LPM’s Bill Burton sat down with the executive director of the left-leaning Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, Jason Bailey, to discuss how federal cuts affect Kentucky. The center recently created a tracker to follow the cuts.
Bill Burton: The cuts that have been made are deep, and in some cases, the programs have been eliminated. For instance, the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. That's a program that was designed to help communities prepare for future disasters like the floods we've had the last few years in the state. That grant has been ended. What happens now for that program without the funding?
Jason Bailey: Well, it just won't move forward. You know, I think that we had a $9 million grant that was eliminated in Kentucky, terminated, and then there were applications for $23 million more that will no longer be considered. So, you know, certainly last few years, with the flooding, the tornadoes, the difficult storms that we've had, it sort of reinforced the need to have more resilient infrastructure.
BB: How many other programs in the state are facing a similar situation?
JB: We haven't even identified all of them on our tracker, but we did identify at least a few dozen. And those cross issues like income security, if you're talking about Social Security or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There were health care cuts that have been made, food and agriculture, you know, lots in the area of education. The cuts have come out sort of one at a time. If you're just looking at one off things, it's hard to see the big picture. And so that's what we try to do here, is pull them all together in one place, so people can begin to understand all the different connections between these cuts and actual jobs on the ground here in Kentucky and actual services that communities, in some cases rely pretty heavily on.
BB: Is there any recourse for these programs?
JB: There are, I mean, one, of course, is that there's big questions about the legality of these cuts. You know, the Constitution gives the Congress the power to appropriate funds, and there are real questions about the ability of the executive branch to then just say we're not going to spend those funds, or we're going to lay off employees that are protected by civil service protection. So in many of these cuts, there are lawsuits underway. Some court rulings have come back, but of course, those will be appealed on either side, so it's a long term process. The other avenue is, is sort of political. You know, that sort of public pressure on these decisions. If there's negative public pressure, we've already seen, in some cases, they have retracted cuts or made them less severe than originally announced.
BB: How many politicians pushed back at this point? Governor, Congress, Senate?
JB: Well, I think you've definitely seen Congressman [Morgan] McGarvey push back. You've also seen Gov. [Andy] Beshear push back very hard against these cuts. You know, I think the the rest of the delegation has been pretty quiet about the specific cuts. I think in some cases, generally supportive of the idea of cutting, but pretty quiet on the specifics.
BB: As you mentioned, it's going to take a long time to sort through all of this, to find out all the particulars to these cuts. But what kind of ramifications are we looking from this in the immediate future?
JB: There are several. One is jobs. You know, there are 23,000 federal employees in Kentucky, plus an untold number of other jobs that are funded by federal grants at universities, at other institutions and nonprofits, or contracts that are with private businesses. So we're talking about many thousands of jobs that either have already been lost or at risk of being lost. But then there are ramifications for the services that are available. I mean, if you look at funding for the National Weather Service, the AmeriCorps programs that have 700 sites across Kentucky to provide education and public health. If you look at school feeding programs that have lost funding, you know, health programs, funding for research at universities, there's a long list of stuff that's been cut that, you know, impact us in various ways. And you know, I think that those those ramifications are also very significant, especially when you look at the whole picture.
BB: That's Jason Bailey. He is the executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. Jason, thank you so much for your time.
JB: Yeah, thank you for having me.
This transcript was edited for clarity. The audio on this story was updated.
