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Laid Off by DOGE and Leaving DC | The American Prospect

July 03, 2025
  • D.C. Policy Center

On July 2, 2025, Executive Director Yesim Sayin was quoted in The American Prospect:

The gutting of the federal workforce unfolds amid an already grim economic outlook for Washington, according to Yesim Sayin, executive director of the D.C. Policy Center, a local think tank. The COVID-19 pandemic produced a structural imbalance in the District’s budget caused by the dual pressures of increased spending on health care and social services for the neediest Washingtonians and the collapse of commercial property taxes.

“The city has to balance its budgets over a four-year financial plan.” Sayin told the Prospect. “The goal [of the most recent budget] was to reduce the gap between the recurring spending and recurring expenditures to zero by 2029, the last year of the financial plan. That’s a very dramatic change, even though the city has four years to get there.”

“I think safety nets are really, really, really important,” Sayin said. “But you cannot pay for safety nets if you don’t have economic growth.”

When Sayin thinks about how the city can move forward, she thinks about the people, including the highly skilled federal workers who have long called Washington home. “The District has always grown, but by acquisition,” she said. “What do we have in our soil, in our water, in our air that will actually lead to an industry or industries that are scalable [to] employ a wide variety of people? We really have never had to sit down and think about ‘what does organic growth look like in D.C.?’”

Washington does not have natural resources or major industries to fall back on, Sayin said, and the one resource it does have is imperiled. “We have the talent,” she said. “But the talent is picking up their bags and leaving.”

Read More: Laid Off by DOGE and Leaving DC
Additional reading: Creating an environment of growth and opportunity in the District

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D.C. Policy Center


Established in 2016, the D.C. Policy Center is a non-partisan research and policy organization committed to advancing policies for a strong and vibrant economy in the District of Columbia. Through rigorous research and collaboration, the D.C. Policy Center develops and tests policy ideas, disseminates its findings, and engages in constructive dialogue and debate.

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