Mayor Muriel Bowser sent a letter to congressional leaders on Tuesday asking them to provide more coronavirus funding to D.C.
The letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, asks Congress to amend its March aid package — which gave D.C. less than half the amount of money states received — in its next round of legislation.
“It is not lost on me that our response to mitigate the coronavirus plays an important role in the federal government’s operations,” Bowser wrote. “Thus, equitable funding for Washington, D.C. not only affects our residents, but also impacts the National Capital Region and the nation.”
D.C., which is more populous than two states and had more coronavirus cases than 19 states at the time, was treated as a territory for the purposes of the March coronavirus recovery bill, receiving roughly $500 million while each of the 50 states got at least $1.25 billion. At the time, Democratic senators called the discrepancy “shameful” and “shortsighted.”
Bowser noted the financial strain the crisis has put on the District in her letter Tuesday, saying that city officials currently estimate a conservative loss of revenue amounting to $1.5 billion over this and next fiscal year. She also said that D.C. has already allocated all the funds it received through the CARES Act, as well as $450 million in contingency and emergency reserves.
Bowser pointed out that the city has spent $17 million on increasing testing capacity and has put $25 million in local hospitals — investments that have benefited the region. She said that Maryland and Virginia residents regularly make use of D.C. hospitals, amounting to half of the city’s capacity at a given time, and represent 30% of the total number of people tested for COVID-19.
As Republicans prepare to release another coronavirus relief bill in the coming days, Bowser called for Congress to include House-approved provisions in new legislation, including amending the CARES Act to “make the District whole in the amount of $755 million.”
Bowser also asked Congress to include state, city, and county-level funding to the District as part of the HEROES Act that the House approved in May — though the Senate has indicated it will not pass the bill — and allow D.C. to borrow in a “meaningful way” through the Municipal Liquidity Facility, a Federal Reserve initiative to provide assistance to state and local governments during the crisis.
“Our continued ability to contain the spread of the coronavirus, especially as we begin to reopen public and private spaces, is heavily reliant upon equitable funding in the next tranche of coronavirus funding,” she wrote.
D.C. is not a state, though city officials and locals argue it is taxed and governed more like a state than a territory, and Washingtonians regularly pay more per capita in federal taxes than residents of any state.
The city’s relatively small coronavirus aid package added fuel to the ongoing fight for D.C. statehood earlier this year, which reached a new milestone last month after the House passed a bill approving the measure, marking the first time either chamber of Congress has done so.
