Today in Washington D. C. - Feb 24, 2009

The Senate schedule is different than reported yesterday. they will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 160, the DC voting bill. The unconstitutional bill would grant House voting rights the delegate from the District of Colombia. At 11 AM, the Senate will vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill. At 4:30 PM, senators will vote on the nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) to be Secretary of Labor.

Tonight 8:30 pm (EST), there will be a Joint Session of Congress and at 9 pm President Barack Obama will address the Joint Session. Following the president’s speech, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will deliver the Republican response.

The two issues set to dominate Congress this week are the so-called DC voting rights bill, and government spending issues in light of President Obama’s first budget proposal and the Democrats’ omnibus appropriations bill.

This morning, senators will vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to a bill that would grant unconstitutional voting rights to the Delegate to the House of Representatives from the District of Columbia. This bill has been misleadingly referred to as “DC voting rights,” when it has little to do with the ability of District residents to actually vote. Rather, the issue at hand is whether the District’s delegate should be able to vote as a full member of the House.

Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have decided to address this issue in a clearly unconstitutional way, granting voting rights in the House by statute, instead of by an obviously necessary constitutional amendment. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky explained the constitutional issues in an article for National Review Online yesterday. Von Spakovsky points out, “Article I specifies that ‘Representatives . . . shall be apportioned among the several States,’ and this is confirmed in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment. One of the qualifications to be a congressman is to ‘be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.’” As von Spakovsky goes on to say, the Founders were very specific in distinguishing the District of Columbia from the states in the Union. Indeed, he notes, “It also took an amendment — the 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961 — to provide District residents the right to vote for president.”

There is a proper way to go about this. Just as with the 23rd Amendment, Congress can pass a proposal and submit it for ratification to the states. But in utilizing its constitutional power to “exercise exclusive legislation” over the District, Congress is not free to ignore the rest of the Constitution.

While the Senate debates the DC bill, the House will begin work on a $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill Democrats are rolling out today. Politico writes, “Covering more than a dozen Cabinet departments, the giant bill adds another $20.5 billion to former President George W. Bush’s domestic spending requests for the current budget year ending Sept. 30. Together with prior appropriations for defense, homeland security and veterans, this breaks the trillion-dollar mark for nonemergency appropriations — providing $1.012 trillion for 2009, a 6.7 percent increase over 2008.”

In an excellent column for The Examiner, Byron York takes a step back to look at all this spending. York writes, “At some point last week, the sheer velocity of Obama’s spending proposals began to overwhelm even experienced Washington hands. In the span of four days, we saw the signing of the $787 billion stimulus bill, the rollout of a $275 billion housing proposal, discussion of Congress’s remaining appropriations bills (about $400 billion) and word of a vaguely-defined financial stabilization plan that could ultimately cost $2 trillion.” York asked Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell about the staggering numbers. “We thought the Bush deficits were big at the time,” Sen. McConnell said. “But this is going to make the previous administration look like rank amateurs. We could be adding multiple trillions to the national debt in the first year.”Tags: D.C., omnibus bill, US Congress, US House, US Senate, voting rights, Washington D.C. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!