The Emergency Committee on the Impacts of Federal Workforce and Funding Reductions, the special group organized by the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates to evaluate conditions caused by the Trump administration’s federal worker layoffs and program cancellations, has as one of its leading members Del. Marcus Simon of Falls Church and environs.
In an exclusive interview with the News-Press this week, Del. Simon discussed how the committee will move forward over the summer in preparing the General Assembly for an array of emergency measures it may enact to mitigate the impact of Trump’s cuts not only for persons directly laid off, but for the ripple effects through the wider economy of the layoffs and commensurate declines in revenue.
Simon told the News-Press that it is still too early to tell how profound the impact will be, but there are indicators that among the hardest hit areas is the health care industry, with massive cuts to Medicaid funding not only called for by Trump, but enacted in Congressional legislation passed last week and already signed into law.
“We in Virginia have enjoyed the benefits of major government funding surpluses in recent years because of our economic growth, and now we may see those evaporate as the resources will be required to shore up areas of our economy hurt by the Trump cuts,” Simon said.
The Emergency Committee has so far held four meetings around the state, in Richmond, Alexandria, Wytheville in southwest Virginia, and Norfolk. At those meetings, the 12 House delegates on the committee have taken in information about the impact of the cuts on local economic conditions along with recommendations for where the state might do best to help in the coming months.
The next meeting will be back in Richmond on August 14 and will be more focused on steps forward to take. By early September, if conditions are as bad as they appear, a special session of the entire legislature may be called to put some dramatic new programs into effect.
Already, Simon said, the permanent staff of the House Appropriations Committee has been working on what kinds of emergency bills they may bring to a September special session. Also, analysts at the Weldon Cooper center at the University of Virginia have been tasked with devising strategies.
By then, matters may be considerably more drastic as many federal workers who’ve been laid off will have the paychecks they have been offered until then run out entirely by the end of that month. That’s when the hardship will first fully begin to take effect.
So far, Simon said, unemployment numbers have been rising but at a slow rate. That will change dramatically by the end of September.
He said to watch out for rural hospitals to close if an answer to the Medicaid cuts aren’t found, and a migration of federal workers away from this area, creating a “brain drain” as former federal workers will choose to move rather than accept lower paying jobs that do not match their skills.
“This is already going on, but it takes awhile for these trends to show up in the numbers we’re dealing with,” he said.
Already, however, rural areas of the state are being hit by the phasing out of federal Department of Agriculture programs to buy produce from local farms to supply food banks. In addition, in Norfolk at the Port of Virginia, Trump administration tariff policies, as unsettled as they may be, are causing major cancellations in orders.
He said Chambers of Commerce are also reporting major declines in revenues from local businesses, including restaurants that are losing business because in addition to the layoffs already, the public is worried about what tomorrow may look like.
Depending on how this fall’s elections go in Virginia, he said, there will not be a lot a new governor will be able to do when she takes office in January, whether the Democrat Abigail Spanberger or Republican Winsome Earle-Sears wins.
In fact, the legislature will be dealing with the final budget proposals of outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin that he will present in December before leaving office at the end of the year. The new governor, in fact, will not be able to present a budget until 2028.
“If there’s any silver lining to the situation we will be facing,” Simon told the News-Press, it may be that we will be compelled at last to reform the state’s tax laws to address the problem.
He noted that the current situation, with a single tax rate for everyone in Virginia, which is the same for someone making a million dollars a year as for someone making $30 thousand, may be restructured as part of the effort to meet the crisis.