‘Not Life or Death for Us’: DC Officials Push for Budget Fix in CR or Out of It

Despite their reluctance to fix a $1.1 billion hole they blew in Washington D.C.’s budget last March, House Republicans are now proposing filling the gap in their new continuing resolution. 

“I’ve been very vocal in trying to get that included,” Rep James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, said of the funding at a Thursday hearing with the district’s leadership. 

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) asked Comer how the money was left out of the Republicans’ spending legislation in the first place.

“No one has ever explained that to me,” Comer responded, chuckling. 

Democrats, too, would fix the hole in their own version of the CR, unveiled Wednesday night. That bill, which would restore funding cut from Medicaid and stop the Trump administration’s power grab of the legislative branch’s ability to appropriate funds, among other things, won’t go anywhere in a Republican-majority Congress.

The district has been in limbo since last spring, forced into hiring freezes and program delays, without the assurance that Congress won’t hobble D.C.’s budget again in the future. The money is the city’s own, raised from its inhabitants’ tax dollars, and did not go to the federal government. The budgetary hole, on top of DOGE cuts, has revised D.C.’s revenue projections downward by $1 billion over the next four years, driven by an expected 40,000 job losses, according to D.C. Mayor Murial Bowser’s (D) office.

D.C’s “lack of full autonomy also prevents us from using the money that we raised in taxes like happened this year,” Bowser said at Thursday’s Oversight hearing. “Taxes that we raised in the district were cut from our approved budget, which forced us to cut services including the pay raises that our police officers are due until this October.” 

Bowser added that she “hopes” that the fix gets passed in the CR, pointing to a standalone bill Congress could pass outside of the funding process — “it’s not too late,” she said.

Her trepidation stems from the uncertain future of the Republican CR. Passing it will require the cooperation of seven Senate Democrats to overcome the filibuster. So far, only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has said that he’ll vote for the resolution (Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that he’d vote against the CR, but has been known to step back into line on Republican spending legislation he doesn’t like).

When Bowser was asked after the hearing whether she’d push for passage of the GOP CR, given its D.C. budget fix, she said that it doesn’t restore needed funding from the past fiscal year.

D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson, though, told TPM that his focus is the forward-looking language that the CR does include, letting D.C. use its own money in 2026.

“We found a way around it that was harmful, but we found a way around it,” he said of the 2025 budget hole. 

“That language needs to be adopted by Congress,” he said of the forward-looking guarantee, “but the CR is not life or death for us.” He pointed to the CR’s inclusion of that language as evidence that “Republican leadership recognizes that it needs to be in whatever passes.”

As of Thursday, Democratic leadership is maintaining that the caucus will not vote for the Republican CR due to its failure to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies and to restore the funds cut from Medicaid. 

“When Donald Trump says don’t even bother to deal with Democrats, he says he wants a shutdown, plain and simple,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the Senate floor Thursday morning. 

If the government shuts down this month, the district will have to wait even longer for a budget fix — and, with the end of the fiscal year looming, the even more important guarantee that the district’s money won’t be abruptly taken again.