All week, residents of Washington, D.C., watched the shutdown debate in Congress with anxiousness and anger, as one part of the persevering with decision maintaining the federal government open would drive on the town a right away $1.1 billion price range reduce.
However on Friday afternoon, shortly after the decision was handed, the disaster for the District of Columbia appeared to have been averted, because the Senate overwhelmingly accredited a separate invoice that may permit the town to proceed working below its present price range with out interruption. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, cosponsored the laws, describing it in remarks on the ground as a repair to a “mistake” within the persevering with decision.
The invoice has to cross the Home and be signed into legislation by President Trump. Ms. Collins additionally mentioned that it had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and by Consultant Tom Cole, Republican chairman of the Home Appropriations Committee, suggesting the invoice’s passage within the Republican-controlled Home was doubtless.
Phil Mendelson, the chairman of the D.C. Metropolis Council, mentioned in an announcement that his workplace was working with the district’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, “to garner Home assist,” including, “I’m assured that we are going to discover a answer to this downside that has been handed to us by Congress.”
In a departure from years of follow, the Home decision, written by Republicans, included the district’s price range in a spending freeze throughout federal companies that may maintain it eventually yr’s fiscal ranges. D.C. officers repeatedly identified in information conferences and conferences with lawmakers that federal funds make up solely a tiny fraction of the town’s price range, which depends totally on regionally raised taxes, charges and fines. In addition they emphasised that this fiscal yr’s price range, which the town has been working on for six months, was accredited by Congress in earlier resolutions.
To account for the freeze, the town would have been compelled to make broad cuts and would almost certainly have needed to lay off many metropolis staff, together with academics and cops.
The turmoil prompted by that prospect solely strengthened the district’s important vulnerability.
With greater than 700,000 residents, the town is extra populous than each Vermont and Wyoming, however has no voting illustration in Congress, holds little management over its felony justice system and should submit all native laws for congressional approval.
This yr, some Republican lawmakers and even Mr. Trump threatened to strip the town of what restricted self-government it presently has by repealing the 52-year-old Dwelling Rule Act, which permits residents to elect a mayor and a Metropolis Council. Such a transfer would put the district totally below federal management.
Isabelle Taft contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
