Florida Rep. Kat Cammack called the vote to approve the District of Columbia as the 51st state on Thursday nothing more than a method for Democrats to accrue power and — considering the situation in the Senate — just a distraction from other issues.
"We've been dealing with this argument for decades, and I don't think that it's going to go anywhere in the Senate,'' Cammack said on Newsmax TV's "Spicer & Co.'' ''Ultimately this is just a Democratic power play for solidified control in the House and Senate for years to come.
''I asked people quite often, 'Do you think that if D.C. was 90 percent Republican that Nancy Pelosi would be pushing for D.C. statehood?' I don't think so."
The House passed the measure on essentially a party line vote 216-208.
Cammack said the effort was unconstitutional, claiming that for the District of Columbia to be a state, Maryland must give permission.
The 33-year-old first-term Republican from Florida’s 3rd Congressional District southwest of Jacksonville thinks that the push for D.C. statehood is a distraction from the border crisis.
"I think this is just really a distraction from the real issues that we have at hand ... at the southwest border that is beyond out of control at this point,'' she said. ''We have spending that is bankrupting our country, not 10 years from now, but today. And this is just a new ultra-liberal left-wing agenda at work here.''
Cammack also ridiculed Democratic lawmakers for claiming — as with many other issues — that Republican opposition to statehood was racist as expressed by Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York.
"I find it pretty hypocritical what the left wants to do in calling everyone a racist when they themselves are doing everything they can to divide and make it so that there are different classes of people in our country,'' she said. ''What happened to this notion of unity under President [Joe] Biden? That was part of his inaugural speech.
''Yet we have seen nothing but further division and then redefining bipartisanship not to include Republicans and Democrats, but different factions of the Democratic Party. It's just, it's horrible."
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