"I am proud to cosponsor Rep. Norton's legislation correcting the injustice of denying representation to 700,000 Americans by admitting the District of Columbia as the fifty-first state.  Last Congress, I brought this legislation to the Floor and worked with Rep. Norton to pass it, and I look forward to doing the same again in the 117th Congress.  Residents of our nation's capital deserve two senators and a representative with full voting rights in the House.  For a city with such a large African American population, this denial of representation echoes a broader history of the suppression of voting rights in our country.  No other democracy around the world denies legislative representation to the residents of its capital city simply because of where they live.  Neither should we here in the United States."