This week a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved a bill that would effectively take away Washington, D.C.’s fiscal autonomy, requiring Congressional approval of any new D.C. laws that increase taxes or fees. This unprecedented and undemocratic power grab would fly in the face of 250 years of an important American tradition: delegating political and economic power from the federal government to the American people.
The bill approved by the House Oversight Committee prescribes that “any Act codified in title 47 of the District of Columbia Code or which would impose or increase a tax or fee” must be approved by a joint Congressional resolution within 60 days or it can’t take effect. Title 47 of the D.C. Code includes virtually every way the city currently raises revenue to fund public investments, from the personal and corporate income tax to the general sales tax, and even the property taxes that are the historical cornerstone of local taxing power in the U.S.
This move would turn the normal rules of local democracy on their head and give members of Congress from Kentucky, Texas, and everywhere else in the U.S. an extraordinary new say over taxes paid by people who have no voting representation in Congress.
The bill does have its loopholes—for example, D.C.’s dog licensing fees are codified in title 8 of the D.C. code, not title 47, so D.C. residents would still have something to say about those. But only if they wanted to reduce them: the law includes a backstop provision that requires Congressional approval of any new or increased tax or fee elsewhere in the D.C. code. So D.C. residents are apparently smart enough to be trusted if they try to drown government in the bathtub, but not if they want to pay the city’s bills responsibly.
The proposal is especially bizarre because Congress already has effective veto power over D.C.’s taxing authority, limiting the city’s capacity to self-govern in a way that doesn’t apply to any other jurisdiction in America. Under the Home Rule Act, Congress can overturn legislation—not just on tax changes, but on any topic—passed by the D.C. Council. And Congress has already exercised this power in 2026: back in February, President Donald Trump signed a law that explicitly reversed D.C.’s choice to decouple from certain provisions of Trump’s 2025 federal tax cut, a choice made by dozens of states in the past year.
Because the Home Rule Act requires Congress to disapprove D.C. laws within 30 days of enactment, and Republicans were apparently too busy redacting the Epstein files to act within that window, Trump’s effort to force his own tax cuts on D.C. voters was ultimately unsuccessful. This week’s legislation would give Congressional tax writers all the free time they need to flout democracy going forward, changing the default from “D.C. can govern itself unless Congress intervenes” to “D.C. cannot make certain basic fiscal decisions unless Congress gives permission.” It should go without saying that any other town, city, county, or state in America would be up in arms if they faced such a universal limit on their autonomy.
How do Congressional Republicans justify this? Committee Chairman James Comer says the legislation is needed because D.C.’s leaders are pursuing a “path to socialism” by (gasp) contemplating tax increases of any kind. While this claim is as absurd as President Trump’s repeated insistence that the U.S. faces an existential internal threat from Communism, there is a straightforward mechanism available for D.C. voters to prevent a rising tide of socialism if they choose: the ballot box.
It is obviously hypocritical to bind D.C.’s hands while allowing far more poorly managed states to enact huge tax and unaffordable tax cuts, but it’s worth remembering why Republicans in Congress haven’t attempted to shackle California or other blue states in the same way: because they can’t. The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reserves undelegated powers, including the power to tax, to the states. Denying such power to D.C. residents flies in the face of the spirit of the law. In other words, the intention of the highest law of the land doesn’t seem to matter much to Republican leaders of Congress at all.
Hypocrisy aside, there’s an obvious practical reason why this legislation is a terrible idea. State tax codes aren’t museum pieces. Governments routinely change them in response to structural changes in the U.S. economy, recessions, federal tax legislation, court decisions, and cyclical changes in fiscal conditions.
D.C. has an especially good reason to preserve that flexibility right now, after federal layoffs and remote work have weakened its fiscal position. Yet H.R. 9720 would deliberately make the District less capable of responding to those challenges. Congress could simply decline to act, leaving locally elected officials unable to raise revenue even when they and their constituents have decided that doing so is preferable to cutting schools, transit, health care or other services.
Even in normal times, taking away the fiscal autonomy of a jurisdiction larger than Vermont or Wyoming would be a profoundly undemocratic and unprecedented act. But coming on the heels of a wave of Congressional actions that have endangered the capacity of D.C. and every state to pay for needed public investments, the steps taken by a House committee this week are simply indefensible.
