Federal Freeze Frame
I typically don’t write about national politics in this space. When I do cover national politics, it is usually through the lenses of West Virginia’s congressional delegation. My focus tends to be on state-level politics.
However, last week’s temporary freeze on federal grant funding by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – now stayed and rescinded – really brought together national and state politics, because probably no other state would have been affected by that freeze more than West Virginia.
According to the memo, federal agencies were to review all financial assistance to ensure those programs are not funding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, environmental policies from the previous administration of former President Joe Biden, transgenderism, or other “social engineering” policies.
It is unclear whether OMB was following directives from President Donald Trump or acting rogue. The Atlantic reported that the OMB did not have prior approval by the White House to issue that memo and that Trump officials were just as surprised as the rest of us were when that memo was first reported by The Washington Post Monday night.
That doesn’t explain why the White House appeared to take ownership of the memo Tuesday and resulting chaos, including accusing the media of pushing fake news. According to the memo, the freeze was not to affect Social Security, Medicare, or other direct assistance to individuals. But something tells me that officials in the White House do not understand federal grant funding.
In fiscal year 2023, West Virginia received about $7.2 billion in federal grants, with 60% of that coming from Medicaid. But 40%, or about $2.9 billion, came to the state through other federal grants. That’s community development block grants. That’s various forms of transportation funding. That’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
That is also funding for free and reduced school lunch. Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accused media of spreading false information that the free/reduced student lunch would be paused under the federal freeze since the OMB memo doesn’t pause direct funding to individuals. However, the free/reduced lunch program is not paid directly to individual families. For families that qualify, the school system gets the federal funding.
I know this because due to growing up in a low-income family, we qualified for free school lunch nearly the entirety of my time in the Pleasants County Schools system. So, if you freeze federal funding for free/reduced school lunch, it can have a direct effect on individuals even if that was not the intent.
And all of this to hunt down specific funding for DEI or the “Green New Deal”? Whatever one thinks of the programs, wouldn’t the better thing to have done was figure out what programs were funding those initiatives and freeze those versus freezing everything pending the review? Because I’m telling you, had the freeze went into effect and lasted a few weeks, it would have been noticed in West Virginia.
West Virginia is a very Pro-Trump state, but I have to wonder how long that would have lasted when the programs West Virginians depend on started to stop working for them? No doubt that the issues of DEI, transgenderism, and the Green New Deal drove voters to the polls. But part of me kind of wishes the federal grant freeze would have gone into effect to see how long those voters would have gone along with the freeze.
I quoted H.L. Mencken in my previous column: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” I think that quote once again applies to this situation. If this is what you voted for, then this is what you’re getting.
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We are just over a week out from the 2025 regular session of the West Virginia Legislature, which will mean 60 days of stories from me as lawmakers weed though thousands of bills to pass around 200 bills.
I can’t decide if this is going to be a busy session yet. On one hand, we have a new governor who will be chomping at the bit to push his agenda, and a GOP supermajority ready to work with him. But also, we have a lot of new faces in both the House and state Senate.
That, combined with a new process for moving bills through new standing committees and subcommittees in the House, and there is a real learning curve that will slow down bills.
I suspect that is kind of by design. The new House committee process should mean that only bills that members really want to make it through and bills that have become distractions in the past won’t likely be taken up. My concern though is how this new process will work closer to the end of session when more Senate bills start crossing over.
There could be real log jams the closer we get to day 60 on April 12. I hope House and Senate leadership are talking through those issues now before we get into the thick of things.