House takes spring break with budget bill in limbo, jeopardizing D.C. services

Enjoy your spring break, we guess?

The U.S. House of Representatives left Washington on Thursday for a two-week recess without acting on a Senate bill that would have fixed a $1.1 billion hole that the House itself blew in the city’s local budget last month. That failure to act raises the prospect that D.C. officials will have to start making cuts to local programs and staff, possibly including in education and public safety, to address a budget fiasco they did not cause. 

The House never voted on the proposed budget fix despite unanimous action by the Senate in mid-March, pleas from both police and fire union officials, lobbying by D.C. residents, and even  urging on social media by President Trump that the House take action “IMMEDIATELY” – the very type of command that has usually gotten Republicans moving. On Thursday Mayor Muriel Bowser even tried communicating with Republicans on Capitol Hill in Trumpian terms, saying on X that they “must act to avoid $1B in cuts to D.C.’s clean, safe and beautiful services.”

The issue stems from the House’s approval of a continuing resolution last month to fund the federal government through September. The resolution required federal agencies to hold their spending at the same levels as the 2024 fiscal year (even though they’re currently in the 2025 fiscal year), and for reasons still unknown it extended the same treatment to D.C. Given that D.C. has been operating under its balanced 2025 budget since last October – a budget that is funded by D.C. taxpayers, not Congress – scaling back to 2024 levels would mean the city would have to cut an estimated $1.1 billion in spending, and do so quickly. The Senate quickly acted to pass a separate bill fixing the budget snafu for D.C., and sent it back to the House for approval. It’s been languishing there for three weeks, and now the earliest it could be passed is at the end of April. 

The House’s inaction  is partly the product of a busy schedule, but also internal Republican politics that would have complicated consideration of the measure. Some conservative factions said they would only vote on the bill if they could attach policy riders, provisions that dictate what the city can and cannot spend money on. (Longstanding policy riders ban D.C. from spending money to subsidize abortions or legalize sales of recreational marijuana.) Politico reported this week that another dynamic may also have been at play: some Republicans saw the fix as a $1 billion federal giveaway to D.C., despite that money having been drawn from D.C. taxpayers and already included in the city’s approved budget.

“These are our local dollars – not a penny in federal savings,” tweeted Bowser on Thursday.

With House members now gone until April 28, it remains unclear exactly what’s next – but Bowser said Thursday that a lack of action in Congress would mean that D.C. would “move into another stage.” Sources in the Wilson Building tell The 51st that her staff have been planning for a variety of options, and those could include “program cuts, hiring freezes, spending freezes, [and] layoffs.” Any proposed cuts to spending would have to be included in a supplemental budget that would be submitted to the D.C. Council.

Last month D.C. City Administrator Kevin Donahue preemptively told city agencies to rein in spending, both because of the budget uncertainty on Capitol Hill and because of expected financial challenges in the year to come, given the Trump administration’s impact on the region’s economy. 

Additionally, a variety of city agencies have been told to prepare for cuts to come. All of D.C.’s public charter schools – which educate half of the city’s school kids – were told to submit “doomsday” budgets for the estimated $165 million in collective cuts they could face. (That would represent a 14% decrease in their spending.) While those schools have received the usual April payment that gets them through the end of the school year, they have also been told that some of the money could be clawed back or taken out of their budgets for the upcoming school year. 

And in recent weeks, Bowser has zeroed in on possible cuts to police should the House not pass the budget fix. “If our budget doesn’t pass and we have to look more closely at overtime spending for public safety officials, that will have an impact on crime,” she said last week. 

What remains up in the air is the timing of any potential cuts. D.C. Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee said in late March that city agencies had not yet exceeded their spending levels from 2024, but has been quiet since on when they might reach those levels – which would trigger the need to start making cuts. The cuts could also be slowly phased in and short-lived, depending on whether the House does eventually act once it returns on April 28.

“We are closely monitoring events in Congress and will continue working with the mayor and council to ensure FY25 spending complies with federal law,” said Natalie Wilson, Lee’s spokeswoman. 

That also indicates that any suggestion that D.C. should just ignore Congress and continue spending its money as  planned  isn’t a feasible option. Federal law prohibits any agency – including D.C. – from spending more than authorized by law, and doing so could carry an extra risk for the city: the return of a financial control board.