Last week was dumb and dangerous

We can't forget how Congress messed with D.C.

Author

Gordon Chaffin
March 17, 2025

I’m Gordon Chaffin, a community volunteer and advocate who nerds out on infrastructure policy. This is my newsletter with local news and researched opinions.

Back to Basics on Congress Messing with Washington, D.C.’s Money

“This will not be forgotten about. And once trust is lost, you don’t get it back.”

These were the words of a Canadian man speaking from the heart in his garage, where he records YouTube videos about radios and electronics. He shared that he’s struggled to make videos recently, given America’s anti-Canadian federal government actions in recent weeks. His audience is half American, and so he recorded a six-minute message to us Yankees watching. With the tone of heartbreak, Jim the gadget YouTuber said more, better about the US-CA relationship in far fewer words than most American media. Jim explained that it’s very easy to destroy institutions in the frenzy of effective political messaging and very difficult to reconstitute.

I think residents and supporters of Washington, D.C. should feel similarly from last week’s events and the precarity of the next few weeks from the U.S. House of Representatives. As 730DC writes this morning, “Hell is relying on House Republicans.”

Last week, Congress threatened the District with a $1.1B budget restriction — preventing our Mayor and Council from spending money raised entirely from District taxpayers. The provision of a stop-gap federal government funding measure would save zero dollars for taxpayers in the other 50 states: the cash would just sit unused in a D.C. bank account through September 30. Meanwhile, the specifics of the budget cut would mean immediate layoffs of law enforcement officers, teachers, first responders, and service providers who deliver basic resident necessities. At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson posted a great D.C. budget primer in two parts to Instagram last week. I’ve included them below in this post.

I was relieved that the U.S. Senate passed a fix on unanimous vote last Friday evening, after a frenzy of unified lobbying from D.C. elected leaders and residents from the Free D.C. movement, among other groups. I joined neighbors mass emailing our connections living out of the District to call their Senators asking to reinstate D.C.’s budget autonomy — a local decision-making norm running for 20 years now. It’s not even full autonomy, either — it’s simply allowing our local elected leaders to execute a budget they proposed, debated, and passed, with Congressional approval in previous stop-gap federal spending laws.

With D.C.’s budget fix pending House action on the Senate resolution, our work is not done. Readers, I ask that you join me in a second call to our connections out of the District — asking those folks to bug their House Representatives to pass the Senate’s D.C. budget fix when the House returns to Capitol Hill on March 25. Until the House passes it, and the President signs it, federal law now requires D.C. to make those drastic cuts.

I assume the Mayor’s press conference today will include her plan of attack. It’s good that, according to Senator Collins, both the President and House Appropriations Committee Chair Cole support the Senate fix — but this interregnum comes at an extra inconvenient time for local D.C. leaders. The Mayor was a few weeks away from delivering her proposed budget for the next fiscal year, starting Oct 1, and the Council was prepping to debate it. I would guess those deliberations will now be delayed and put into a compressed time window. That time compression stinks worse when those leaders had to find massive cuts even before last week’s episode.

Pulling back from the play-by-play, I emphasize that last week’s events were dumb and dangerous. My first instinct is to try rational arguments with Congressional leaders who claim to wish the District to become a safer, cleaner place for residents, visitors, and to do business in America’s glorious National Capital. How can that be possible when they pass budgets that force across-the-board, non-strategic cuts? But then I remember — and we must bear in mind — that politics is about vibes more than ever these days. Like the Canadian man communicating his broken trust with America — and that of his neighbors — District residents should no longer trust in temporary truces with Congress.

It’s no longer viable to assume the 20-year tradition will continue of D.C. budget autonomy, and relative rubber-stamping of locally determined budgets. In that environment, I ask that you join me in focusing on the basics: let’s raise our voices to the Wilson Building’s leaders: oversee and enact fiscally responsive budgets that maintain core services and data-driven provisions for public safety, public education, public health, and economic opportunity. While we run a tight ship, let’s “keep our heads on a swivel,” because Congress has another budget to debate this summer — potentially with more of this fuckery.

“The future of the Democratic Party is not center vs left, it’s who is actually ready to fight vs. who is not.”

Rebecca Katz, a Democratic campaign consultant

Washington, D.C. Budget Explained, Part 1

Washington, D.C. Budget Explained, Part 2

Advocacy opportunities on D.C. local issues - Week of March 17, 2024

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DISCLAIMER: All opinions and analyses in this newsletter are those solely of Gordon Chaffin and do not represent his employer or community groups with which he’s affiliated.