By Retreating In The Funding Fight, Democrats Have Abandoned Their Most Loyal Constituents: D.C. Voters

In capitulating on the GOP funding bill, Democrats have hung their most core constituents out to dry.

By Sam Rosenthal

On Friday, with another government shutdown looming, Senate Democrats, and their feckless leader, Chuck Schumer, fully folded to the Republican Party’s bullying tactics. Late Thursday, Schumer announced, first in a closed-door caucus meeting and then in a floor speech, that he would be voting to advance the GOP spending bill to the Senate. While no Senate Democrats actually voted for the spending bill once it hit the floor, all that was needed for it to pass was for Democrats to take their hands off the last point of leverage they had to disrupt Republicans’ agenda: the Senate filibuster threat.

These moves are sure to tank Senate Democrats’ already flagging popularity with their constituents. House Democrats, usually publicly united with their Senate brethren, have been openly critical of their feeble capitulation to the GOP agenda. Recent reporting even revealed that some House Democrats are privately encouraging House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to primary Schumer in his re-election bid in 2028.

There are a thousand reasons why Senate Democrats should have done everything within their power to stop this bill from passing. Voters have been clamoring for months for the party to do something, anything, to stop the onslaught of chaos induced by Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE catastrophe. Democrats have repeatedly said that they are helpless to do anything to combat Trump’s agenda; this would have been a clear sign to voters that, despite their minority status in Congress, Democrats would use any opportunity they can muster to throw sand in the gears. The GOP spending bill also includes cuts to health care and social programs while somehow incorporating an increase in the military budget, spending preferences that Democrats should oppose on principle.

But there is another reason why Democrats should have stopped this bill from becoming law. The spending bill includes a flagrant attack on the city government of Washington, D.C. and its citizens. While the Senate did also pass a separate D.C. funding bill, its prospects in the House, where it must also pass, are reportedly grim. While the passage of the district funding measure may temporarily shield the Democrats from criticism that they have hung D.C. residents out to dry, it is purely a cosmetic victory.  If Democrats had actually wanted to stand up for one of their most loyal blocs of constituents anywhere in the country, they should have stopped the underlying funding bill.

If D.C. were its own state, it would be the bluest in the nation. In the 2024 presidential election, 90.3% of D.C. residents voted for Kamala Harris. That puts it nearly 30 points ahead of the next bluest state in 2024, Vermont, which supported Harris with around 64% in favor. D.C., and surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia, are also an epicenter of one of the most reliably Democratic blocs: middle-class black voters.

For these reasons, D.C. has long been a punching bag for right-wing presidential administrations. Because of its status as a federal district, Congress can exercise a great deal of control over D.C.’s local policymaking. This includes an ability to repeal laws passed by the D.C. Council and dictate how D.C. spends its own tax dollars. In fact, until 1973, D.C. did not even have the ability to elect its own local representatives, and were instead attended to by federally-appointed commissioners who often cared little for D.C. residents’ concerns.

As an entirely urban, majority-minority, and historically lower-income city, D.C. has long represented the archetype of everything that rightwing Congressmembers love to rail against.

With their new funding bill, Republicans are back at it again. The bill cuts $1 billion from the budget that D.C. passed for itself for the 2025 fiscal year. D.C. officials are warning that a cut of this size, approximately 16% of the city’s remaining budget, will have dire consequences for the district. It will likely entail personnel cuts for the city’s teachers and emergency services, potentially crippling D.C.’s ability to attend to its population of around 700,000. (Republicans apparently have no problem with defunding the police when it comes to punishing their political enemies.)

While Democrats have abandoned their most loyal supporters in their latest retreat, there is a way that they can still make things right: by foregrounding the push for D.C. statehood in the Democratic Party platform. Residents of the district have long clamored for statehood and an end to their civic purgatory. The arguments for such a move are robust: while the district is small by land area, its population exceeds that of both Wyoming and Vermont, and it is within striking distance of North Dakota and Alaska. The district’s GDP puts it in the middle of the pack for all U.S. states. Meanwhile, D.C. residents pay more, per capita, in federal taxes than residents in any U.S. state.

The statehood idea has modest support among the American public, too. Recent surveys have found a slight edge in favor of D.C. statehood, despite its comparatively obscure status as a political issue. And it obviously makes for appealing political math for Democrats in Congress. Whereas D.C. currently has no voting representation in Congress, its admittance as the 51st state would come with two reliably Democratic senators and one representative.

Making D.C. a state would not be a complex political process. The Constitution allows for the admittance of new states by a simple act of Congress, which could be passed as a typical piece of legislation, then forwarded to the president’s desk for their signature. This is the same process that all but the original thirteen colonies have followed for admittance to the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii, which both became U.S. states in 1959, well within living memory.

After decades mired in the political abyss, the drive for D.C. statehood has picked up momentum in recent years. In 2021, House Democrats, then in the majority, successfully passed a bill establishing statehood for the district. That bill was effectively tanked in the Senate when then-Senator, and current corporate asset advisor, Joe Manchin declared that he would not support the legislation.

As Republicans once again take a swing at their favorite punching bag, Democrats should renew their push for D.C statehood. While the current political environment is obviously a forbidding one for the passage of a statehood bill, they can continue to set the stage for the eventual realization of this goal. In doing so, Democrats would be both standing up for their most reliable voting bloc and also presenting the kind of vocal and defiant affront to Trumpism that voters have been pleading for. Support for D.C. statehood is morally sound, but it is also smart politics; Democrats could use more of both at this moment.