Cutting California
The Trump administration’s bellicose budget plays to the nation’s divisions, but it also inadvertently underscores its connectedness. Like other states, California relies on federal funding and programs, and while the budget the White House released this week claims to put “America First,” it would do nothing of the kind in a state that’s home to nearly 1 in 8 Americans.
Trump’s plan would devastate California’s finances and disrupt communities and lives across the state. And it would do so only to augment the nation’s already expansive military and security spending, failing to narrow the federal deficit while creating new shortfalls in California and across the country.
Reducing Environmental Protection Agency spending by almost a third would be particularly poisonous to the Golden State. A dramatic cut in Superfund spending, for example, would hamper cleanups of 130 toxic sites in the state, The Chronicle has noted, including 28 in the South Bay. Long-standing efforts that have restored San Francisco Bay and other waters would dry up.
A 13 percent downsizing of the Department of Education would also cause great pain in California, which counts on the federal government for about a tenth of its K-12 spending. Higher education wouldn’t be spared either: UCSF, for example, gets about a tenth of its funding through National Institutes of Health research grants, which would face an 18 percent reduction under Trump’s plan.
A 6 percent cut to the Energy Department would probably mean diminished research funding for the Bay Area’s Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley laboratories.
The elimination of federal funding for public broadcasting would be a blow that urban public radio stations like KQED could probably overcome but that many rural stations couldn’t.
And withdrawing federal support for programs providing meals for senior citizens and utility subsidies for the poor, while also substantially reducing funds for affordable housing and homeless services, would further strain state and local governments forced to fill the breach or contend with the consequences.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., aptly described the president’s plan as “an absolute travesty for California and every state or community that thought they had a true partner in the federal government.” Fortunately, Feinstein and her fellow lawmakers hold more sway over the federal budget than the president — and are more likely to remain tethered to the reality that America’s well-being can’t be separated from that of California or any other state.