front page - search - community

House passes D.C.'s fiscal 2005 budget
(Published July 26, 2004)

The House of Representatives approved the District of Columbia’s fiscal 2005 budget, with more than a dozen Democrats casting "nay" votes in what was characterized as a protest against the inclusion of federally funded vouchers to funnel public money to private schools.

"Vouchers continue to leave a bitter taste here, witness the loss of Democrats who have always voted ‘yes’ on D.C. appropriations," the District’s non-voting delegate to the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton, said of the 371-54 vote on July 20.

The bill includes $14 million to fund a second year of the controversial program that allows D.C. schoolchildren to apply for federal tuition assistance to attend private schools. During the House Appropriations Committee markup of the bill last week, the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Chaka Fattah of California, unsuccessfully attempted to divert $4 million unused from last year’s voucher appropriation to help fund D.C. Public Schools.

Despite the protest vote, Democrat Norton applauded efforts by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., and Rep. Thomas Davis, R-Va., that helped produce what she called "the cleanest [D.C. appropriations] bill to come to floor in a timely fashion since Republicans took control."

This year’s D.C. budget bill, like others in the past, contains several so-called "riders" that continue a congressional prohibition on use of locally generated government funds for such things as needle-exchange programs to combat the spread of AIDS, abortions for women with no or low incomes, and lobbying for D.C. statehood or voting rights.

But Norton credited "strenuous efforts" for beating back attempts to attach new riders to this year’s bill that would have banned same-sex marriages, repealed D.C. gun laws and prevented documented immigrants from voting in local elections.

The D.C. appropriations bill is widely expected to face an attempt in the Senate to attach a provision that would repeal the District’s ban on handgun ownership.

The bill passed in the House would provide the District with $560 million in federal funds, including $25.6 million for the D.C. College Access Program that funds tuition assistance, $13 million for public schools, $13 million for public charter schools, $10 million to continue upgrading the District’s antiquated combined sewer system, $7 million for the city’s planned public safety communications center, and $3 million for the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative.