who currently holds the tie-breaking vote in the u.s. senate?
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented after the US House of Representatives passed a historic vote Friday on a bill that would turn Washington, D.C., into a state in a historic precedent. Democrats welcomed the move, but it certainly won’t pass in the Republican-controlled Senate.
“For more than two centuries, residents of Washington, D.C., have been denied their full rights to participate in our democracy,” Pelosi said, even though they pay taxes and serve in the military.
hee who currently holds the tie-breaking vote in the u.s. senate?
The law was passed by 232 votes to 180, with the support of Democrats. It is the first time in American history that one of the two houses of the US Congress has adopted a text of this kind, and the first time since 1993 that a vote on Washington’s status is being held.
Pelosi and several other Democratic representatives for the occasion wore a black sanitary mask with the number 51 written on it, because the vote aims to make Washington the 51st state.
Washington’s only representative in the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton, said that “Congress has two options: either to continue to exercise tyrannical, undemocratic power over 750,000 people” who are Washington “or to fulfill the covenant and ideals of this nation” by voting for the law. Norton has observer status and is not entitled to vote on the Council.
This underrepresentation, which is at the heart of the debate, is written on car license plates in Washington with the phrase “taxes without representation,” a slogan dating back to the British colonial era.
When the United States was created in the 18th century, the Founding Fathers wanted the seat of the federal government to be outside the first 13 states to avoid conflict. The constitution therefore provided for the creation of a “province” in 1790, directly attached to the central authority.