The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday aimed at stopping the Washington, D.C., local government from blocking parts of President Donald Trump’s new tax law.
D.C.’s progressive city council passed a local measure to stop certain parts of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act from going into effect due to their expected effect of cutting city revenues.
Policies that would have been blocked include Trump’s elimination of taxes on tipped and overtime wages, as well as certain tax cuts aimed at businesses.
The legislation was led by Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, who told Fox News Digital he did not expect any Democrats to support his bill. It passed the House entirely along party lines in a 215 – 210 vote.
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“Republicans want more money to be in the hands and in the pockets of working-class families, and Democrats want that money to be in the hands of government,” Gill said.
The D.C. government generally conforms with large swaths of the federal tax code, as a federal territory itself.
But according to local officials, including non-voting Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., enacting the full Trump tax bill would amount to a $600 million revenue loss for the city.
“This resolution is nothing short of unprecedented and deliberate administrative and fiscal sabotage of D.C.,” Norton said in a statement.
But Republicans, including Gill, argue that the capital’s progressive officials are blocking Trump’s signature legislation for political reasons at the cost of working-class residents.
“Whenever we passed that tax law, we expected Washington, D.C., to conform to those tax provisions. And unfortunately, they decided that they were going to try to separate from them,” Gill said.
“So to give you a few examples, you have no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime pay, a variety of pro-growth, pro-business tax provisions that they decided they wanted to decouple from. So what we’re saying is, we think that that’s bad policy on D.C.’s part, and we’re gonna stop them.”
Congress has the ability to overturn most local laws set by D.C. thanks to the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973.
If passed by both the House and Senate, however, Republicans’ bill could complicate the tax season for D.C. residents who have already begun filing for their annual returns.
