DC Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday begged House Republicans to reverse course on a continuing resolution (CR) that she claims would devastate her city.
The problem with the CR, according to Bowser, is that it’d treat DC as a federal agency. This itself is problematic because federal agencies still lack a 2025 budget and are therefore stuck at 2024 levels.
So, by treating DC as a federal agent, the CR would force DC to be stuck at its own 2024 spending levels. This, in turn, would mean a $1.1 billion cut to DC services, according to Bowser.
NOW: DC Mayor @MurielBowser is on Capitol Hill to protest House GOP’s funding CR to avert a shutdown.
DC does not have a voting congressional delegation.
Bowser notes DC will be forced to reduce its spending by $1.1 billion for the final 6 months of FY25 if the CR is enacted pic.twitter.com/Ms9xT3cKlP
— Nathaniel Reed (@ReedReports) March 10, 2025
“In the most recent continuing resolution language, it ignores our already congressionally approved fiscal 2025 budget,” she said during a press conference Monday outside Congress. “Instead, it would peg us at FY24 levels — the levels that federal agencies are [at] because they do not have an approved FY 25 budget.”
“But we are not a federal agency. 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,” she added.
She went on to warn that the “devastating” CR would mean across-the-board cuts affecting teachers, law enforcement, front-line workers, and more.
“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.
The only good news is “Congress can fix this.”
“They can fix this $1.1 billion problem that we have brought to their attention,” Bowser said.
DC has been operating under a congressionally approved budget for 6 months.
Now, DC could be forced to cut $1 billion halfway through our fiscal year—impacting public safety, health and human services, and education.
It’s not good for DC, and it’s not good for our nation. pic.twitter.com/OHQMQ9Xl7y
— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) March 11, 2025
They can, but not by scrapping the CR altogether. Instead, they can fix it by adjusting the CR’s language. The thing is that previous CR bills always contained a special provision just for DC. The problem is that the provision is missing from the latest CR.
“The CR omitted a longstanding provision that would allow DC to continue spending its local fiscal year 2025 budget and instead treats DC as a federal agency forcing the district to revert to spending at fiscal year 2024 levels for the remainder of the year,” Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said during Monday’s presser.
House Appropriations Committee chair Tom Cole, a Republican, has defended the CR, arguing that most of the $1.1 billion in previous spending was meant to cover the costs of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“A lot of that stuff, again, was inaugural stuff, like extra police,” he said on Monday. “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. This is mostly things like, we don’t have an inauguration again.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Jim McGovern pushed back on Cole, arguing that he was mistaken, according to the Washington Post.
“DC passed a budget for this fiscal year — a balanced budget, I might add,” McGovern said. “But now Republicans are blowing up their budget with no warning, and I think it will impact safety, cops, firefighters, teachers. And I think it’s shameful. Regrettable.”
House Democrats did try to push an amendment that would have allowed DC to maintain its current spending levels, but their Republican counterparts rejected it.
“A Democratic-backed effort for consideration of an amendment to allow DC to continue to spend under the fiscal year 2025 levels was blocked in a party-line vote as the House Rules Committee considered the funding bill on Monday,” according to The Hill.
This angered Norton.
“With this bill, House Republicans have intentionally committed nothing short of fiscal sabotage against DC,” she said.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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