D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said Wednesday that the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will mark up and vote on her D.C. statehood bill next month.
The vote is scheduled for April 14 at 10 a.m.
“This historic markup of the D.C. statehood bill, which will be only the second in Congress since 1993, will prepare the bill for the floor and will serve to educate the American public on why statehood for the residents of our nation’s capital is so important,” Norton said. “As we held the hearing on the bill last week, we learned that support for D.C. statehood in the latest poll has increased to 54% nationally. The hearing, markup and floor vote on our bill last Congress educated millions of Americans who did not know that the Americans who live in the nation’s capital do not have the same rights they have.
“And this markup will occur two days before Emancipation Day, when President Lincoln freed slaves in the District before those in the states, but we’ll be celebrating the same theme: granting equal rights to residents of the District of Columbia,” she said.
Norton’s bill has 215 co-sponsors, enough to pass the House. Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) has a companion bill that has 42 co-sponsors.
President Biden has indicated his support for D.C. statehood.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that after the markup, which is expected to be successful since Democrats outnumber Republicans on the committee, he looks forward to working with Norton and committee Chair Carolyn Maloney on bringing the bill to the House floor.
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