2 days ago
Federal cuts aren't efficient, they're dangerous
West Virginia has declined to join other states suing the Trump administration to block the cancellation of AmeriCorps programs. (AmeriCorps photo)
'The needs will go unmet.'
That's what Habitat for Humanity of Kanawha and Putnam executive director Andrew Blackwood told West Virginia Watch in April when asked about the cuts the Trump administration made to AmeriCorps that month. In total, an estimated 32,000 AmeriCorps service members were told to stop working.
AmeriCorps members, of course, often do vital service work in distressed areas for low pay. You name it, and an AmeriCorps member has probably done it. After school programs, disaster clean up, home repair, the list goes on. It's an important service program that steps in to fill gaps that our local and state governments and nonprofits simply can't afford to do.
That's why it was so disappointing that West Virginia didn't join the multistate lawsuit to challenge the program's termination. Our attorney general J.B. McCuskey, who early into his role has already joined lawsuits to challenge other states' own laws, couldn't be bothered to provide a comment to West Virginia Watch.
A spokesperson for Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who would be the first to tout his bona fides in suing the Obama and Biden administrations when he was West Virginia's attorney general, said, 'The governor believes most matters can be solved through collaboration and communication rather than lawsuits. The governor will continue to fight to protect all West Virginians and will work diligently to help all those impacted.'
Well that's great and all. But I wonder if he would repeat that now, after a judge ruled that the AmeriCorps members can return in the 24 states and Washington D.C. that sued the administration in April. Those two dozen states will now have the young (although many older Americans join AmeriCorps, too), eager people returning to work and helping the communities they've chosen to make home, doing projects, supporting their neighbors.
A win for them; a loss for us. Unfortunately because of our elected leaders' decision not to join the lawsuit, West Virginia won't be one of those states.
To be fair, the governor's office has a point. Most matters should be resolved through collaboration.
But it never should have gotten to this point in the first place.
This year we've seen story after story of programs, grants, employees and offices being cut all across the country. Some people, organizations, cities or states sue. Others hope that their senators, congress members or governor will get down on their knees and beg the administration to spare their states from the cuts and pain. Sometimes, sometimes, it works. Usually it hasn't.
We're not a healthy, efficient democracy if you have to routinely beg someone to change their mind after, arguably illegally, killing your job, grant or anything else. Here in West Virginia we've seen a grant terminated that would help the state address its long history of PFAS contamination. Our very own Department of Environmental Protection wanted that grant. They applied for it. They won it. Then, they saw it taken away.
Health professionals who work on black lung disease and other issues at NIOSH in Morgantown had their jobs cut. It took congressional and advocate pressure, and ultimately, a lawsuit, to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to change his mind.
That should never have happened. But it did. I could go on with things in West Virginia or what I've seen and heard from friends in other states.
We already live in a state where some of our most basic services for some of our most vulnerable people are heavily reliant on the work of volunteers and government grants. The reality is our politics today makes simple 'collaboration' a pipe dream, especially when doing so would require members of a certain political party to publicly acknowledge that these vital services are more than just the woke ideologies they want them to be.
So many of these vital services — from efforts to improve our drinking water, protect miners' health and feed families to programs that provide coaching for our kids, improve homes and safeguard our national parks — face political threats.
It's going to be hard to ignore the ramifications of these cuts and the impacts they have on average West Virginians for long. The legal system has, unfortunately, proven to be one of the only effective tools we have to stave off the worst of these consequences.
We can't let it go on like this forever. This can't become a genie that stays out of the lamp. If we allow future administrations, whether they're Democrat, Republican or another party, to casually and unilaterally upend systems, no one will be safe. What's to stop a Democratic president from attacking programs that are seen to help 'red states?'
Our electeds must do a better job at speaking up — and actually doing something — for the West Virginians who stand to lose the most when funding for programs that serve our state are cut. The madness has to end, and it's their job to stop it.
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