Officials in D.C. say there will be a direct impact on residents if the House continuing resolution is adopted by the Senate.
The House passed legislation Tuesday to avert a partial government shutdown and fund federal agencies through September. The measure now moves to the Senate.
The spending bill could have major ramifications for the District of Columbia’s government.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said the proposal would require the District to cut more than $1 billion in spending in the next six months since it has already passed a balanced budget and is midway through its fiscal year. That means, officials said, cuts to critical services such as education and public safety, The Associated Press reported.
D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto said the continuing resolution requires a rollback of spending to 2024 levels. That would mean a cut of 16% of the remaining budget, which Pinto said would mean a cut of $1.3 billion.
Pinto said the effects would be felt in critical areas, such as “our Metropolitan Police Department, Fire and Emergency Medical Services, our teachers, because that’s what makes up the majority of our budget.”
The effect, said Pinto, is that “we would have to have furloughs and layoffs,” and that would include having to cut staff in public safety. “And when we think of our Metropolitan Police Department, we are already down 700 officers,” she said.
Pinto chairs the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public safety, and said, “Now is not the time to be cutting funding — and for Republicans to be defunding police in the Senate in the nation’s capital — we cannot have that right now.”
Like Bowser, who has emphasized D.C.’s shared goals with President Donald Trump’s administration for a cleaner, safer D.C., Pinto said “this major reduction in our funding would undermine what should be those bipartisan goals.”
GOP officials have downplayed the impact of the continuing resolution on D.C.’s operations. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said in a statement that it wasn’t the plan he wanted, but “at the end of the day, it is significantly better than the alternative — a government shutdown.”
The Senate has until Friday to act on the legislation. If it doesn’t, that would result in a government shutdown.
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