LWVUS Joins Letter to the House Supporting DC

LWVUS joined nearly 200 national and local groups to urge the House of Representatives to bring the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025 to the floor and swiftly pass it into law

Cc: all members of the U.S. House of Representatives

RE: Take Up and Swiftly Pass the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025 to Restore D.C.’s Budget Autonomy

Dear Speaker Johnson, Minority Leader Jeffries, Majority Whip Scalise, and Chairman Cole:

On behalf of the nearly 200 undersigned national and local faith, small business, parent, education, civil rights, justice reform, democracy, labor, and environmental groups, we write to urge the U.S. House of Representatives to promptly bring the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025 to the floor under suspension of the rules and swiftly pass it into law. This bill – passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate – would restore the District of Columbia’s ability to spend its locally raised tax dollars under its already Congress-approved Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget.

There is an urgent need for the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025 due to implications from the recently passed continuing resolution (“CR”). The CR forces D.C., six months into its already-approved budget for FY25, to revert to outdated FY24 spending levels, effectively blocking the District from spending over $1 billion in locally raised tax revenue. The CR treats D.C. like a federal agency, not like a home to 700,000 residents – more than the populations of Vermont and Wyoming and comparable to states like Alaska and North Dakota. The consequences of the CR’s restrictions on the District of Columbia are severe, arbitrary, and entirely preventable.

According to D.C. government estimates, reverting to the prior fiscal year’s budget requires a 16% reduction in remaining funds, which would require implementing overnight layoffs, furloughs, and hiring freezes, along with significant cuts across public education, public safety, housing supports, food access, health care programs, transit, environmental programs, sanitation and more. If Congress fails to immediately pass the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025, Washingtonians will have to grapple with significant across-the-board cuts including, but not limited to:

● $358 million in cuts to public and charter education, which will jeopardize school operations and staff;
● $28 million in cuts to the Department of Human Services, which threatens vital support for unhoused and low-income residents;
● $42 million in cuts to the DC Fire and EMS Department; 
● $600 million in cuts to projects for roads, bridges, sidewalks, alleys, road safety, WMATA funding, and more.

We extend sincere gratitude to U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Chris Van Hollen for their bipartisan leadership in recognizing the significance of this preventable fiscal crisis and moving quickly to address it by spearheading the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025 (S 1077). Let us be clear: this is not about reducing the federal deficit. Prohibiting the District’s access to local tax dollars does not save the federal government a single dollar. The Congressional Budget Office verifies this in their recent analysis of the DC Local Funds Act of 2025, noting that the local funds implicated in this legislation “are not recorded on the federal budget” and that “enacting S 1077 would have no effect on the federal budget.” The District’s budget is balanced, largely locally taxpayer funded, and has already been approved by Congress, as required by law. Failing to fix this problem immediately will – for no good reason – haphazardly destabilize core, local D.C. government operations and devastate essential services for 700,000 residents, 44% of whom are Black. The failure to immediately act amounts to fiscal sabotage, not fiscal responsibility. Furthermore, the intangible costs of such an abrupt, significant reduction across the local government and public sectors would be more significant than could be quantified in dollars and cents.

This is a moment for decisive leadership in the U.S. House. There is no informed or principled reason to delay action on this bill. Given the unanimous Senate support, the straightforward nature of the legislative fix, and the urgent need to avert a completely preventable fiscal catastrophe in the District, all 197 undersigned organizations and the undersigned elected officials strongly urge U.S. House leadership to immediately bring the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025 to the floor for a vote under suspension of the rules. We also implore U.S. representatives across the aisle to vote in favor of this critical fix. It is worth noting that President Trump also endorses the District of Columbia Local Funds Act of 2025 and similarly calls for House Leadership to bring this bill to the floor for a vote immediately. The longer the House waits to pass this legislation, the greater the human, operational, and economic cost for the District of Columbia.

Time is of the essence.