D.C. Escapes the Most Brutal Cuts as Appropriation Passes House Today- June 14, 2006
D.C. Escapes the Most Brutal Cuts as Appropriation Passes House Today
June 14, 2006
Washington, DC—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today breathed a sigh of relief after House passage of the D.C. appropriation, where she was able to preserve federal funding for District priorities in the Transportation, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development (TTHUD) bill, including $20 million to expand the Navy Yard Metro Station and $2 million to increase total funding for the popular D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program (TAG) to $35 million. Norton also worked with the appropriators to keep the D.C. part of the bill free of any new attachments. However, she said that in spite of the outcry over D.C.’s HIV/AIDS epidemic, the rider barring the city from using its own funds for a needle exchange program to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS remains in the House bill. An amendment that had been planned to allow D.C. to lobby for statehood and voting rights was not introduced because of indications that it could not pass.
Considering that TTHUD was cut hundreds of millions of dollars, including Amtrak and housing rehabilitation, Norton said that D.C. escaped the worst of it, “with generous and indispensable help from our majority and minority appropriators.” The Congresswoman was pleased that the special appropriation to cover police, fire and other services for national demonstrations that she has gotten on a regular basis beginning five years ago was retained. Unfortunately, the House bill does not include the $30 million that had been in the President’s budget proposal for city libraries, she said, “an important D.C. priority that I was unable to save because unlike the Metro funding, for example, the libraries are entirely local.”
Last week Norton was successful in saving the Metro upgrade funds when the full Appropriations Committee approved the District’s budget, even after the subcommittee originally had cut the funds. The need for increased capacity at the Navy Yard Metro Station for baseball stadium crowds aside, Norton had stressed the significant federal interest in providing transportation for more than 10,000 federal employees at the renovated Navy Yard, 5,500 coming with the new Department of Transportation headquarters, and other workers at the new office buildings that line M Street, S.E.