Florida Senate - 2012                                    SM 1446
       
       
       
       By Senator Braynon
       
       
       
       
       33-01128-12                                           20121446__
    1                           Senate Memorial                         
    2         A memorial to the Congress of the United States,
    3         urging Congress to admit the District of Columbia as
    4         the 51st state of the United States of America.
    5  
    6         WHEREAS, citizens of the District of Columbia have been
    7  denied federal voting rights and complete self-governance since
    8  1801, and
    9         WHEREAS, the District’s 600,000 residents are not entitled
   10  to full voting representation in Congress and lack an autonomous
   11  local government, and
   12         WHEREAS, residents of the District pay more than $3.8
   13  billion each year in federal income taxes, yet have no voice as
   14  to how their taxes are spent, and
   15         WHEREAS, Congress oversees the democratically elected
   16  District government and can change or veto any budget or
   17  legislative matter passed by its locally elected officials, and
   18         WHEREAS, over 40,000 veterans reside in the District of
   19  Columbia, which accounts for more veterans per capita than any
   20  other city in the nation, and
   21         WHEREAS, residents of the District have fought and given
   22  their lives in every international conflict beginning with the
   23  War for Independence and, during the Vietnam conflict,
   24  registered more casualties than 10 states and recorded more
   25  deaths per capita than 47 states, and
   26         WHEREAS, the international effort to plant and nurture
   27  democracy in the farthest reaches of the globe is diminished at
   28  home by the denial of democracy to the District’s residents, and
   29         WHEREAS, it is an extreme contradiction that this nation,
   30  the exemplary leader of representative democracy, denies
   31  national voting representation to the residents of its capital,
   32  and
   33         WHEREAS, the District of Columbia is the only entity in the
   34  United States whose residents shoulder the complete
   35  responsibilities of citizenship without enjoying the complete
   36  privileges of citizenship, NOW, THEREFORE,
   37  
   38  Be It Resolved by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
   39  
   40         That the Legislature formally declares its support for
   41  admitting the District of Columbia as the 51st state of the
   42  United States of America.
   43         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be
   44  dispatched to the President of the United States, to the
   45  President of the United States Senate, to the Speaker of the
   46  United States House of Representatives, and to each member of
   47  the Florida delegation to the United States Congress.