Taking Taxation Issue to the Streets

More than 300 District of Columbia residents--who pay federal taxes yet have no voice in Congress--traded in their car license plates for new ones that will take that message on the road--literally. “Taxation Without Representation,” say the new plates, which replace the “Celebrate and Discover” slogan. District leaders used their debut to call for full voting rights on Capitol Hill. “This is no drive-by,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s delegate to Congress. “We want our rights now.” Norton, who is permitted to vote in committee but not on the House floor, said most people in the country don’t realize that district residents--despite paying $2 billion a year in federal income taxes--have no voting rights in Congress. D.C. Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp said the inequity amounts to “tyranny.” The district was created from parts of Maryland and Virginia, and when Congress voted in 1801 to create the district government, its residents lost their right to vote in congressional elections in their former home states. U.S. territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico also have nonvoting congressional delegates, but their residents do not pay federal taxes.