Martin Austermuhle / DCist/WAMU
A draft federal spending bill unveiled by House Republicans on Wednesday would impose a broad slate of new and old policy restrictions on D.C., from maintaining the eight-year-old ban on legalizing marijuana sales to prohibiting the city from using traffic cameras — a move that would immediately throw the city’s budget into deficit, likely requiring significant spending cuts or tax increases.
The proposed policy riders — provisions of the federal budget that require or prohibit something from being done — were included by the Republican majority of the House Appropriations Committee in a draft $25 billion spending bill for financial services and general government. The bill includes specific federal payments to D.C., such as for the city’s court system and to help cover security costs related to the federal government’s presence.
And while budget riders have been an unpleasant political reality for D.C. since it gained limited home rule 50 years ago, the new Republican proposal includes a broad menu of riders that target everything from hot-button issues like abortion to more pedestrian issues like, well, pedestrian safety.
The spending bill would maintain a longstanding prohibition on D.C. subsidizing the costs of abortions for low-income women, and forbid the city from using any federal funds it receives on needle-exchange programs. It would also extend the ban on legalizing marijuana sales first imposed by Republicans in 2015, which city...
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