AFGE supports a bill that would make Washington, D.C. the 51st state.
The Washington, D.C. Admission Act, introduced by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, was approved by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform April 14. It’s now headed to the full House, which is expected to vote on the bill as soon as this week.
The need for D.C. statehood became glaringly clear last year when Congress passed the CARES Act and treated D.C. as a territory, instead of as a state, in the Coronavirus Relief Fund – depriving D.C. of $755 million in much-needed revenue for nearly a year until the new Congress intervened.
AFGE supports the bill because it would give federal and D.C. government employees who live in D.C. more say in their livelihood.
“States are the fundamental basis for our system of government and to deny a population the ability to form a state denies them the ability to fully participate in self-governance,” wrote AFGE President Everett Kelley in a letter to House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney urging support for the legislation.
“Any solution short of statehood would simply continue the two-tiered system of citizenship the residents of the District of Columbia have endured for 200 years,” he added.
AFGE represents 700,000 federal and D.C. government employees.
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