Entire D.C. Government Urges GOP to Reverse Course on ‘Devastating’ $1B Cuts

The Washington Post

12:04 JST, March 11, 2025

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and almost every D.C. lawmaker stood on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol on Monday and implored House Republicans to reverse course on the $1.1 billion in cuts to D.C. services they said the GOP’s spending bill would cause to its $21 billion local budget if the measure passed – a rare show of solidarity across all corners of District government that underscored the depth of city officials’ fears.

The GOP’s stopgap funding bill, called a continuing resolution, would treat D.C. as a federal agency and force the city to revert to fiscal 2024 spending levels for the next six months, amounting to the effective cancellation of the city’s active 2025 budget.

Bowser – joined by members of her Cabinet, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and almost the entire D.C. Council – warned that the city would have to find more than $1 billion in immediate, across-the-board cuts affecting every area of D.C. government, probably including teachers, law enforcement officers and other critical-front line workers.

Bowser called the prospect “devastating.” There could be immediate layoffs and cuts to city services that touch Washingtonians’ everyday lives, officials stressed.

“There’s no way, to cut that kind of money in the time that we have this fiscal year, not to affect police, not to affect teachers and not to affect some of the basic government services that allow us to keep our city clean, safe and beautiful,” she said.

But, Bowser said, “Congress can fix this.”

“They can fix this $1.1 billion problem that we have brought to their attention,” she said, and work to reverse “what I like to think of as a $1.1 billion mistake. And the thing about mistakes is they can be corrected.”

Norton, the District’s nonvoting representative in the House, had introduced an amendment in the House Rules Committee intended to resolve the problem. But it failed, meaning the House will proceed Tuesday with a vote on a bill that, in effort to avoid a government shutdown, will also blow a hole in D.C.’s budget.

Because D.C. is now tied up in the stakes of a national government shutdown, it is unclear what additional avenues the city could have to prevent the anticipated cuts, or whether they would be able to stave off the problem if the continuing resolution passes and heads to the Senate.

At the heart of the issue is that Congress has to approve D.C.’s budget during its annual appropriations process. But when that process is delayed, as it is now, lawmakers have for the past two decades included a provision in the continuing resolution that allows D.C. to continue spending at its current budget levels. In this case, that would be 2025.

That language is what House Republicans omitted.

House GOP leadership aides said over the weekend that the language was omitted to treat D.C. as a federal agency and to treat all federal agencies “equally” by keeping all, including the city, at 2024 spending levels. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) insisted that D.C. officials “will have what they need to cover operations for the next six months,” until the city’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

In a hearing at the House Rules Committee on Monday afternoon, Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) said he did not think the continuing resolution, as is, would have any impact on D.C.’s day-to-day operations, framing it as a minor adjustment that would mostly affect inauguration funding that the city did not need anymore.

“It’s time to move on. We’ve not taken anything out of there that substantively affects the day-to-day operation of municipal services,” Cole said. “This is mostly things like, we don’t have an inauguration again.”

Cole’s testimony suggested that House Republicans may not intend to cut $1 billion in city services. But House Democrats questioned whether they realized that is the actual effect of omitting the provision allowing D.C. to continue spending its fiscal 2025 budget without disruption.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) informed Cole that he was mistaken, repeating warnings from the D.C. government that the effect of the missing provision would impact the entire local budget.

“D.C. passed a budget for this fiscal year – a balanced budget, I might add. But now Republicans are blowing up their budget with no warning,” McGovern said, “and I think it will impact safety, cops, firefighters, teachers. And I think it’s shameful. Regrettable.”

A spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did spokespeople for Johnson.

Norton’s amendment that failed at the House Rules Committee sought to insert the language allowing the city to continue spending at its current budget levels.

That language has been in every continuing resolution going back two decades, for the purpose of avoiding roping the District into political standoffs or federal budget chaos. House Republicans did not inform D.C. they were omitting that language in this continuing resolution, city officials said.

“With this bill, House Republicans have intentionally committed nothing short of fiscal sabotage against D.C.,” Norton said.

Congress must pass a stopgap funding bill by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. But Democratic leadership came out against it, and its passage in this form is uncertain given the GOP’s thin margins.

Should the bill pass as is, the Bowser administration said in a memo sent to House leadership, D.C. would have to slash 16 percent of its remaining funds to comply.

D.C. Public Schools and charter schools could see more than $300 million in cuts, while D.C. police could experience $67 million in cuts and the Department of Human Services, which serves the city’s poorest residents and provides homeless services, could see $28 million in cuts.

“These are not savings for the federal government. This is simply damage to the District,” D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said at the joint news conference. “It cripples this District for the remainder of this year. Which is why, again, we stand here in unified opposition to this language.”

The anticipated D.C. impact caught even some Republicans by surprise – an aide with the House Oversight Committee, which has oversight of the city, said the panel had no involvement in the decision to remove the long-standing provision and was not made aware that it was happening.

Council members knocked on doors at the Capitol on Monday to try to educate lawmakers about the impact of the cuts. Bowser said that she was in touch with the White House budget office and sought its help, and that she learned the omission of the critical D.C. provision did not originate with the White House.

“If the Congress goes through with this action,” Bower said, “it will work against a priority that President Trump and I share, and that is to make Washington, D.C., the most beautiful city in the world.”

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the D.C. provision, while a White House official pointed to the president’s general support of the continuing resolution.

D.C. staffers and lawmakers spent the day feverishly reaching out to Republican lawmakers and congressional leadership, while some residents joined a protest on the Capitol lawn.

“We are not a federal government agency,” said Keya Chatterjee, a co-founder of the group Free DC, which advocates for D.C. home rule. “We are thriving communities that deserve dignity and deserve the respect that other people in this country get,” she added, to applause from the crowd of a few hundred who were mostly rallying against other national impacts of the continuing resolution.

If members of the House passed the resolution as is, she said in an interview afterward, “they are going to have every angry PTA parent in D.C. screaming in their office.”

D.C.’s fire union hoped to find a listening ear in Johnson’s office, given that he has been open about coming from a family of firefighters and “knows the first hand impact and potential catastrophic consequences when local fire departments are forced to make cuts to their budget,” union president David Hoagland wrote in a text message Monday.

Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) said a group of lawmakers tried to speak with staff at Johnson’s office Monday, but they were asked to leave. They had better luck at the offices of other House staffers, many of whom White said did not seem fully aware of how the spending bill would devastate the District.

“Most of the high-level staff I spoke to seemed surprised by what’s actually happening here, which makes me think that at least for the majority of congressional Republicans, this was unknown or inadvertent,” he said.

Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) also spent several hours in House office buildings Monday, reaching a staffer for Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada).

“We think it might be a mistake,” she said, adding that it would be “super easy to fix.”

The staffer, who said he was a resident of D.C.’s NoMa neighborhood, said he would be “happy to flag” the issue to the congressman. The council members reunited ahead of Monday’s news conference with Bowser.

“Good job today, everybody,” Nadeau told her colleagues. “Whatever happens, we gave it our all.”