House committees to vote on bills on D.C. statehood and reparations

Washington — Two House committees will take up measures long championed by progressives on Wednesday, signaling that congressional Democrats are willing to move forward with their priorities despite narrow majorities in the House and Senate. One panel will vote on advancing a bill to admit Washington, D.C., as a state, while the other will take up a measure that would create a commission studying reparations for descendants of slaves.

The D.C. statehood bill considered by the House Oversight Committee is broadly popular among Democrats, with 215 cosponsors. An identical version of the bill passed the House last year, but stalled in the Senate, where then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to bring it to the floor for a vote. "The United States is a republic, but its capital lacks full representation. The United States is the only democratic country that denies both voting rights in the national legislature and local self-government to the people of its capital. That is wrong. It violates everything we stand for as Americans," Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney said in her opening statement.