As DC fights Congress over its budget, a look back at how we got here

WASHINGTON — Advocates are wondering what Congress could do next to flex its authority over the nation’s capital, after a scramble over unexpected budget cuts sent hundreds of locals and their kids to plead with lawmakers at the Capitol.

“This funding bill issue is really reminding a lot of people of the vulnerabilities that D.C. has because we are not a state, and the fact that Congress oversees our funding,” said Alex Dodds, co-founder of Free DC, an advocacy project that helped organize the rallies this week.

When Republicans put together their stopgap funding plan for the rest of the fiscal year, they left out language that would allow the District to keep operating under its own already-set budget. That means slashing $1.1 billion for teachers, cops and more, local officials say, unless Congress can come up with a fix.

The incident is only the latest that has unsettled residents, as some Republicans repeat President Donald Trump’s threats to “take over” the city. What autonomy the District has depends on congressional allowance, or at least indifference, and that is no guarantee.

While residents may suffer from, as their license plates note, taxation without representation, their ability to self-govern is still better than it once was.

“Prior to home rule, it was a difficult city,” said Paul Strauss, who lobbies for statehood as one of D.C.’s shadow senators. Even small matters often fell to those with little stake in the outcome, including members of the House District of Columbia Committee and its Senate counterpart.

The Founding Fathers believed the U.S. capital city should be distinct from any state, so none could gain unfair leverage. The solution, embedded in Article 1 of the Constitution, was to give Congress the power “to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over” the district housing the seat of the U.S. government.

James Madison, writing in Federalist No. 43, noted he still expected Congress to provide “a municipal legislature for local purposes.”

The federal district’s government changed frequently in its early years. For a while, the existing cities of Georgetown and Alexandria continued under their own charters. Eventually, national politics began to dictate local governance. The land west of the Potomac River was returned to Virginia in 1847, one of many congressional compromises aimed at avoiding the coming Civil War; Alexandria was then a major port in the slave trade.

After the war, the federal city remained a muddy backwater, and Congress consolidated Georgetown and Washington into a single territory with a presidentially appointed governor and locally elected legislature. A few years later, that was replaced by an appointed three-person board of commissioners, which continued to manage the District until the mid-1960s, when President Lyndon B. Johnson led a reorganization to provide for more local say.

The civil rights movement helped win some representation in 1961, when the 23rd Amendment was ratified and gave D.C. three electoral votes, and again in 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed a bill providing a nonvoting delegate in the House, as chronicled in books like “Dream City” and “Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital.” But it wasn’t until Congress passed what’s known as the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in 1973 that it got something close to self-governance.

Bring us your potholes

Despite LBJ’s efforts, when Washington residents had local issues — potholes that needed filling, or trash that went uncollected — they’d call up members of Congress. Those added headaches were part of the reason they ceded control. Rep. Thomas Abernethy, a Mississippi Democrat, told The Washington Post in 1971 he supported giving up local taxing powers because he was “sick and tired of people saying Congress won’t give us this and Congress won’t give us that.”

History has repeated itself this past week on the Hill, as hundreds of residents gathered in the Hart Senate Office Building to rally against the stopgap funding bill and its cuts for D.C.

One local parent attending Thursday’s “Recess at the Capitol,” Emma Kelly, said the sudden reversion to last year’s spending levels would not only put her children’s safety and education at risk, but D.C.’s autonomy. “They’re both immediate existential threats,” she said. “I’m not normally one to go to the Hill, even though it’s right there, but it’s important enough to take the time today.”

While locals usually oppose a government shutdown, in part because of the city’s large percentage of federal employees, this time was different. They urged senators to vote against the stopgap to avoid “giving away D.C.’s rights, our power over our municipal budget,” Dodds said.

The fallout seemed to come as a surprise to Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, who said Thursday she initially wasn’t aware of the D.C. omission. Calling it a “serious problem,” she signaled openness to a fix, but with the House already having left Washington for a recess week, the path was unclear.

“These congressional offices don’t want to get back in the city management business,” Strauss warned, urging them to think twice before sliding back to the old precedent. “It’s not a good way to run a complicated and dynamic urban environment with complex and frequently changing needs.”

It was largely white southerners who originally opposed home rule for the majority-Black city. Eventually, the civil rights movement boosted the political power of Black Americans, who found support from pro-local government Republicans.

What passed in 1973 was a compromise. D.C. residents were allowed to elect a mayor, city council and advisory neighborhood commissioners to manage the day-to-day operations of local government. But Congress kept plenary power over local laws and the budget.

In the years since, aside from the financial control board period of the 1990s, Congress took a relatively hands-off approach. Local bills go through a congressional review period before they become law, and the District’s budget is formally approved via the annual appropriations process.

‘Take over Washington, D.C.’

While Congress has occasionally blocked D.C. laws, advocates worried when many Democrats joined Republicans in preventing an overhaul of the city’s criminal code in 2023, fearing it could signal the start of a new trend.

Those fears have only increased. Trump’s ongoing campaign to slash the federal workforce is expected to cause financial and unemployment woes for the city, even as the president pushes local leaders to beautify it and crack down on crime. In February, Trump publicly mused about taking control of the district, telling reporters on Air Force One, “I think we should take over Washington, D.C. — make it safe.”

Republicans in Congress have echoed those calls, floating renewed proposals to scrap home rule altogether. One bill sponsor, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, described the city as a “cesspool of Democrats’ failed policies.” Another House lawmaker, Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, introduced a bill that would withhold millions in transportation funds unless D.C. renamed the Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House and removed the street mural there.

Mayor Muriel Bowser moved quickly to repaint the plaza, created during the racial justice protests in 2020, but Trump’s Transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, still wrote to D.C. officials with a warning that his agency considered street murals unsafe. After clashing defiantly with Trump during his first term, Bowser has taken a more cautious and conciliatory tone so far in his second, with little yet to show for it.

Attempts to give D.C. real autonomy over the years have stalled. The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment passed both chambers of Congress in 1978, but not enough states ratified it before a 1985 deadline. As D.C. became more solidly Democratic and the nation more polarized, the odds of seeing Congress cede more power has declined.

Now, statehood advocates hope to channel the public’s anger into a concerted push for lasting change, despite the odds.

In the last Congress, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s statehood bill received 211 co-sponsors — all Democrats. While some Republicans have argued statehood would undermine the founders’ vision, others have derided it as a political power grab that would give Democrats two more votes in the Senate and another in the House.

Some have proposed retrocession instead — transferring most of the District, save certain federal buildings and land, to Maryland, which could give the state another representative in the next reapportionment. While locals and Democrats have long rejected that idea, Rep. Jamie Raskin of neighboring Takoma Park, Md., recently said on the “City Cast DC” podcast that “coming back” to Maryland would be the District’s second best option.

In the meantime, the city now must grapple with the prospect of immediate cuts to services like police, thanks to this week’s budget battle, said Strauss. “This is really House Republicans voting to defund the police,” he said. “It’s hard to discern their motivation here. … I really don’t get it.”

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(David Lerman and Aidan Quigley contributed to this report.)