Senate Republicans could be on track to approve legislation that would effectively defund public safety in Washington after spending years depicting the nation’s capital as a crime-ridden wasteland.
The funding bill passed by the House of Representatives is missing language included in previous continuing resolutions that would allow the city to spend its own local revenue according to its most recent budget. The result, according to Mayor Muriel Bowser and other city elected officials, would effectively be a $1 billion cut to city operations if Congress doesn’t do anything to adjust the language.
The mayor has said that among the hardest hit sectors could be public safety, and given Republicans’ heavy messaging around bringing law and order to the District, Democrats are pointing to the irony.
“It seems purely punitive and vindictive. It doesn’t save the federal budget any money,” Rep. Jamie Raskin told NOTUS. “The Republicans are clearly trying to defund the police in Washington, D.C.”
Washington’s most recent budget — which Congress had already approved — tried to staff up the Metropolitan Police Department with more funding, partially in response to congressional criticism of an increase in carjackings and homicides in the city in 2023. Homicides and carjackings dropped the following year, but that hasn’t stopped some Republicans from depicting the city as a place of lawlessness and blaming city officials.
Most Republican senators that NOTUS spoke with, who may be voting on the bill as early as Wednesday night, did not know about the potential effects of the legislation on Washington.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Appropriations Committee member, said she only learned about them recently — after the bill had already passed the House.
“Many of us were surprised to realize the impact to the DC budget … I literally read about this last night for the first time,” Murkowski said. “This is obviously something that we all should care about. We all work here. We may not claim this as our residence, but we live here at least three, four, five days a week, so it matters.”
It also reportedly came as a surprise to Appropriations Chair Susan Collins.
“That was not a provision that was in the Senate bill or anything that we advocated for. It came as a surprise to me and explains why the mayor has called me,” Collins said Wednesday, according to HuffPost.
Some Republican senators said they had heard about the bill’s potential effects on the city and said it wasn’t their problem. Another appropriator in the Senate, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, first passed the blame onto House appropriators — before then blaming the mayor.
“She’s calling it a cut. I don’t see it as a cut,” Mullin said. “I don’t know how they need to add a billion, because FY24 they did just fine. So we need to add a billion to it? That seems a pretty large increase for any city.”
The city is already six months into its newest budget, and the bill would force city officials to revert to last year’s spending levels with less than a week’s notice, which City Administrator Kevin Donahue said Monday would result in an immediate hiring freeze followed by layoffs.
The mayor said Monday her staff had been in touch with House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole’s staff about the issue, but when NOTUS asked Cole about it before the funding bill vote in the House on Tuesday, he said he didn’t know about it: “I’ve been busy.”
“We’re here now. I think this needs to pass. Everybody will be better off if the government’s funded,” Cole said.
Sen. Josh Hawley did not have many suggestions for how the city should navigate the tough budget situation Congress could put them in. Instead, he suggested support for overturning the federal law that granted D.C. limited authority over certain municipal operations.
“Get a new mayor, a new administration. Or maybe, Congress oughta just revoke home rule,” Hawley said after claiming Bowser turned Washington into “one of the most dangerous places on the face of the earth.”
There is existing support among Republican lawmakers in the House to take back control of the District of Columbia. Seven House Republicans reintroduced a bill last month to repeal the Home Rule Act, and Bowser even had the letters of the city’s Black Lives Matter Plaza removed Monday after a lawmaker proposed a bill that would withhold funds from D.C. unless she did so.
But other lawmakers were much less passionate. Some, like Sen. John Curtis, met Bowser’s public safety funding concerns with indifference.
“If we’re taking a cut, shouldn’t she?” Curtis asked NOTUS, adding that he hadn’t heard about the funding issue.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested there could be a fix, but it’s unclear if that would help Washington in the meantime.
But some Republicans, smelling the jet fumes from House members already leaving Washington, said at this point, there’s nothing they can do.
“It’s the best we’re gonna get. The House has already left town. If you don’t do it, the government shuts down, our troops don’t get paid,” Sen. Ted Budd told NOTUS.
There’s a divide among Democrats in the Senate on how to respond. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who represents Maryland, told The Washington Post he’s looking for options to force a vote to address the D.C. funding anomaly in the bill. But any changes from the Senate would require approval from House lawmakers, who are long gone on retreat or making their way back home.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, who represents a district in northern Virginia, told NOTUS it could affect his constituents who work in the capital and raised the issue before his chamber approved the legislation.
“They’re defunding public safety and making everyone in D.C. less safe,” Subramanyam said of Republicans.
But Sen. John Fetterman, one of the only Democratic senators to come out in favor of voting for the funding legislation, said the situation with D.C. would not impact his vote regardless: “I’m not going to vote to shut down the entire government over something.”
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Emily Kennard is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.