The long fight for economic justice in Washington reached another milestone this week as D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) reintroduced legislation to designate low-income neighborhoods in the District as federal Empowerment Zones.
The bill, introduced Dec. 9, seeks to restore the federal tax incentives that once fueled business investment across parts of the city before Congress cut them off in 2011.
Norton’s latest push comes as the District’s economic foundation is buckling under federal workforce losses, weak investor confidence, and the lingering shifts brought on by remote and hybrid work.
A December 2025 assessment by the D.C. Policy Center found that employer demand, worker demand, and investment demand for the city remain fragile. The report noted that nonfarm employment in the District still trails its pre-pandemic level, real wages have declined, business applications have fallen, and investor interest has not translated into new development.
For Norton, the evidence is proof of what she said she has known for years.
“With the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal employees, budget cuts and proposed relocation of federal agencies, as well as the continued prevalence of remote and hybrid work, this bill is especially important,” Norton remarked.
The history behind the bill stretches back decades. Congress created the national Empowerment Zone program in 1993 to revive economically distressed areas across the country, but the District was left out of the designations. Norton moved to fill that gap in 1997, crafting a suite of federal tax incentives specifically for D.C. in partnership with Republicans.
“The business tax incentives were similar to, but more generous than, those available under the national empowerment zone program,” she noted.
Those incentives, combined with federal redevelopment projects like the Department of Homeland Security complex at St. Elizabeths produced investment in neighborhoods long passed over by developers.
Norton testified in 2019 that the initial incentives “had been amply and visibly demonstrated in the economic resurgence in many parts of the nation’s capital where they applied,” even though they “expired before the poorest neighborhoods were ready to make use of them.”
Congress allowed the D.C.-specific incentives to lapse in 2011, even as it continued extending the national program. Norton has argued every year since that the choice made little sense, especially as the District’s most vulnerable communities were on the cusp of being able to absorb new investment.
Her new bill resolves that disparity by folding D.C. directly into the national Empowerment Zone program. If enacted, neighborhoods meeting federal poverty and unemployment thresholds would qualify for targeted tax benefits designed to draw business activity, job creation, and long-term commercial stability. The District’s eligibility would last as long as the national program remains authorized.
The need is plain in the data.
The D.C. Policy Center found that the city’s economic recovery lags behind the nation, and that remote work has dramatically weakened the connection between employers and the physical city. The result is shrinking job activity inside the District’s borders—even when residents continue to work for D.C.-based organizations.
“D.C. has the highest job losses by [percentage] of any part of the U.S. so far this year, due almost entirely to DOGE cuts—federal job losses reduced total D.C. employment by 1.07% over the last year,” Joey Politano wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “with Maryland losing 0.51% of its workforce & VA .26% in the same manner.”
Investors, meanwhile, have pulled back. Real estate investment trusts exposed to D.C. holdings have underperformed, office vacancies hover near historic highs, and new groundbreakings remain scarce.
Norton said the District cannot wait for the market alone to correct decades of uneven growth and the post-pandemic economic shakeout. Her bill, she argued, restores a proven tool with a bipartisan lineage.
“Congress has long recognized that the benefits of tax incentives for investment in low-income communities outweigh the costs,” she stated. “I urge my colleagues to support this bill.”