House Republicans have proposed throwing out a 20-year-old compromise on how Congress oversees Washington, D.C., in order to meddle with the city’s spending on a historic scale.
The latest federal spending bill in the House proposes treating the city like a federal agency and requiring that it cut $1 billion worth of local services, The Washington Post reported, citing city officials.
That could lead to layoffs for teachers, firefighters and cops; hurt the city’s credit rating, making it more expensive to borrow money to build roads and schools in the future; and damage a local economy already struggling under President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce.
What’s more, it gets Republicans basically nothing. Washington is not a federal agency, after all, and the budget cuts Congress is demanding would mostly come from local taxpayer money. So while Republicans may try to justify this as part of their broader spending cuts, it’s not actually saving the federal government much money.
This kind of interference would be unacceptable for any other U.S. city. It’s only possible because Congress has the power to review any local legislation under the Constitution.
Over the years, Congress has used that authority to score political points, as when then-President Barack Obama let congressional Republicans bar Washington from using tax dollars to fund abortions for low-income women as part of a budget deal. (“John, I’ll give you D.C. abortion,” Obama reportedly told then-House Speaker John Boehner during budget negotiations, like two guys swapping Pokémon cards.) But a 2004 compromise sought to give the city a more stable budget by letting it continue to keep spending at its current rates when Congress is struggling to pass its own budget. That line is missing — intentionally — from the spending bill being negotiated this week. There’s still a chance that Washington (the city) can convince Washington (the political establishment) not to do this. Republican lawmakers live and work in the city too, after all. But if the cuts to the city’s active budget go through, adding to the problems a previously thriving city is facing because of federal mismanagement, Republicans will have made the case for D.C. statehood better than activists ever could.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW.
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