House Republicans have decided to slash the District of Columbia’s budget by more than a billion dollars, despite having already approved D.C.’s budget for this fiscal year. The District of Columbia’s budget had been approved by Congress, as according to law as is necessary. These changes will forcibly reduce $1.1 billion in spending which has already been funded, approved, allotted and budgeted for by D.C. citizens and taxpayers.
A charitable view — and I do say charitable, because the alternative is actually worse — is that the Republican party is stupid, and thinks that cutting the D.C. government’s budget will save money. There is no ‘better view.’ D.C. funds its own government and does not receive extraneous government subsidization beyond grants available to every state in the union, which is not even the point. D.C. goes through the same process of raising and funding a budget just as the states do. The only difference is that Congress as a body has power to review and make changes to the budget as they feel like it. Enter people like House Speaker Mike ‘Covenant Eyes’ Johnson, who has decided in his infinite wisdom, that cutting D.C.’s budget must equal savings, despite it only being 0.8% of spending which goes to states.
It does not. The U.S. government does not save money from this. D.C. passed its budget and began operating under it six months ago. Mandating the district cut spending by $1.1 billion, is going to do nothing except force emergency spending cuts, according to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. So, which programs are going to be impacted most harshly?
The top header is the Metropolitan Police Department. Hey, I thought the Republican party was the party of law and order? The thin blue line just got a bit thinner. Thank you President Donald J. Trump!
The second is fire and emergency services, and the third is D.C.’s public schools and public charters, then cuts to public transit, healthcare, public service and to round out the most impacted agencies, behavioral health. To quote a memo Bowser sent to Congress, “Being forced to cut police officers, teachers, bus/rail service, and first responders would contravene the Trump Administration’s vision of making DC a world class national capital.”
Some people may be confused. D.C.? Yes, that would be the nation’s capital, home to more citizens of these United States than Vermont or Wyoming, home to 68 fortifications built in defense of the nation’s capital during the war of southern treachery. So, I must ask the logic of the Republican house, which as of March 11 voted 217-214 to pass the bill which includes these cuts; How does stealing $350 million from public school teachers make America great again? How does blocking $600 million of spending from going to roads, public safety, health and public transit, make America great again? Money which has been, all of it, already been funded, already been given to D.C., approved by Congress under the law?
How does making the capital of the United States worse make this country great?
Why do I, as a Washingtonian, have to listen to representatives I did not vote for, men and women I did not elect according to any democratic process, give their commentary and input on the budget raised and spent by my home? I do not want to hear what a man from Louisiana, a man from Wyoming or any other individual besides a resident of my home has to say about the funding of my home. I don’t want to hear anything from the party of Gary Palmer, who described D.C.’s public schools as, and I quote, “inmate factories” in 2023, when it comes to bills about D.C. funding, let alone bills which actively cut funding to D.C. schools! Aside from how wildly racist and wrong that statement is — Alabama has a higher rate of incarceration than D.C., aside from being next thing to a welfare state, to tie back to budgets for a moment — why should I even be hearing these people’s voices in matters of D.C. government and laws at all, coming from a body to which I have to pay taxes, but in which I get no say?
No taxation without representation. The time for D.C. statehood has passed, and it is now a critical necessity that the autonomy of D.C. not be infringed upon. The party without a single ounce of morality threatens to occupy the city and revoke what little autonomy is kept, while attempting to slash its capacity to govern.
To paraphrase Cato The Elder’s call for the destruction of Carthage, Ceterum censeo pars Republican esse delendam.
