the other issue that I was getting to in regards to what would constitute the jurisdiction of the state of Colombia Douglas because they've attached it to be?
N. Rodgers: Colombia Douglas. It'll be a hard thing to get used to adding to the map.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you'd have a capital that basically would consist of three buildings.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's it.
N. Rodgers: Wait, a capital of the United States, you mean?
J. Aughenbaugh: The capital of the country would consist of three buildings with the most recent bill passed by the House of Representatives, okay? The District of Columbia would surround the two Congressional Buildings, the White House and the Supreme Court and I lumped the two congressional buildings into one, "the Capitol", the White House and the Supreme Court.
N. Rodgers: Okay, but I'm trying to think of Richmond is the capital city. But the actual capital is [inaudible 00:27:27] Capitol Square. It's not the whole city of Richmond, is it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. But you're sort of missing a very salient point, okay? Any creation of DC as a statehood would have to go ahead and revise Article 1, Section 8, which describes the capital because the capital is the entire, if you will, jurisdiction that was created by a clause in the US Constitution. It wasn't a state. It's a national capital. So you would basically be carving a state, out of a property that was identified in the US constitution as the national capital.
N. Rodgers: I see, yeah, that's not cool.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay, whether it's cool or not, it's part of the difficulty in creating and this is where I've got into a lot of discussions with students and people who born and raised in DC. I'm like to create DC or to give DC statehood is not as simple as creating Hawaii or Alaska or any of the 37 other states after the Constitution was ratified. I mean, you would have to also, according to some constitutional law scholars, amend or get rid of the 23rd amendment, okay?
N. Rodgers: Yeah, you'd have to do a prohibition thing, where not only you change the constitution, but you also X nay, the previous amendment and you say starting over from the beginning, basically because giving them a vote and then giving them a stake. Yeah, no, I can see where you'd have to do both. One amendment would have to do the work of amending the Constitution and amending a previous amendment.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because the 23rd Amendment gives them on non-voting seat in the house. No representation in the senate.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're going to have to get rid of the 23rd Amendment, because if you're a state, you would start of. [OVERLAPPING]
N. Rodgers: Amendment 28 would start off with Section 1. We get rid of the 23rd Amendment. Section Two, we change the Article 1 of the constitution. [OVERLAPPING]
J. Aughenbaugh: Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution that says that Congress can control the District of Columbia. That's why this gets really complicated constitutionally. That's why, for instance, every justice department from the Kennedy administration until the Obama Administration issued legal memorandum saying that Congress cannot just create the District of Columbia as a state. It would have to amend the Constitution then Congress can go ahead and take up the issue of granting statehood to the district.
N. Rodgers: That's interesting, but then Holder said that's not the case.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Attorney General in the Obama administration Eric Holder overruled the career bureaucrats and the Justice Department and said, I disagree. Congress can create statehood for the District of Columbia. The Trump administration, not a big surprise, went ahead and rescinded that memo.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I mean and I've pointed this out to people. I said, we're talking about four different Democratic presidential administrations, five Republican presidential administrations. I mean, it's one of those rare things.
N. Rodgers: It truly is bi-partisan. We're going to have to change the Constitution to do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're going to have to change the Constitution.
N. Rodgers: I'm not saying you can't change the Constitution. I'm just saying that's how you're going to have to do it. As we discussed in the previous episode, if you jumped through approximately 3-87 hoops, you can become a state, right? There's a method for doing that that does not involve any constitutional change whatsoever. The Constitution doesn't care how many states there are, except that it does care about the capital of the United States. It's made clear that it cares about that. In order to change the capital of the country, you would need a constitution. I think I agree with that. Oh, that don't know how that makes me feel, but I think it is definitely a constitutional issue if it's mentioned specifically in there.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's why I think, and you and I talked about this before we started to record today, that's why I think that even if Congress gave statehood to the District of Columbia, for instance, hypothetically, it happens during the Biden administration. President Biden is already said DC should be a state, and he signs it almost immediately, okay?
J. Aughenbaugh: Other states, probably controlled by Republicans, are going to file suit in Federal Court and if it got to the Supreme Court, I'm afraid advocates for DC statehood are going to lose because again, the intent of the framers in this instance is not unclear.
N. Rodgers: Right. Well, and part of that is because didn't they at that point take property from other states? They were carving that out in a very deliberate manner.
J. Aughenbaugh: They took property from Maryland and Virginia. Maryland and Virginia gave up property.
N. Rodgers: I think you could say they were voluntold. They were voluntold to give up property. ''We really appreciate you giving this up,'' ''Wait what?'' ''Yeah, I know. We think it's a great idea.''
J. Aughenbaugh: But again, particularly because these were two states that were basically told while the alternative is the nation's capital will be in the North, either Philadelphia or in New York. In particular, Virginia was just like, ''No. We want the nation's capital closer to the South.''
N. Rodgers: We think that there may be a few presidents from here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The State of Virginia, did provide a roster of a fair number of our early presidents. From Washington to Jefferson to Madison to Monroe, there's a couple of others in the 19th Century where we get to the long list of mediocre presidents. I think one or two of them were also from Virginia.
N. Rodgers: Virginia's like, ''No, we have it here because then we're close to home.''
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the constitutional but even if you went ahead and overcame the constitutional hurdles, you still got some significant political hurdles once you get to the Senate and it's not just because of Mitch McConnell. The Democratic caucus in the United States Senate is not of one mind about DC getting statehood. In particular, in the early part of this year, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has stated publicly a number of times, he is not in favor of DC getting statehood. With the current math, 50/50 split in the Senate, Democrats lose one or two senators, it goes nowhere.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because the Senate can't attach statehood to a spending bill.
N. Rodgers: They can't do it through reconciliation, then it becomes a question of a filibuster.
J. Aughenbaugh: Filibuster.
N. Rodgers: Which as we know is the third rail of Senate politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: The third rail of Senate politics and for our listeners who don't know what the filibuster is, in the United States Senate, to end debate on a bill that's being considered for adoption in the Senate, to end debate, you need to get 60 senators to vote to close debate. It's known as a cloture vote. If you're the minority party in the Senate, you threatened to do what's called a filibuster.
N. Rodgers: We're going to talk it to death and keep it open so that it can never come to cloture and never be forced for a vote.
J. Aughenbaugh: Vote.
N. Rodgers: At this point, you only have to peel off one Democrat.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, hey, if all the Republicans say no.
N. Rodgers: No, yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: I would have to peel off 10 Republicans.
N. Rodgers: Ten republicans, that's right, sorry
J. Aughenbaugh: Right now, there aren't 10 Republicans.
N. Rodgers: There are three that we know of.
J. Aughenbaugh: That you could possibly convince. We don't know where Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins think about DC statehood.
N. Rodgers: Mitt Romney.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski.
N. Rodgers: You said Mitch McConnell, we know what he thinks about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Mitt Romney. Oh my goodness.
N. Rodgers: The Freudian slip.
J. Aughenbaugh: The conflating of those two.
N. Rodgers: Wow. Mitt Romney, somewhere in DC just went, ''Hey,'' and he doesn't know why. He mumbles like ''I just felt something cold go across my spine. It's okay, I'm better now.''
J. Aughenbaugh: I just felt the Earth move. I just had a chill down my spine, I know I'm warm in but I'm thinking I need a stiff drink now.
N. Rodgers: Exactly or an exorcism. Right now, it would benefit the Democrats if they could get a state because DC is seen as heavily Democratic.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's voted pretty consistently, overwhelmingly Democratic for basically the last 70 years.
N. Rodgers: Is Joe Manchin's objection that he thinks that it should be an amendment?
J. Aughenbaugh: He's not spoken to the constitutionality, Manchin believes that because it strikes him as an obvious attempt by the Democratic Party to get two more safe Democratic votes in the Senate.
N. Rodgers: To tip the scales.
J. Aughenbaugh: That it is too partisan.
N. Rodgers: He see's it as a thumb on the scale?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He thinks that the Senate should be more bipartisan. For those of you who don't know, Joe Manchin is walking a very fine line. He is a Democrat in a state, West Virginia that I believe voted for Trump by almost a 27 point margin.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. He's in a heavily Republican state.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay.
N. Rodgers: Coal mining, rust belty lifestyle.
J. Aughenbaugh: Gun loving, God fearing.
N. Rodgers: Very rural.
J. Aughenbaugh: Very rural. They were settled.
N. Rodgers: Yet he is loved there.
J. Aughenbaugh: He is loved there. He was a former governor of the state and he knows his constituents. His constituents do not like overwhelmingly partisan Democrats. Democratic voters, they don't get really represented in the Democratic Party anymore because they like a large social welfare state but they like not to be told by the government how they should conduct their life.
N. Rodgers: They are a state of libertarians basically.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Who also are like, ''You guys owe us because we used to be the backbone of the country so where is our social welfare programs?'' He knows this. His predecessor in the Senate was Senator Byrd.
N. Rodgers: Robert Byrd. One of my favorite senator characters.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was a character.
N. Rodgers: For listeners, my image that always comes up of Senator Byrd. Byrd used to carry a pocket constitution with him, and he began in the elevator with his junior people, and he would ask them constitutional questions, and if they didn't know the answer, he would whip it out, read it to them, and then flak them on the face with it or on the back of the head with it or on the shoulder.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He wasn't trying to hurt them. He was basically saying, you must know this document. This document is the rock upon which our entire nation is built and you can't work for me if you don't know it. I am not a fan of a lot of Byrd's policies, but I am a fan of the idea of if you're going to argue that something is or isn't constitutional, you better be able to back that up by having read it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because many people today will say I think that's constitutionally. Do you even know where to find the constitution? You don't even talk to me about this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and another reason why Byrd was well loved and elected.
N. Rodgers: Eighty four times?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He served in the senate for well over 40 years. He was so beloved by West Virginians because he was the king of pork.
N. Rodgers: That's right. There are Byrd roads and Byrd bridges and Byrd airports and Byrd schools. He could divert money into West Virginia.
J. Aughenbaugh: The FBI's research lab is in West Virginia.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. If he could have moved LaGuardia to the Virginia, he would have.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yeah. If he could have moved Dulles Airport which is not yet, which is Reagan, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: If he could have move that to West Virginia, he would have. According to my colleague and I agree with his assessment Professor [inaudible 00:44:29], the best roadside rest stops in the country are in West Virginia.
N. Rodgers: It makes sense. That makes sense because he would have had them built like palaces.
J. Aughenbaugh: They are by United States standards incredibly well kept, well-maintained, that got the most up-to-date technology. There's plenty of them. You don't have to go very far on the interstates in West Virginia to go ahead and stop off to find a rest stop.
N. Rodgers: Manchin's following him.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: That's a big shoes to fill.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure it is.
N. Rodgers: That's a hard road to have. He's got to really be aware of what his constituents want and to try to deliver as much as possible. Because what do all politicians want more than anything else?
J. Aughenbaugh: They want to get re-elected.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: They want to get re-elected. The funny thing about this is we were talking about the votes of Romney, McCloskey and Susan Collins. The press labels them as the Mavericks in the Republican Party. But they vote the party line well over 90 percent. Manchin's votes the Democratic Party line just as high. It's just that on a certain number of key issues that are seemingly very important to the Democratic Party right now, he's just like, no. But he's against it. He doesn't want to get rid of the filibuster, and so the Democrats are like stock. They are stock right now. As we're going to discuss in our next podcast episode when we talk about the initial results of the 2020 census for foreshadowing, a little advertising, a little teaser, the Democrats know that they basically have more than likely until early 2022 to get their legislative priorities passed.
N. Rodgers: They have about six months.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because when you get to the mid-part of 2022 is when everybody starts campaigning, particularly for the house, elections every two years. A third of the Senate. Right now the Democratic Party has what? A six or seven seat majority in the house. There are 50-50 split in the Senate, but they get the tiebreaker because vice president is Kamala Harris, a Democrat. They basically know that come November of 2022 they may lose one or both houses of Congress and at that point, they have no legislative agenda, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. Then they spent two years fighting with President Biden and blaming. Then we get two more years of blaming. Yay, something to look forward to. Just before we go, I want to ask a question, is it a popular idea in the district to become a state?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yes. It's overwhelming.
N. Rodgers: So they really want to be a state?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they want to be a state. The research that I found was there was a poll done, when was it? 2016. A referendum that was placed on the ballot in DC, 85 percent of their residence wanted to become a state.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, one more thing comes to mind. Wouldn't that be super-complicated for federal employees to be surrounded by a highly partisan state? Isn't part of what opponents are saying is the theory is that this is the seat of federal government which should be neutral?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, particularly the bureaucracy. Yeah, let's face it.
N. Rodgers: If you have this state of DC, meaning the state of Douglas, Columbia, it would be hard for federal employees in that area to be neutral. One of the things that we want for the capital of any country is for it to not be particularly partisan because you get those weird pressures of lobbying and all that other stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You basically want the seat of government to treat everybody equally, fairly, etc.
N. Rodgers: It'd be hard to do if you were three buildings inside a state that was highly partisan.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, Nia, let's face it, the District Columbia is what? The largest racial ethnic group in the District of Columbia is African-Americans.
N. Rodgers: It's hugely disenfranchising for those forks?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, disenfranchising. The District of Columbia early on in our country's history actually had slave auctions. In regards to combating the nation's history of racism, giving DC statehood would be seen, I believe, at least symbolically, as a step to address this. This is complicated, right?
N. Rodgers: Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that, but you're right.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is more than just some slogan on license plates.
N. Rodgers: The founders probably didn't think that it would grow to be the metropolitan area. I'm not entirely certain that they thought. Forgive me, wait. Let me put it in the most honest way I can. When they built DC, where they built it, it was a swamp.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, there's no getting around this.
N. Rodgers: It was a back water. Real people aren't going to move here and live here. They're going to come here, they're going to serve their time like in prison and then they're going to go back to real cities. This is not going to turn into a thing. I think they probably really thought that because at the time, it wasn't really a thing. Lafayette's plans were beautiful and if they could build it like that that'd be spiffy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Think about the fact that two states willingly gave up land.
N. Rodgers: Right. They didn't give up nice land, they gave up crappy land.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They gave up crappy land. It is. For most of our country's history, because it is so swampy, because it is so hot and humid and miserable, basically, Congress would adjourn in late April, early May and not return until late September, early October. Okay?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Before the advent of the air conditioning, nobody wanted to be in Washington DC in the summertime.
N. Rodgers: Well, presidents went back to their homes, and in the case of modern presidents, they went to vacation.
J. Aughenbaugh: We discussed this in the previous podcast. You got out of DC.
N. Rodgers: Right. Of course, they wrote it in as, well, it's going to be a thing and it'll be fine because nobody's going to want to live there. They had no idea that better than 500,000 people, isn't it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Their population is pretty high. We'd want to live there and we'd eventually want states' rights. But the founders could not have thought that was going to be possible. You want to live where? Why? That's what the founders would have thought. Why? Is the Okefenokee Swamp too full for you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Because one of the arguments that Philadelphia made for having the nation's capital there was Philadelphia is a well-developed city with plenty to do. Yada, yada, yada.
N. Rodgers: Even they're hot in the summer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and the alternative was, Maryland swamp land, are you freaking kidding me? This is where we going? Think about it. I've read a couple of histories about the War of 1812. The Brits went ahead and burned down a big chunk of a White House. Many of the British commanders remarked they could not believe that a nation's capital was located where it was. They were just like, "There's nothing here." Right?
N. Rodgers: Right. There's a nice river, but that's it. Even the nice river gets swampy sometimes and mosquito-ey sometimes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, we're not trying to disparage DC.
N. Rodgers: Right. Because now it's grown into a marvelously wonderful city where you can do all kinds of cool things, see our entire summer set of episodes. It's not that we don't admire it, but at the time of the writing of the Constitution, when they carved that part out, I don't know that they ever thought that anybody would want to be a state who live there. You know what I mean?
J. Aughenbaugh: They basically thought that the new nation needed a capital that owed no alliances, allegiances, nor could the nation's capital control a state. It was supposed to be set off as a separate new government jurisdiction.
N. Rodgers: Not something I even thought of, but if DC did get statehood, the potential for it to be stomped on by the federal government would be huge just because of the sheer volume of the federal government within its borders. DC might want to think about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Easily, two or three of the Federalist Papers were written in response to Anti-Federalists who were like, "Okay, where's the capital going to be," right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: The concern of the Anti-Federalists was, "Would the states lose their jurisdiction, particularly those states located near the freaking capital?" All of this was designed to go ahead and say, this is the nation's capital. It's not a state capital. The nation's capital.
N. Rodgers: A separate entity.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is a separate entity and it's not a large entity. It's not large at all.
N. Rodgers: Because they could have made it. They had the entire West. They could've looked over the Appalachian Mountains and said, "Over there, right there in Tennessee, we're just going to take that whole territory."
J. Aughenbaugh: Think about if you're traveling on Interstate 66 coming out of Washington DC, it basically takes you through the northern part of Virginia into West Virginia. All of that could have been taken by the federal government for the capital, but no, it was confined. You mentioned Lafayette's architecture for laying it out. Well, one of the reasons why he could go ahead and lay it out as well as he did is that it's not a big area.
N. Rodgers: Much bigger now than it started off.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless. Again, I understand the slogan no taxation without representation, and it takes us back to the American Revolution and why we wanted to get out from under the yoke of the British monarchy. But at the same time, you got some constitutional issues. You've got some political issues.
N. Rodgers: Given the Congress right now, I can't imagine that those nuances could possibly be settled. This is going to be another one of those things that just goes away because nobody can figure it out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, I don't mean to be a downer about this, but I'm just like, it's not this easy, guys. You could put 10 constitutional law scholars in a room and if I had to hazard a guess, you're probably going to get easily six or seven different opinions, easily six or seven. Again, I teach this stuff. In the notes that I prepared for this particular podcast, so I went ahead and narrowed them down and it's what? Well over a page of notes about the constitutional issues, and I parsed that. I summarized.
N. Rodgers: DC, what we're going to say to you is we wish you the best. We think it's unlikely that you are going to be a state. You may, however, get to change your name, which would not be the worst thing in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, I would not.
N. Rodgers: It would be a marvelous thing to recognize Frederick Douglass and his contributions to the nation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Dial out the Frederick Douglass, I'm all in favor of it.
N. Rodgers: I'm cool with changing the name if they want to change the name. But now that I've seen that it's more, I was, I have to admit, yes, 51 stars, that will make this flag look weird. I'd love it. But now I'm like, and I also understand that the thing you have in your notes, which now makes much more sense to me about having states join in pairs, because then you take care of Joe Manchin's question about partisanship. You're like, "Okay. Go find a place that's heavily Republican, heavily partisan in that way so that you can make these balanced." Maybe he would feel differently if somebody said, we also propose this state of Republica wherever and it balances out both population-wise and partisan wise. Might make him and lots of other people more comfortable with rather than. It does appear to be a little bit partisan, I have to admit now that I've heard your arguments.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've told students this, I said, hey guys, partisan concerns have been with us for pretty much, not all, but for a number of states that have been admitted. If not partisan reasons, political reasons broadly conceived. See the previous podcast episode, where Congress put conditions on the states that they admitted, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Were you going to be a free state or a slave state, that you have to go ahead and outlaw polygamy. You couldn't discriminate against certain religions. Because again, some of the territories like some of the colonies were settled by religious groups.
N. Rodgers: It's a lot more complex an issue than just does DC deserve to be a state?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, does it deserve to have representation in the senate, in the house where they vote? Do they get to go ahead and have self-rue. Because like you, I'm like, sure you want self rule, enjoy it. Because there's a lot of headaches that come along with self rule.
N. Rodgers: No kidding. Good luck with getting your tax-base going.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Right.
N. Rodgers: All right. Well, I guess we'll see where this goes, but I suspect this is going to go nowhere. I'm going to predict nowhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not optimistic.
N. Rodgers: But who knows? Maybe we got a constitutional amendment coming that's going to rewrite the whole dang thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and that's the cool thing about the Constitution.
N. Rodgers: It gets updated every so often.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you want to amend it, get the support, amend it, then go through the statehood process. It can be done. It might be difficult, but it can be done.
N. Rodgers: Cool. Thanks, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, thank you, Nia. I enjoyed it.
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