{"id":8687,"date":"2025-04-30T16:02:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T16:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/new-snags-for-dc-budget-bill-as-house-conservatives-push-for-add-ons\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T16:02:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T16:02:50","slug":"new-snags-for-dc-budget-bill-as-house-conservatives-push-for-add-ons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/new-snags-for-dc-budget-bill-as-house-conservatives-push-for-add-ons\/","title":{"rendered":"New snags for DC budget bill as House conservatives push for add-ons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Republican hard-liners say a bill to restore the District of Columbia local budget and forestall planned layoffs doesn\u2019t have votes to pass the House without conservative policy add-ons, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.<\/p>\n

Those could include a provision blocking noncitizens from voting in D.C., which is one option the hard-liners have raised with senior Republicans in recent weeks. The three people were granted anonymity to describe the private talks.<\/p>\n

District officials say they\u2019re facing a $1 billion funding shortfall after House Republicans inadvertently reverted city spending to prior-year spending levels in the latest government funding bill. A fix passed the Senate unanimously but despite support from President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson has yet to move it forward<\/a> in the House.<\/p>\n

D.C. allows noncitizens to vote in local elections under a 2022 law that first took effect last year. The House voted last year to overturn the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said in a WTOP radio interview<\/a> Tuesday that he and other conservatives oppose the Senate-passed measure and are seeking to “put some guardrails on the spending” done by D.C.’s local government. <\/p>\n

“The bill is not ready for prime time in the House,” he said. D.C. largely governs itself under a 51-year-old home rule arrangement, though Congress retains ultimate constitutional power over the capital city.<\/p>\n

Harris did not mention the noncitizen voting law but cited city policies surrounding reparations for slavery<\/a> and abortion funding as reasons for congressional intervention, as well as the Washington Commanders stadium deal<\/a> announced this week, saying “there are some people who question whether those are responsible uses of money.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican hard-liners say a bill to restore the District of Columbia local budget and forestall planned layoffs doesn\u2019t have votes to pass the House without conservative policy add-ons, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. Those could include a provision blocking noncitizens from voting in D.C., which is one option the hard-liners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}