Federal spending cuts, ICE raids will have devastating effects in Tri-Cities | Editorial
Federal spending cuts threaten to devastate the Tri-Cities economy while immigration raids shred the region’s agricultural workforce. If only the Mid-Columbia had a representative in the U.S. House who fought for us.
President Donald Trump’s spending plans propose cuts at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Trump is going after anything that sounds like environmentalism.
The Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program and the Biological and Environmental Research subprogram stand to lose support. Yet these are valuable research efforts that are helping define how America will meet the energy needs of the future without destroying the planet in the process.
PNNL could lose 1,100 employees if compliant Republicans cater to the president. That’s about one in six workers there. The effects would ripple through the local economy. According to Friends of PNNL, a group that advocates for the laboratory, eliminating 1,100 jobs could jeopardize another 2,500 jobs in the community as the income spent by those workers on local goods, services and education disappear.
Trump and Republicans in Congress also proposed slashing $1 trillion of Medicaid spending. Their punitive efforts to make qualifying more difficult will leave millions of Americans without basic health coverage.
The effects will disproportionately hit Central Washington where 70% of children in the 4th Congressional District rely on Apple Health, Washington’s version of Medicaid. That will lead to crowded emergency rooms, longer waits and overwhelmed specialists.
People without insurance will delay care until small problems become much more expensive big ones. That, in turn, could contribute to private insurance premium increases and could end with the closure of hospitals like Prosser Memorial Health and Lourdes in Pasco, as well as rural medical facilities in Sunnyside, Dayton, Ritzville and elsewhere.
Health care is not the administration’s only target. Trump also plans to reduce Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by up to 20% and increase work requirements. That risks throwing thousands of Washingtonians off the program. Nearly 17,000 households in the Tri-Cities rely on SNAP to avoid going hungry. They are our neighbors and our friends who rely on the social safety net.
The administration also is reducing federal funding for schools and dismantling the Department of Education. Local school districts will lose millions of dollars that have helped students succeed.
There might be a case for the cuts if they were part of a comprehensive spending and revenue package that dealt with the nation’s unsustainable deficit spending, but they primarily just offset the cost of lower taxes for the wealthy. In fact, the Republican’s spending plan adds $5 trillion to the debt ceiling to accommodate the cost of tax cuts and other spending.
While spending cuts undermine the region’s economy, immigration enforcement has intensified beyond targeting violent criminals. The arrests tear at the fabric of communities and make labor scarce during critical harvest seasons for regional farms and orchards. Washington’s agricultural sector employs about 29,000 undocumented workers. Even a father and mechanic who had worked on farm equipment locally for decades was not safe.
Disruption is not limited to the agricultural sector either. Construction workers are being deported or staying away from job sites. That lost labor impacts the ability to build desperately needed housing.
All of this threatens the local economy. People will lose jobs, incomes will falter and the future is less certain.
Ideally, the region’s representative in Congress would stand against the harm happening here and fight for his constituents. Alas, we have Rep. Dan Newhouse. Once upon a time, Newhouse built a reputation as one of the few Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Trump. That independent streak is dead. Now he is a reliable vote for Trump’s agenda who cheered passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.
The federal government has long played an outsized role in the Tri-Cities through strategic investment in research, cleanup at Hanford and funding infrastructure. The Trump administration is undoing the progress we have made and leaving communities vulnerable.
Tri-Cities residents should demand that Newhouse prioritize regional economic interests over party loyalty. Our community’s future depends on the federal investments that have sustained us for decades.