Washington, D.C.’s infamous height limit for buildings has returned to the news of late, with the D.C. Office of Planning recommending that current restrictions—which essentially make a 13-story building about as high as you can go—be loosened around D.C.’s core and eliminated altogether elsewhere, with further zoning left to the discretion of the District’s government.

By artificially suppressing housing inventory (the anti-limit argument goes), the law drives up prices, forcing out people who might live or want to live in the District. “The District desperately needs more capacity. The way to build it intelligently is to let the market and the city decide where tall buildings might or might not prove valuable,” Lydia DePillis once wrote at Washington City Paper. “The idea of buildings puncturing D.C.’s squat skyline might seem unsettling at first—especially to those who absorb the terrifying rhetoric from the District’s preservationists. But … abandoning the Height Act and letting zoning rule would be worth it.”

However, since the height limit is encoded in a federal law—the Height of Buildings Act of 1910 (emphasis mine)—Congress would have to change it. Which means Rep. Darrell Issa, the conservative Republican from San Diego who chairs the House Committee on Government and Oversight Reform, would need to be persuaded. And he has seemed, at best, lukewarm.

Might self-interest succeed in pushing him and national Republicans where common sense and empathy have failed? Might they be inclined to ease the height limit, paving the way for skyscrapers in Tenleytown and on H Street, if doing so could help them politically? Specifically, by turning Virginia red again?

According to Christopher Leinberger, a Brookings Institute fellow and author of The Option of Urbanism, the height limit’s persistence could cause D.C. to lose market share to the nearby suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, something which has not happened for nearly a decade as improved schools, safer streets, and the desirability of walkable urban neighborhoods have made D.C. a more attractive place to live. The District has “not felt the impact of height limits on supply” yet, Leinberger argued. However, he added, “we will be feeling that impact in the future. In greater downtown D.C., we probably have 15 or 20 years of supply left as far as potential build-out. From a real estate perspective, 15 to 20 years begins to influence prices now.”