The U.S. House of Representatives voted for D.C. statehood last spring, and the Senate is poised to consider the issue this year.
The last Senate vote on ending the disenfranchisement of the 700,000 Americans who live in Washington, D.C. was in 1978, when Barry Goldwater and I had the honor of serving as Arizona’s U.S. senators.
The 2021 bill would fulfill the constitutional requirement for a seat of government by setting the borders of the capital around several square miles of federal buildings such as the White House and Capitol, while granting statehood to the rest of D.C. where people live, work and pay taxes.