DC4RD — 2025 DC Budget Update
Washington, DC — May 23, 2024 — As workers who put their bodies on the line in the many capitalist wars get ready to relax one extra day before summer, the DC City Council is poised next week to take up Mayor Bowser's continued war on the poor and working residents and families (many of whom are veterans without a vote).
It was in April when the news of the Mayor's 2025 austerity budget came across newswires. The City Councilmembers remarks were stark in their analysis of what Bowser is trying to impose: http://www.tinyurl.com/dcbudget2025-take1
However, instead of lifting the burden off the backs of the working residents of DC, the Council wants to simply shift the pots of money around to make the hardship a tiny bit less bearable all while delivering a line of credit of half-a-billion dollars (that butts DC up against our loan ceiling) to be delivered to a billionaire (Ted Leonisis) so that luxury playtime “can save Downtown DC.” https://dccouncil.gov/council-approves-arena-funds-to-keep-teams-in-dc-receives-mayors-budget-proposal/
Numerous DC advocacy groups who care about working families and the lower-income DC residents are asking that the wealthy pay a much fairer share of the burden and the city make modest tax increases on millionaires, let alone billionaires.
The Council, at least the Chair, seems to be playing the dire need for human services to be maintained let alone increased against their understanding of a mostly apathetic DC voter base. Councilmembers appear to be deflecting calls for raising taxes on the rich, again, despite overwhelming support as such: https://www.dcfpi.org/press-releases/dc-voters-strongly-support-taxing-wealth-to-raise-revenue-and-address-inequality/
Mayor Muriel Bowser, leading Phil Mendelson by the nose, all together are essentially telling the plebiscite that stadiums are far more important than the massive displacement of Black residents and the severe uptick recent evictions of longtime DC residents from their home and even from the tents.
► 'Homelessness numbers continue to rise in D.C. region, data shows.' WaPo's
Kyle Swenson: “The number of unhoused individuals across the Washington region jumped by over 12 percent from 2023, marking the second year in a row that homelessness has increased, according to data released by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments this week.
https://archive.ph/nuMMl
► 'D.C. clears major homeless encampment, but critical housing problems linger.' WaPo's
Marissa J. Lang: “Dozens of homeless adults were forced to scatter this week to far-flung parks and slivers of turf around the District after the National Park Service and D.C. officials cleared out several sites in the Foggy Bottom area that collectively had become the last large-scale homeless encampment in the city.
https://archive.ph/h94iD
If the Council truly cared would they not deploy the verve and fast action we've seen go to protecting Leonisis' Capital One Arena as we would for real DC people undergoing serious hardship as entire DC neighborhoods being emptied of their people and culture, replaced by expensive housing and homogeneity.
Perhaps this is a wrong read, but yet again this budget season, the Council and Mayor seem poised to keep the working-class under threat to unduly bear the brunt of an overall sluggish economy coming out of a global pandemic all while funding billionaires for more luxury play time.
If the veterans of past fought fascist dictators, their grandsons, and granddaughters, and great family are now being compelled into a class war by pitiful political policies that provide social welfare to the rich and downright brutal auerstry for the working families and lower-income residents of the city.
There are solutions — will the Council take them up this budget season?
— DC4RD 2025 BUDGET UPDATE, Chris Otten
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