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The District of Columbia statehood movement is a political movement that advocates making the District of Columbia a U.S. state. As the national capital, the District of Columbia is a federal district under the direct jurisdiction of the United States Congress. Statehood would grant the District voting representation in the Congress and full control over local affairs. It has been proposed that the state would be named New Columbia. Statehood for the District could potentially be achieved by an act of Congress using the power granted under Article Four, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution. However, there is some debate as to whether simple legislation would be sufficient to grant statehood to the seat of government. == History == In 1783, a crowd of disbanded Revolutionary War soldiers angry about not having been paid, gathered to protest outside the building where the Continental Congress was meeting. The soldiers blocked the door and initially refused to allow the delegates to leave. Despite requests from the Congress, the Pennsylvania state government declined to call out its militia to deal with the unruly mob, and so Congress was forced to abruptly adjourn to New Jersey. This led to the widespread belief that Congress needed control over the national capitol. As Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 43, "Without it, not only the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings interrupted with impunity; but a dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy." This belief resulted in the creation of a national capital, separate from any state, by the Constitution's District Clause. The "District Clause" in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the United States Constitution states: In 1788, the land on which the District is formed was ceded by Maryland. In 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act placing the District on the Potomac River between the Anacostia and Connogochegue with the exact location chosen by President Washington. His selection was announced on January 24, 1791, and the Residence Act was amended to include land that Virginia had ceded in 1790. That land was returned to Virginia in 1847. The Congress did not officially move to the new federal capital until the first Monday in December 1800. During that time the District was governed by a combination of a federally appointed Board of Commissioners, the state legislatures and locally-elected governments.〔 Within a year of moving to the District, Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 and incorporated the new federal District under its sole authority as permitted by the District Clause. Since the District of Columbia was no longer part of any state, the District's residents lost voting representation in Congress and the Electoral College as well as a voice in Constitutional Amendments and the right to home rule, facts that did not go without protest. In January 1801, a meeting of District citizens was held which resulted in a statement to Congress noting that as a result of the impending Organic Act "we shall be completely disfranchised in respect to the national government, while we retain no security for participating in the formation of even the most minute local regulations by which we are to be affected. We shall be reduced to that deprecated condition of which we pathetically complained in our charges against Great Britain, of being taxed without representation." Talk of suffrage for the District of Columbia began almost immediately, though it mostly focused on a constitutional amendments and retrocession, not statehood. In 1801, Augustus Woodward writing under the name Epaminondes, wrote a series of newspaper articles in the National Intelligencer proposing a constitutional amendment that would read "The Territory of Columbia shall be entitled to one Senator in the Senate of the United States; and to a number of members in the House of Representatives proportionate to its population." Since then more than 150 constitutional amendments and bills have been introduced to provide representation to the District of Columbia, resulting in congressional hearings on more than twenty occasions, with the first of those hearings in 1803. At that time, resolutions were introduced by Congress to retrocede most of Washington to Maryland. Citizens fearful that the seat of government be moved asked that DC be given a territorial government and an amendment to the Constitution for equal rights. But James Holland of North Carolina argued that creating a territorial government would leave citizens dissatisfied. He said, "the next step will be a request to be admitted as a member of the Union, and, if you pursue the practice relative to territories, you must, so soon as their numbers will authorize it, admit them into the Union."〔Congressional Record, 1805: 979-980.〕 The first proposal for congressional representation to get serious consideration came in 1888, but it wouldn't be until 1921 that congressional hearings would be held on the subject. Those hearings resulted in the first bill, introduced by Sen. Wesley Lively Jones (R-WA), to be reported out of committee that would have addressed District representation. The bill would have enabled - though not required - Congress to treat residents of DC as though they were citizens of a state. Congress members continued to propose amendments to address the District's lack of representation, with efforts picking up as part of the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950's. This eventually resulted in successful passage of the Twenty-third Amendment in 1961, which granted the District votes in the Electoral College in proportion to their size as if they were a state, but no more than the least populous state. This right has been exercised by D.C. citizens since the presidential election of 1964. With District citizens still denied full suffrage, members continued to propose bills to address congressional representation. Such bills made it out of committee in 1967 and 1972, for a House floor for a vote in 1976 and in 1978 resulted in the formal proposal of the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment. However that amendment expired in 1985, ratifications short of the needed 38. Before the failure of the Voting Rights Amendment, but when passage seemed unlikely, District voters finally began to pursue statehood. In 1980, District voters approved the call of a constitutional convention to draft a proposed state constitution,〔(Washington, DC Statehood Constitutional Convention Records ), Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University〕 just as U.S. territories had done prior to their admission as states. The proposed constitution was ratified by District voters in 1982 for a new state to be called "New Columbia".〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=DC Statehood: a Chronology )〕 In 1987, another state constitution〔(Constitution for the State of New Columbia ) (enacted 1987). Westlaw. 〕 was drafted, which again referred to the proposed state as New Columbia. Since the 98th Congress, more than a dozen statehood bills have been introduced, with two bills being reported out of the committee of jurisdictions. The second of these bills made it to the House floor in November 1993, for the only floor debate and vote on D.C. statehood. It was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 277 to 153. Pursuant to the 1980 proposed state constitution, the District still selects members of a shadow congressional delegation, consisting of two shadow Senators and a shadow Representative, to lobby the Congress to grant statehood. These positions are not officially recognized by the Congress. Additionally, until May 2008, the Congress prohibited the District from spending any funds on lobbying for voting representation or statehood. Since the 1993 vote, bills to grant statehood to the District have been introduced in Congress each year but have not been brought to a vote. Following a 2012 statehood referendum in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, political commentators endorsed the idea of admitting both the District and Puerto Rico into the Union, following a tradition of U.S. states entering as pairs. In July 2014, President Barack Obama became the second sitting President, after Bill Clinton in 1993, to endorse statehood for the District of Columbia. In a town-hall event, he said "I'm for it." He added that "folks in D.C. pay taxes like everybody else, they contribute to the overall well being of the country like everybody else, they should be treated like everybody else," Obama said in response to a question. "There has been a long movement to get D.C. statehood and I've been for it for quite some time. The politics of it end up being difficult to get through Congress, but I think it's absolutely the right thing to do."〔http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/obama-dc-statehood_n_5606737.html〕〔http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/07/21/president-obama-dc-statehood-position/12949055/〕 For more than 20 years following the 1993 floor vote, there were no congressional hearings on D.C. Statehood. But on September 15, 2014, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs held a hearing on bill S. 132, which would have created a new state out of the current District of Columbia, similar to the 1993 bill. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「District of Columbia statehood movement」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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