GOP senator on DC statehood: 'No one is compelled to actually' live there

[Judi Lynn]

Celine Castronuovo 13 hrs ago

GOP Sen. James Lankford (Okla.) on Tuesday vocalized opposition to making Washington, D.C., the 51st state in the union, arguing that the nation's capital has not had voting representatives in Congress for some time and that "no one's compelled to actually" live there.

"Any individual that moves to Washington, D.C., understands that Washington, D.C. is unique," Lankford said during the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday over legislation that seeks to legalize D.C. statehood.

Lankford argued that D.C. residents should know upon moving to the District that "this is a place where you don't have a vote for a senator or a House member," though he acknowledged that D.C. for decades has had a non-voting delegate in the House, a position currently held by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D).

"It's been well known that when you move to Washington, D.C., at any point, you're moving to an area that doesn't have two senators or a House member," the Oklahoma senator continued.

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-senator-on-dc-statehood-no-one-is-compelled-to-actually-live-there/ar-AALk4xo?li=BBnb7Kz





Sen. James Lankford

[elleng]

1. CLEARLY a joke.

[5X]

2. He wants to go back to good old days of slavery when they were compelled.

[padah513]

3. From root to stem

These are some horrible people. The state of Oklahoma has 3.97 million people. Washington DC has 5.37 million. Why should his state with fewer people have more representation than the District of Columbia?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. That argument could've been made about any state...

... after the original 13!

Edit:
If he wants, we could return to only US reps from the original 13 states. I'd be happy with a 21-5 Democratic advantage in the Senate!

[lees1975]

5. And yet thousands of native Americans were removed from their tribal lands and compelled

to live in Oklahoma which remained a territory for as long as it had a native American population. It did not become a state until it had a majority white population.

[marmar]

6. The Missing Lank