DC funding fix runs into abortion concerns in House

Aidan Quigley, CQ-Roll Call on Apr 1, 2025

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WASHINGTON — House Republicans are likely to amend the Senate-passed bill that would allow the District of Columbia to avoid a $1.1 billion budget cut to make clear that a legacy anti-abortion rider is still in effect, House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Tuesday.

The House GOP wants to make sure the so-called Dornan amendment — a decades-old rider that prevents the D.C. government from funding abortion coverage for Medicaid beneficiaries using local tax revenue — is explicitly retained in the bill.

President Donald Trump has called on the House to pass the Senate’s version of the bill “immediately,” as the full-year continuing resolution did not include language needed to allow the D.C. government to spend up to its fiscal 2025 budget, instead of reverting back to fiscal 2024 levels.

“I have no problem with D.C. having the ability to spend the money, but I do want to make sure that, not new conditions, but things we have had on traditionally should remain on,” Cole said.

Cole said House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James R. Comer, R-Ky., will take up the legislation in his panel before it reaches the floor.

Senators believe the Dornan amendment carries over under the full-year stopgap funds law, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters last week. She said she has an opinion from the Congressional Research Service that the restriction applies since it was included in the fiscal 2024 Financial Services appropriations law, which carried over to the CR.

That chamber passed its D.C. bill, which Collins authored with Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., immediately after clearing the full-year spending measure.

The D.C. government “also has a legal opinion that says that riders would still apply,” Collins said Thursday.

The legacy abortion rider is named for its author, former Rep. Robert K. Dornan, R-Calif. He first successfully attached language to the fiscal 1989 D.C. appropriations law barring the use of both federal and local funds for abortion services.

In 2009, under Democratic control of both chambers and the White House, Congress lifted the restriction on local funds but kept the federal funding restriction. Nine years later, Republicans in charge of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue reinstated the full Dornan amendment prohibition.