House Republicans voted to reverse a ballot measure by which Washington, D.C., residents claimed control over the local budget, on the grounds that the policy flouted Congress’ legal authority over the federal city.
“It’s about upholding the rule of law and constitutional authority of the intent of Congress, who wanted to reserve the appropriations process,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.
Meadows offered a proposal “clarifying the congressional intent” of legislation that gave D.C. limited home rule authority in 1973. The bill passed Wednesday evening, 240-179, mostly along party lines. Democrats argued that the 1973 bill was silent on the question of whether the city could take control of its own finances.
“It’s pretty hard for Republicans to be against people tending to their own budget without having a federal overseer,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city’s Democratic non-voting member of Congress. “We conceded that they had the authority to take away budget autonomy, just like they can take away the whole of home rule. So to allow us to go forward when you can always take it back would deprive them of no power.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser hopes that the fight over the budget process will spur progress toward the more ambitious goal of statehood. “We demand two senators — the full rights of citizenship in this great nation,” she said in April.
House Speaker Paul Ryan made clear that he opposes both the budget proposal and Bowser’s broader campaign for statehood. “Article I, section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to ‘exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over . . . the seat of the government of the United States,'” his team noted in a memo released ahead of Wednesday’s vote. “The Founding Fathers designed it this way so that the seat of power would not exceed that of other states. James Madison even advocated for this in The Federalist Papers.”
House Republicans will need the cooperation of President Obama and Senate Democrats if they want to restrain the D.C. government without the help of a federal court, but Meadows thinks that bipartisanship could be in reach.
“To allow a local governing body to essentially repeal a federal law is not only something that would set bad precedent, but I don’t know that it’s rooted in a constitutional argument,” he said.
