Good news from Congress has been hard to come by for D.C. officials over the past year. But a bipartisan spending bill released Sunday evening contains a number of bright spots for the city that top officials are applauding — including a new provision that would have prevented the $1 billion budget cut to the city in the middle of last year.
The proactive step serves to put city officials at ease after the considerable budgeting hurdles Congress caused in 2025.
The appropriations bill also would boost funding for a college scholarship grant program for D.C. students for the first time in more than two decades, and includes $90 million in funding for police.
“We thank our partners in Congress for including these critical provisions that will benefit Washington, DC — residents and visitors alike — and we urge Congress to act swiftly to pass this legislation,” Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in a statement, praising the education and police funding measures.
The House and Senate released the appropriations proposal — a broader bill that includes the D.C. funding within it — Sunday evening and are seeking to advance the spending package quickly to avoid a government shutdown by Jan. 30.
The $90 million for the Emergency Planning and Security Fund — a pot of money to reimburse D.C. police for patrolling federally focused events — represents a substantial increase from the amount President Donald Trump requested in his budget submission, only $30 million, and an increase from House Republicans’ proposed $70 million last year. The money reimburses the city for police work such as staffing the inauguration, responding to protests of federal actions and escorting federal VIPs.
This year, Bowser said, the money will be especially important as the nation’s capital prepares to host America 250, celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday with major festivities.
Tomás Talamante, the mayor’s chief of staff, said $90 million is more than D.C. has ever received for that fund in a non-inauguration year. “We were on the Hill every single day meeting with offices and appropriators to get this done, and they got it done, so we’re really appreciative to them.” He also thanked the White House, which he said advocated D.C.’s position to lawmakers.
Federal lawmakers also included a funding boost for the Tuition Assistance Grant program, which allows D.C. students to attend hundreds of participating colleges and universities nationwide at reduced rates. It would be the first permanent increase since the program was created in 1999.
Scholarship grant amounts would rise to $15,000 annually, up from $10,000, while the lifetime total per student would be bumped to $75,000 instead of $50,000 — increases Bowser called a “critical step toward addressing rising college costs and expanding access to affordable higher education for even more D.C. residents.”
The new provision appropriators added on the D.C. budget makes clear that unless a temporary spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, explicitly cuts or changes D.C’s funding levels, the city can continue spending its local budget without disruption. That provision appears designed to prevent the situation caused by House Republicans’ omission of a long-standing D.C. provision in last spring’s continuing resolution — which had the effect of cutting D.C’s active 2025 local budget by more than $1 billion.
D.C. leveraged some obscure budget maneuvers to avoid taking the drastic measures city officials had initially warned about, such as laying off employees or closing government facilities. But the city still had to cut contracts, delay police raises and put off housing projects, among other actions amounting to about $350 million in cuts.
Bowser, who is not seeking reelection, noted the provision would extend into next year, when she will have left office. “I think we leave the next mayor in a good place,” she told reporters Monday evening.
Ankit Jain (D), D.C.’s shadow senator, said the provision provides “close to a guarantee” that the city won’t have to worry about a repeat of last year’s budgeting chaos.
“It’s interesting to me because Congress is always attacking Washington, D.C., for being dysfunctional or whatever — but this is a situation where Washington, D.C., passes a balanced budget every year, and we got sucked into the dysfunction of Congress and had to cut a bunch of funding in the middle of the year,” Jain said. “And so this is protecting us from any potential dysfunction by Congress, and making sure we’re not a victim of that.”
Jain said another bright spot was that the appropriations bill did not include any new budget riders, or restrictions that prevent D.C. from spending money on certain policies. It does include two “legacy riders”: one preventing D.C. from using local funds to subsidize abortion for low-income women, and the other from allowing the city to set up a legal recreational marijuana market.
In a spending proposal that did not go anywhere last summer, House Republicans had put forward about a dozen new restrictions, including banning automatic traffic enforcement and prohibiting enforcement of a local law protecting employees from discrimination based on their reproductive choices. None of those ideas made it into this year’s version, which Jain attributed to aggressive advocacy from all corners of D.C. government.
Still, Republicans are reportedly weighing a separate ban on the traffic cameras, which are a key part of D.C.’s road safety plan and major source of revenue; losing them could cost the city more than $100 million — and potentially more than $200 million — a year.
Jain noted it’s not impossible that House Republicans could still attempt to propose new D.C.-related changes before a final version of the bill passes. One Republican, Rep. Andrew Ogles (Tennessee), is asking the House Rules Committee to allow consideration of an amendment to prohibit funding for the D.C. commission that coordinates statehood initiatives.
“I don’t want to say we’re home free and this is a done deal, but it’s a really, really good first step,” Jain said. “I don’t think it was inevitable we would get to this outcome where there were no new riders on Washington, D.C. — a lot of people worked really hard to make this a reality. Or close to a reality.”
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