Rep. Andy Harris, a conservative Republican from Maryland, will propose a spending rider on the District of Columbia’s annual funding bill Wednesday that would deny funding for implementing the city’s recently passed marijuana decriminalization law.

...(Harris, a doctor), will seek to block the implementation of the District’s newly passed decriminalization law that would limit punishments for small amounts of marijuana to a civil infraction of $25 — among the laxest in the nation. While Congress has 60 legislative days to review D.C.’s decriminalization proposal, Harris is choosing to instead just cut off its funding. “Probably too late to affect anything because of the deadlines. But there will be a limitation amendment,” Harris said. “I would suspect it will pass the committee.

There’s a long history of Congress taking their pet issues and applying them to D.C., which is still in many ways overseen by Capitol Hill. Republicans have attached riders to spending bills that prohibited city money from being spent on providing abortions, and an amendment that loosened the city’s strict gun laws torpedoed Democrats’ attempt to give the District a congressional seat when Nancy Pelosi was speaker.

“[Harris would] have a whole lot of push-back in his own district if he tried that. I mean, they may be conservative but he’s got a whole lot of people in his district smoking pot, and they’d be incensed,” said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) of Harris’s Eastern Shore district. “It’s like kicking somebody when they’re down. Invariably, we have amendments to pick on D.C. because you can get away with it and they figure D.C.’s politically powerless to do it. And it’s wrong.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/andy-harris-marijuana-washington-dc-108259.html#ixzz35cENqOR5