Rachel Kurzius
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
Soon-to-be Kalorama resident President Barack Obama has issued a veto threat over legislation that would prevent D.C. from controlling its own tax dollars.
“The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 5233, which would repeal the District of Columbia’s Local Budget Autonomy Amendment Act of 2012,” reads a statement of administrative policy sent out this afternoon. “The Administration strongly supports home rule for the District and the President has long called for authority allowing the District to spend its own local taxes and other non-Federal funds without congressional approval … If the President were presented with H.R. 5233, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
The bill today advanced through the Rules Committee in the House, and is up for a vote tomorrow. Not only does it repeal a bill passed by a wide margin of D.C. voters, it preemptively repeals this year’s city budget, and prevents future city legislation on budget autonomy.
“The White House’s veto threat will give us momentum as we battle to keep the repeal bill from moving in the Senate or being attached to an omnibus later this year,” D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton said in a release.
But that’s not the only legislation looming over the city’s bid for budget autonomy. Another draft bill in the Appropriations Committee includes a repeal of the law, as well as blocking use of local or federal funds for abortions and further cannabis decriminalization, as well as blocking federal dollars for needle exchanges. That bill will be marked up by an appropriations subcommittee tomorrow.
“It’s a double-edged approach,” says Benjamin Fritsch, Norton’s spokesperson.
All is not lost, though. The Senate will also craft its own appropriations bill and the two chambers will negotiate before the passage of final legislation.
“The House is only half of the story, and I am making every attempt to make sure the Senate does not follow suit,” Norton said.
Updated to clarify that the appropriations bill blocks federal, not local, dollars for needle exchanges.
