Senate Democrats scored a minor victory with a fix to deep cuts to the District’s budget after ceding the broader government funding fight to President Trump and Republicans.
The Senate passed the Trump-backed stopgap bill on Friday, and with it a measure that would effectively nullify a provision tucked away in the bill that would have slashed $1 billion from the District’s budget.
The stopgap bill, or continuing resolution in Capitol Hill jargon, effectively considered the District a federal agency after lawmakers didn’t include a longstanding provision that gives D.C. officials control over the city’s funding levels while lawmakers spar over federal funding.
The legislation from Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, Maine Republican, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, which passed separately from the stopgap bill, blocked the steep cut.
Ms. Collins said that her bill, which has the backing of Mr. Trump, would “simply fix a mistake” in House Republicans’ stopgap bill at no cost to the federal government.
“There are no federal dollars involved. The issue here is just allowing the D.C. government to proceed to spend its own tax revenues,” Ms. Collins said.
The bill must pass the House to become law. Lawmakers from the lower chamber aren’t set to return to the Capitol until March 24.
The Republican-authored continuing resolution keeps federal funding largely flat for federal agencies and would have required that the District revert to its budget for fiscal year 2024. Doing so would have forced D.C. officials to slash the city’s budget by $1.1 billion for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
D.C. officials warned that the proposed cut would hit a variety of services, including millions of dollars slashed from the Metropolitan Police Department, public and charter schools, Metro transit, D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services, and the city’s Department of Human Services.
Passage of the bill is somewhat of a victory for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, whose decision to cave to Republicans’ demands in the funding extension to avert a partial government shutdown broke with the position of most congressional Democrats.
Mr. Schumer told reporters Thursday that Republicans admitted to him that the D.C. funding issue was a “mistake,” but that he was willing to work with them to fix it.
On the Senate floor ahead of the vote to fund the government Friday evening, Mr. Schumer said the bill would “make sure that we take care of the residents of the District.”
“It will support law enforcement and firefighters and teachers and city services,” he said. “The legislation is very good news for the residents of the District of Columbia.”
• Lindsey McPherson contributed to this story.
