President Donald Trump called upon the House to pass a funding fix to Washington, D.C.‘s budget “IMMEDIATELY” to avoid $1.1 billion in cuts, which would likely sail through the chamber on a bipartisan basis.
In a post to Truth Social, Trump said Washington needs to become “CLEAN and SAFE again!”
“We need our Great Police back on the street, with no excuses from the Mayor, or anyone else,” the president wrote. “The House should take up the D.C. funding ‘fix’ that the Senate has passed, and get it done IMMEDIATELY. We need to clean up our once beautiful Capital City, and make it beautiful again.”
The continuing resolution, or short-term spending deal, passed by the House in March did not include a standard provision for Washington’s budget. This forces the city to adhere to the same local budget freeze that Republicans are applying to other federal agencies and return to the levels in its 2024 budget approved by Congress.
To alleviate that, the Senate passed a stand-alone “fix” that would allow D.C.’s 2025 budget to move forward without any disruptions. However, the House left for a week-long recess after avoiding a government shutdown and did not take up the funding fix before then.
If the House does put the funding fix on the floor, it will join a host of legislation expected to come up for votes in the coming weeks, including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, a compromised budget resolution, and potentially the new parent proxy voting bill.
Punchbowl News reported that House Republicans will take up the funding fix before the Easter and Passover recess, but the legislation will not likely come to the floor next week. The offices of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) did not respond to the Washington Examiner for comment.
Trump’s calls to pass the funding fix comes as he and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser have been collaborating on ways to fulfill the president’s campaign promise to improve public safety in the nation’s capital. Bowser appealed to Trump through several favorable moves in recent weeks, helping to soften his views after criticizing the district’s crime rates and saying he wants to “take over D.C.”
DC OFFICIALS DECRY CR PLAN TO STRIP DISTRICT OF FUNDING: ‘FISCAL SABOTAGE’
The president signed the “Make Our Nation’s Capital Safe” executive order on Thursday, establishing the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force. The body will surge law enforcement officers in public areas, strengthen pretrial detention policies, and crack down on crimes and fare evasion on the D.C. Metro.
Part of the executive order also creates a program to “beautify” Washington; the National Park Service will rapidly clear all homeless encampments and graffiti on federal lands as part of the program, and there will be restorations for federal buildings, monuments, and memorials.