Washington falls back into its elevation sickness every few years, but the city itself has limited say in the matter because any change to the law must be approved by Congress. Although the Republicans leading the House largely resist federal-government intervention in their own districts, they have not shied away from intervening in Washington’s affairs.

“This committee has no desire to make D.C. into the next New York,” Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, affirmed as he opened the hearing, dismissing the concerns raised by some.

Indeed, it has been a debate given to hyperbole, and repetition. In 1988, as a change to the law was being discussed, Dorn C. McGrath Jr., then the chairman of the citizens’ planning group Committee of 100 on the Federal City, told The New York Times, “There is constant pressure to skyscraper this city.”

With the preponderance of its rooftops currently resting below triple-digit heights, Washington would be dwarfed not only by the monumental towers of New York or Chicago, some more than 1,000 feet tall, but also when measured against shorter buildings of smaller metropolises, like Atlanta or St. Louis.

The Height of Buildings Act became law in Washington first in 1899 and then, in its current form, in 1910, after residents complained about the construction of the Cairo Hotel, now an apartment building, at 160 feet tall. The limit imposed thereafter — which is measured relative to the width of a city street but comes out roughly to 90 feet for residences and 130 feet for commercial buildings — was agreed to arbitrarily. Were Congress to change the law, it would most likely consider raising the limit only by tens of feet, not hundreds.