In this morning's blaring front page headline story, the Baltimore Sun details how Trump’s proposed budget will devastate Maryland.
President Donald Trump unveiled a budget Thursday that calls for eliminating spending on the Chesapeake Bay, reducing medical research and slashing the federal workforce to levels not seen in decades — part of an effort to force a historic resizing of the government he now leads.
The budget may put thousands of federal employees who live in Maryland (and northern Virginia and DC) out of work, with devastating impacts on the Washington-Baltimore regional economy. 300,000 Marylanders (which until 2015 included me), 10 percent of the workforce of Maryland, are federal employees, while hundreds of thousands more work for federal contractors. Maryland’s budget officials have already calculated that Trump’s hiring freeze on federal workers (never mind the now threatened reductions in workforce) will result in 4,653 fewer Marylanders working for the federal government, reducing state income tax revenue by $25 million and state sales tax revenue by $7.2 million.
The National Institute of Health, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, will be cut by $5.8 billion. Until now, both parties have joined to support the medical research conducted by NIH. Johns Hopkins University, located in the heart of Baltimore City, is one of the largest recipients of NIH grants. According to the dean of JHU’s Bloomberg School of Public Health:
These proposed cuts are the antithesis of “making America great.” They would be devastating for biomedical research in the United States but, more importantly, for the health of persons in the U.S and around the world.
Trump proposes to cut $3 billion from a federal grant program to Baltimore that is tearing down abandoned row houses and building community centers. Urban development and road projects now underway in Baltimore will grind to a halt if the state doesn’t cover the proposed federal cuts.
Trump proposes to eliminate $73 million for continued cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay. Until today, Republicans and Democrats have joined to support government efforts to clean up the bay. That proposal was attacked by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, whose website promptly urged those of us who love the Bay to take action:
Bay grasses and crabs are up, the water is the clearest it's been in decades, and the dead zone is trending smaller. Clearly the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint —the state-federal partnership to reduce pollution and Save the Bay—is working. But the recovery is fragile, and it is imperative that all 18 million of us who call the Bay region home recognize that the Bay is not saved yet. Not by a long shot.
The office of our Republican governor Larry Hogan immediately denounced the proposed cut to Bay cleanup, “Governor Hogan has invested more than $3 billion in efforts to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay and will remain a fierce advocate going forward.” Even ultra right wing Republican tea partier Andy Harris, whose congressional district bestrides the Bay, and whose constituents include commercial and recreational fishermen, crabbers, and oystermen, as well as boat owners, has vowed to restore these cuts.
The cuts will hit Baltimore's arts community hard, as Trump proposes to eliminate entirely the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In 2016, groups in Maryland received 19 grants from the NEA, worth a total of $520,000. That same year, 11 grants were awarded to Maryland groups and individuals by the NEH, worth over $1.46 million. The IMLS sent almost $2.9 million to the state.
Maryland Public Television would lose $3 million. In Baltimore City alone, institutions that benefit and to a large extent function as a result of NEA, NEH, and IMLS grants include the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Gallery, Center Stage, Wide Angle, and Creative Alliance of Highlandtown. (HIghlandtown is a working class Baltimore inner city neighborhood populated until the last few decades with Polish immigrants and their children, but now largely populated with Hispanic immigrants. Since Trump’s accession to power, Highlandtown has been victimized by several ICE raids, and Highlandtowners have responded by protest rallies, one of which I attended.)