As our Congressional leaders engaged in ideological posturing and haggled back and forth over the budget and the federal government teetered on the brink of a shutdown, one critical segment of the nation, the District of Columbia and its 600,000 citizens, became collateral damage in this bipartisan bickering. Why? The simple answer is that the District of Columbia does not enjoy the protections and sovereignty of statehood and is treated, dismissively, like a federal agency.
Sadly, many Americans are unaware that the District of Columbia is the only jurisdiction in America that has no voting representation in the United States Congress. As a result, the residents of the District of Columbia, unlike those who live in New York, Iowa and New Hampshire, were not allowed to meaningfully participate in the democratic process to resolve the budget impasse between the two chambers of Congress and the president.
Equally as disturbing as being shut out of the democratic process is the fact that the District of Columbia is the only state, city or local government in the entire nation that could not use its own tax generated revenue paid by its own citizens to serve those very same citizens during a federal shutdown. Why? The Anti-Deficiency Act forbids the District of Columbia from expending any of its own funds without authorization from Congress.
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The District of Columbia’s government collects over $5 billion from its citizens. Our locally collected resources are more than sufficient to pay the salaries of our employees and to provide services needed to keep our city functioning for the benefit not only of our residents, but also for the tens of thousands of commuters and tourists who travel to the Nation’s Capital every day.
But because the District of Columbia does not enjoy the autonomy of statehood, our local revenue could not be used to collect garbage, perform street sanitation, open libraries, or pay foster care families the funds needed to feed, clothe and otherwise help the children in their care. District residents have the same need of all the government services and benefits that every other state and local government provides to its citizens during a federal shutdown.
This threat to the District’s fiscal health and resident safety could have been averted if Congress had passed a bill that exempted the entire District’s locally collected revenue from the restrictions of the Anti-Deficiency Act as offered by the District’s non-voting delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. The statute should be amended to permit the District, like every other state and local jurisdiction, to spend its own locally collected funds for services during the federal shutdown but, ultimately, the District needs full representation in the Congress, full self-determination and recognition of statehood.
Many congressional leaders unwaveringly support the promotion of democracy in distant lands but peculiarly spurn District residents’ pleas for participation in the democratic process. District residents should be allowed to set their own priorities, to meet their own needs with locally raised revenues and not be held hostage to the inability of Congress to reach agreement on an overall federal budget from which its citizens are excluded. The members of both the Senate and House of Representatives, regardless of their political philosophies, should support the uniquely American policy of local governance for the District of Columbia.