Congress poised to force $1B cut to local DC budget, surprising many lawmakers
Congress is poised to pass a President Trump-endorsed funding bill this week that D.C. officials warn would lead to a $1 billion cut to the district’s local budget, a move that has been catching members of both parties off guard.
The 99-page, GOP-drafted stopgap funding bill would keep the federal government running past a Friday night shutdown deadline at largely fiscal 2024 levels. While its passage is not assured, there is enormous pressure on Senate Democrats, who hold the deciding votes, to allow it to advance.
But Democrats and local officials are sounding the alarm over the omission of language that would allow D.C. to continue spending its local budget at fiscal 2025 levels, as has been a long-standing practice for stopgap bills.
“This doesn't save the federal government any money, right?” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a senior appropriator, told The Hill. “This is not about a billion dollars in federal funds. What they did was cap the D.C. budget.”
“So, this is like telling someone’s city council what their total budget cap is, which is just Congress trying to use the District of Columbia as their playground and plaything?”
Van Hollen said that he’s looking “at a whole variety of options right now to try to address that issue,” but he added that his “understanding” of the motive by House Republicans in leaving out the language was that “is it was deliberate.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told The Hill she supports allowing D.C. to continue to operate under its own budget plan and that she plans to speak to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) on the matter.
“I support that language. I have no idea why the House left it out,” she said.
The stopgap funding bill being considered by the Senate would be the third continuing resolution (CR) for fiscal 2025, which began in October. While there are some funding boosts and cuts in the bill, it keeps funding largely at fiscal 2024 levels.
A key difference between this CR and previous ones is that it is missing language allowing D.C. to spend its local budget — which consists mostly of local tax dollars — at already approved 2025 levels. While D.C. was granted what’s known as “home rule” in the 1970s, Congress still approves its budget during the appropriations process.
As a result, D.C. officials have said the district would be forced to spend at its fiscal 2024 levels like federal agencies would under the stopgap — despite running at its updated budget levels for roughly half a year.
In a statement obtained by The Hill this week, the mayor’s office described the cut to D.C.’s budget as a “senseless, reckless” move that “would have devastating consequences for our nation’s capital, impacting public safety, education, and essential services.”
Leading up to the House vote on the legislation earlier this week, D.C. officials took to the Capitol with their concerns over the stopgap, with Bowser calling on members just meters away inside the building to address the “$1.1 billion problem” halfway into its fiscal year.
“We are not a federal agency,” she said. “We are a city, county, state all at once, and we provide direct services to the people of the District of Columbia, visitors to the District of Columbia, businesses in the District of Columbia, diplomats and visiting heads of state and everyone who works here in the Congress.”
The mayor’s office said in a recent request to lawmakers that such a cut would deal a significant blow to its general funds budget, which it described as “solely supported” by the district's “locally raised taxes, fees and fines.”
“So far, DC has expended, obligated or encumbered $6.3 billion, which is 48 percent of the total local appropriation,” the note stated. “If we now had to reduce local spending by $1.1 billion it would require a 16 percent cut to all remaining funds that are not expended.”
The office also warned such a cut “would result in immediate and unanticipated layoffs of direct service workers and reduction or elimination of direct services residents and visitors rely on.”
Bowser’s office has pushed for the Senate “to ensure the District can continue to operate under our congressionally approved [fiscal 2025] budget.”
The office additionally is asking for Congress “to add back the language that provided the District with the ability to spend its local resources in the event of a federal government shutdown.”
Additionally, Van Hollen and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) are pushing for an amendment to prevent cuts for D.C.
But adding the language back into the bill would require an amendment, which would send the CR back to the House for a vote. The House adjourned after passing the spending bill on Tuesday and would not be able to return to D.C. to pass an updated version before the government shuts down.
If it does fail Van Hollen said the plan is then to ask to try to pass a resolution before the Senate leaves town “to accomplish the same goal on D.C.”
House GOP appropriators said in a statement on Wednesday that “additional resources to support the District of Columbia with respect to ensuring the security of public events, as well as responding to terrorist threats or attacks, remain,” though it acknowledged that “for the remainder of the fiscal year, this bill holds D.C. at [fiscal 2024] levels, like the rest of the federal government.”
“The House Appropriations Committee has been assured that D.C. will continue to have a balanced budget,” they added. “Given the impact a government shutdown would have on D.C. and the nation, House Republicans took steps to avert one.”
Asked about the recent opposition from D.C. officials to the current stopgap plan, House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) initially told The Hill earlier this week that some of the funding “was inaugural stuff, like extra police,” but he added that he would have to “go through and look at it in more detail than I have.”
“I’m sorry if everything wasn’t perfect, and I’m sorry the Democrats weren’t on the table to talk to us, but it just is what it is.”
In its memo to Congress, the district said almost three-fourths of its budget “is made up of locally generated revenues,” compared with about 24 percent that “comes from federal grants that all other states received.”
Previous stopgap legislation also included funds for Trump’s inauguration in D.C. earlier this year, but Bowser's office said federal payment comprises less than 1 percent of its total budget and is separate from federal grants.
“Yet it supports critical functions, including in [fiscal 2025's] approved budget of $47 million for the costs incurred to support the inauguration of President Donald Trump and $50 million to the District’s Emergency Security and Planning Fund (EPSF) which supports costs incurred by the District to support federal activities.”
“In [fiscal 2024], DC had no funds appropriated to support President Trump’s inauguration and less funding for the EPSF,” the mayor's office added.
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