D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s budgets for the remainder of this fiscal year as well as for 2026 include some good news, as well as some major cuts that would impact low-income families.
Bowser found a way to avoid any major cuts this year after Congress cut more than $1 billion from the fiscal year 2025 budget.
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WATCH HERE“We have really blunted what could have been a catastrophic situation for city services,” she said.
Her budget does not include furloughs, layoffs or closing facilities.
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SIGN UP “We fully funded our police and teachers with this budget, and we won't have any changes to our summer programming,” Bowser said.
But the mayor is proposing significant cuts to social safety net programs to close a more than $300 million budget gap next year.
Bowser’s fiscal year 2026 budget includes cuts to Medicaid eligibility, the child tax credit, TANF benefits (which provides cash assistance to families) and paid family leave when workers must stay home to care for family members.
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Bowser’s budget would move more than 25,000 residents off Medicaid. Those individuals would have to move to government health care plans for which they may have to pay out of pocket, like the DC Health Exchange.
Bowser’s budget has several pro-business components that she says are needed to grow the economy, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars for the RFK Stadium development and improvements to Capital One Arena.
“We have to have a city that grows,” she said. “We can't invest in the best schools if we don't have revenue to do that. We can't have the types of human services programs that we've invested in if we don't have revenues.”
“We have a shifting economy, and if we don't shift with it, we will be a city that people flee, OK?” Bowser said.
Her budget does not have any tax increases.
It now goes to the D.C. Council, where changes are expected before final approval.
Several advocacy groups have already blasted Bowser’s budget as being too pro-business and placing too heavy a burden on low-income families.
The D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute issued a statement saying: “Our country and our city are witnessing a massive upward distribution of wealth. While Congress is advancing trillions in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the mayor is doubling down on disproven, trickle-down economic policies that hand D.C.’s limited resources over to corporations. Her budget betrays workers and tenants and will worsen racial inequity.”
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