TOM ANSTROM, ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA: My name is Tom Anstrom and I'm from Alexandria, Virginia. And my question is, why does Washington, D.C. not have any representatives in the U.S. Congress even though they have to pay taxes?</s>CHARLES BIERBAUER, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Congress created the District of Columbia in 1801 from a chunk of Virginia and a slice of Maryland. It was not until 1961 that the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution allowed District residents to vote for president. It's the most reliably Democratic voting block in the nation. Al Gore got its three electoral votes. And that's a major reason why the nation's capital won't become a city-state and acquire seats in Congress. We'd have to amend the Constitution again. But Republicans have no interest in handing Democrats two sure Senate seats. That 50/50 split in the Senate now, it would become a Democratic majority. There is a D.C. delegate, Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has a voice but not a vote in the House of Representatives. And the city recently issued new D.C. license plates to revive the pre- Revolutionary complaint about taxation without representation. President Clinton put them on the presidential limo. President Bush took them off. So politics does have a lot to do with why the residents of the District of Columbia have no vote in Congress.
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