President Trump is urging swift passage of legislation to fix what members have called a “mistake” by Congress that forced significant cuts to Washington, D.C.’s local budget.
Trump on Friday wrote on Truth Social that the House should “immediately” take up the “D.C. funding ‘fix’ that the Senate has passed.”
“We need to clean up our once beautiful Capital City, and make it beautiful again. We will be TOUGH ON CRIME, like never before. I will work with the Mayor on this and, if it does not happen, will have no choice but to do it myself,” he said.
The post comes as House Republicans have yet to move on the bipartisan legislation that passed the Senate earlier this month.
The Senate passed the bill immediately after approving a larger government funding stopgap to prevent a shutdown. The latter bill keeps the government funded through September, but mostly at fiscal year 2024 levels.
However, D.C. officials and lawmakers said the bill omitted language seen in previous government-wide stopgap funding legislation that allows D.C. to continue operating under whatever budget the city has approved.
As a result, D.C. officials have said the District would be forced to spend at its fiscal 2024 levels like federal agencies would under the stopgap — after running at its updated budget levels for roughly half a year. They say the move would mean a roughly $1 billion cut for the District’s budget in the months ahead.
Backers of the budget fix passed by the Senate aimed at allowing D.C. to operate at its fiscal 2025 budget levels have said the government will not save any money from the potential $1 billion spending cut, noting the money in question is sourced from the District’s local tax revenues.
However, there has been clear resistance by hardline conservatives, as some Republicans have pushed leadership to hold off on passing the measure and have discussed potential “requirements” for the Democratic-led District to spend at its own budget levels.
