House passes bill stripping District of Columbia of budget control

WASHINGTON — House Republicans passed a bill Wednesday that strips the District of Columbia of any autonomy over how it spends its own money.

The measure, which passed 240-179, seeks to overturn a local law passed by D.C. officials and affirmed by voters in a referendum allowing the city to control how it spends money it raises through its taxes. The House measure also spelled out that all city funding is subject to Congress’s annual appropriations process.

But the debate over the D.C. Budget Autonomy Act isn’t expected to clear a more closely divided Senate, and it faces the threat of a veto by President Barack Obama.

Still, Republicans in the GOP-led House chamber are so determined to keep their grip on the city’s finances that they slipped similar language into the draft of an appropriations bill marked up Wednesday.

At the same time, the North Carolina Republican leading the charge suggested the language can be inserted into a “must pass” resolution to keep the government funded even if Congress doesn’t pass a budget.

While playing down a Superior Court decision that upheld the act, Rep. Mark Meadows, who sponsored the ban bill, reiterated his stance that the act would “usurp” congressional authority and that he believed the act was “null and void.” He further made his case that a local government could not decide what powers Congress may or may not hold.

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton gave another impassioned speech, in which she blasted Republicans for going against one of its own core values: giving a local government the chance to run itself.

“These are the same friends that despise the federal reach,” Norton said.

On Tuesday, the White House expressed its opposition to a ban on budget autonomy and threatened to veto such a measure if it reached President Barack Obama’s desk.