(cnbc.com
>House Democrats passed a bill Friday to make Washington, D.C., the 51st U.S. state, a historic move unlikely to gain traction in the Republican-held Senate.
The chamber approved it by a 232-180 vote.
The legislation would give Washington residents, who have long decried the fact that they pay federal taxes but have no voting representation in Congress, one House member and two senators. A smaller area encompassing the White House, U.S. Capitol, and other federal buildings and monuments would remain under U.S. oversight.
Washington’s longtime nonvoting House delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced the bill, which would change the name of the district to the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth. In advocating for the legislation Friday, she noted that D.C.’s population of about 700,000 is larger than that of Wyoming or Vermont, and that the district pays more federal taxes than 22 states.
>“As we approach July 4th, it is long past time to apply the nation’s oldest slogan, ‘no taxation without representation,’ and the principle of consent of the governed to District of Colu
But if Democrats can win control of the White House and Senate in November, D.C. could get another shot at becoming a state next year. mbia residents,” Norton said.
>“DC will never be a state,” the president told the New York Post in May. “You mean District of Columbia, a state? Why? So we can have two more Democratic — Democrat senators and five more congressmen? No thank you. That’ll never happen.” (Washington would only have one House member, not five as Trump said.)