OPINION:
Call it a shot across the bow, a nail in the coffin, or a stake through the heart. Still, the overwhelming bipartisan rejection on March 8 by the Senate — including a surprisingly large number of Democrats — of soft-on-crime revisions to the District of Columbia’s criminal code almost certainly deals a coup de grace to whatever remained of the fever dreams the city had of statehood.
Rightly so, and ironically, that coup de grace was self-inflicted.
With its Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022, the D.C. Council proved yet again that the city is clearly not up to the responsibility of prudent self-governance that statehood would confer. It had to be reined in by Congress.
Invoking their constitutional authority to disapprove of and override the actions of the city government (such as it is), the Republican-controlled House and Democrat-led Senate both nixed the pro-criminal/anti-victim revisions to the city’s criminal code that the D.C. Council passed unanimously last Nov. 15.
The Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022 would have eliminated mandatory-minimum sentencing for almost all crimes and reduced statutory maximum sentences for some violent crimes. It would have also overwhelmed the city’s court system with the restoration of the right to misdemeanor trials.
Members of Congress apparently were cognizant of rising crime in the city and the bad signal the criminal code revisions sent, even if the City Council wasn’t. As of March 13, homicides in the city are up 25% in 2023 over the same date last year (45 vs. 36), according to D.C. Metropolitan Police Department figures. Motor vehicle thefts so far this year are up 108%, sex-abuse crimes are up 131%, and total property crimes are up 29%.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser — no conservative — wisely vetoed the bill as too extreme even for the District, but that apparently didn’t give even a moment’s pause to the council, which easily overrode her veto.
But after the Republican-sponsored resolution passed the House 250-173 on Feb. 9 with 31 Democrats’ votes, President Biden indicated March 2 that he would sign it if Senate Democrats concurred. Six days later, on March 8, fully 31 of the 48 Senate Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them did just that.
As of this writing, the congressional resolution of disapproval awaits the president’s promised signature.
It’s hard to say whether the political calculus of the congressional Democrats who voted to override the D.C. Council was predicated on legitimate concerns for public safety (including their own) or on not wanting to provide the GOP with fodder for “soft on crime” campaign advertising in the 2024 election cycle.
Either way, the Senate vote was as bipartisan as it was overwhelming, 81 to 14 — with even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., no less — voting with Republicans to approve it.
Meanwhile, 42 House Democrats also voted in favor of a second resolution, this one to quash a D.C. bill that would allow noncitizen residents of the city — including illegal aliens — to vote in local elections. The Senate vote on whether to rescind the clearly unconstitutional D.C. noncitizen voting bill is still pending, but it seems likely to pass just as handily.
Under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973, Congress has the final word on legislation passed by the D.C. Council. That would change if D.C. ever achieved statehood, but that now appears even less likely than before because the now-defunct criminal code revision and extending the franchise to those who broke the law by breaking into the country vividly underscores just how reckless and irresponsible the D.C. government is.
Since at least the late 1970s, congressional Democrats have fantasized about turning the 68.4-square-mile city — roughly 1/15th the size of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the Union — into the 51st state, ensuring the election of two more ultraliberal Democratic senators in perpetuity.
Thank God and the Constitution that neither HR 51 nor SR 51 — their sponsors’ claims to the contrary notwithstanding — can legislatively sidestep the constitutional amendment process that would be required to make an utterly irresponsible District of Columbia our 51st state.
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