I don’t think the founders envisioned DC have a population larger than some states. You know I think they went to war over the whole no taxation without representation.
Frankly if DC and PR both want statehood, they should bout get statehood.
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I get PR being a state, if they want. I don’t get DC. Just cede the territory back to MD. That completely resolves the representation issue and doesn’t create a new tiny state.
I will say that making PR a state would blow the Federal Budget pretty badly. I’d rather see PR get its financial house in order before it was granted statehood. Otherwise it will be, yay PR is a state!! Now give it a bailout.
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So land mass is the definition of tiny? Not population? When talking about representation in the federal government?
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I could see DC back to Maryland but can also understand desire for independent statehood.
PR debt seems like a strage hill. I mean $129 Billion is a lot but it’s still a drop in the bucket of $28T US debt.
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PR has been a US territory for almost 125 years. If their economics are a shambles (and they are), we own some level of responsibility for that, reflecting a long term pattern of taking what we need without making long-term investments that we would in any of our other states.
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Exactly what has the US taken from PR? The island isn’t exactly a major production point for much of anything. Now we do need to do away with the rule restricting shipment to/from PR only being on US flagged ships. Other than that we tried to turn it into a major pharmaceutical manufacturing area through tax breaks. It failed when the tax breaks sunsetted.
I’ll take them too!
Maybe New Jersey should split into New Jersey and those people from Southern Jersey.
Rum?
I don’t know but it seems they are a net exporter of goods.
I’d vote a big NOem on that proposal.
Yeah, DC is larger than two existing states (Wyoming and Vermont) and about the same size as the Dakotas, Montana, meant something I’m forgetting.
It’s extremely close in size of population to Alaska.
That’s the one, thanks.
If you had to choose between these two options, which do you go for?
- DC becomes a state
- DC population goes to Maryland
- Wyoming disolved and added to Montana
- Vermont disolved and added to New Hampshire.
New Hampshire is an upside-down Vermont imo
Unlike adding Puerto Rico, or ceding the populated portions of DC to Maryland, adding DC as a state would require a constitutional amendment, would it not?
The Constitution lays out that DC should not be a state, right?
Seems like there’s an extra layer of complication here.
Hmmm … sort of. It gives Congress final authority over the “District acting as the seat of government.” Presumably, the federal government buildings themselves would be excluded from the state, and Congress would retain authority over that. The only limit on that is it cannot be more than 10 square miles, but there is no other requirements.
Not under the current proposal. It would retain a small federal district that contains most of the actual core government buildings.
This is what I was envisioning. Sort of a donut shaped state.