Real #DCValues
It’s often said that budgets are moral documents. Budgets crystallize government priorities, distributing resources and putting dollar amounts to community values. Mayor Bowser embraced this notion this year with her campaign to frame the FY18 budget discussion using the hashtag #DCValues. On Tuesday, June 13, the Council took its second of two needed votes (the first was on May 30, because things are complicated in DC) to finalize the city’s $13.9 billion budget. The budget certainly expresses #DCValues, but probably not in the way the Mayor thinks.
Despite all the buildup and pretense of transparency and community oversight, it’s become routine for the final budget to be released just hours before the first vote. This year, the budget was published by Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (who holds great sway over the final version) on his website near midnight the night before the vote and not promoted on Twitter until nearly 4 am. In recognition of the late hour, the vote was generously pushed back from 10 am the following day…to noon. The rushed vote after months of input from the public and community advocates is quintessential inside baseball politics, proving the lie of the “transparency” in the performative public input process and making the job of groups looking to hold government accountable to the people all but impossible.
But this is business as usual. The real scandal is what’s actually inside the budget — a ticking tax cut time bomb that only benefits the rich and big businesses.
Despite record revenues, a supermajority of the Council voted against delaying tax cuts for millionaires and businesses with annual revenue over $10 million. Caving to pressure from the business lobby, the council decided that it was more important to uphold its “promises” to the rich and big businesses than to use the extra revenue (a projected $40 million in FY18 alone) to address our affordable housing crisis, pay for much needed homeless services, or improve funding in our public schools. Self-proclaimed “progressive” CM Robert White, a first term At-Large member who obviously harbors grander ambitions, took the opportunity of his “no” vote for a little grandstanding — earning praise from CM Jack Evans, the trickle-down economics enthusiast from Ward 2. All the while, other “progressive” stalwarts like CM Charles Allen of Ward 6 and CM Kenyon McDuffie of Ward 5 looked on in cowardly silence before voting against delaying the unnecessary tax cuts.
There was still much worth celebrating in the final budget. The Universal Paid Leave Act received full start-up funding (check out Ep. 4 for more info on this important program and the work that still needs to be done to fight off ongoing repeal-and-replace efforts), the arbitrary cut off for TANF benefits (cash assistance for needy families) was eliminated, $19 million was secured for public housing repairs, $2 million was set aside for adult learner transit subsidies, and the NEAR Act was mostly (though not fully) funded. These are just some of the progressive nuggets included in the nearly $14 billion budget, but most are small line items that should be top priorities for funding over tax cuts for the wealthy in a city with notoriously exploding inequality.
Councilmember David Grosso deserves to be commended for leading the charge to put the interests of vulnerable communities above those of the rich individuals and businesses, and CMs Elissa Silverman, Brianne Nadeau, and Trayon White deserve credit for voting to delay the tax cuts. But the reality is that the District still boasts a Council that mustered nine votes in favor of tax cuts for millionaires and 10 votes in favor of tax cuts for big business (CM Trayon White from Ward 8 voted to delay the estate tax cut, but not the business tax cut).
We need to do better.
Progressive groups in the District must hold our elected officials accountable. Washingtonians must engage in politics both inside the formal channels of power and through mass politics in the streets to demonstrate our priorities. As the jurisdiction with the highest rate of Democratic party affiliation in the nation and the platform that comes with being the nation’s capital, DC has a unique opportunity to push the boundaries of what’s possible in progressive politics today. The Universal Paid Leave Act and the strong coalition of local and regional supporters who built up around it is one example of that in practice. But there’s still a lot of work to be done before the District’s politics adequately address the challenges and opportunities that come with our skyrocketing growth and inequality.
Until our budget reflects real #DCValues — like making sure every individual and family can afford a home, that the housing provided to our most vulnerable communities is humane and dignified, that policing is carried out with respect and community oversight, and that every child is getting a quality education with access to first-class facilities no matter where in the city she lives — we must not be satisfied.
