Two agencies that Trump wants to dump help the rural poor
WASHINGTON — Exit 417 off Interstate 40 in tiny Dandridge, Tenn., is an economic engine — a place where travelers pull off the highway to gas up, grab a quick bite to eat or maybe even crash for the night at one of the nearby hotels.
Next spring, the East Tennessee city is hoping to embark on a $1.8 million project to make water more readily available to the interchange, which will allow for more commercial and industrial development and ultimately send more tax dollars flowing into the city treasury.
But part of the city’s strategy for the funding the project is in doubt. Just a few weeks after the city applied for a $750,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission, President Trump proposed eliminating all funding for the agency – a move that, if approved by Congress, would stop the flow of federal dollars for such projects into communities in 13 states.
“Not anytime soon,” Melissa Peagler, the Dandridge town administrator, said when asked whether the interchange project would happen without the federal money.
“It would delay the project at the very least,” she said.
The Appalachian Regional Commission is far from the only federal agency Trump is targeting. The proposed budget he submitted to Congress two weeks ago would eliminate funding for 62 agencies or programs — many of which are designed to provide assistance to people in the small, rural and often impoverished communities that helped send Trump to the White House.
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Trump’s proposal is just the starting point in the upcoming budget discussions. Congress could ditch his budget and write its own, so many of the cuts he’s proposing are unlikely to survive intact.
Trump’s spending plan already has drawn fire from congressional Democrats and some Republicans for the deep cuts it is proposing. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican who represents the impoverished coal-mining region of southeastern Kentucky, dismissed it as “draconian, careless and counterproductive.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., declared it dead on arrival.
One of the other agencies Trump wants to disband is the Delta Regional Authority, an economic development agency for eight states in the Mississippi Delta region. Since its creation in 2000, the Clarksdale, Miss.-based agency estimates it has invested $163 million in projects or programs that have attracted $3.3 billion in public and private investments.
Back in 2012, when Shelby County, Tenn., needed money to widen a road leading to the industrial park where the kitchen-appliance manufacturer Eletrolux Home Products was building a 700,000-square-foot plant, the Delta Regional Authority stepped in at the last minute and provided $3 million.
“It was the 11th hour, a lot of money had been invested, and we were running the risk of losing” the Electrolux project, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell said.
“When we were really kind of pulling our hair about how to get this last piece of it done, Chris Masingill and the Delta Regional Authority stepped up and said, ‘Let’s see if we can do it,’” Luttrell said.
Right now, the authority is operating under a $32 million budget allocation from the federal government. Losing that funding would take away the agency’s ability to make investments in the communities it serves and mean it would eventually close its doors, Masingill said.
The Appalachian Regional Commission, a 52-year-old agency created as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, also is in jeopardy. The agency, known by the acronym ARC, funds projects and programs to encourage economic growth in 420 counties in 13 states and currently operates on a $146 million budget – all of which is approved by Congress.
Between October 2015 and last January, the agency estimates it has pumped $175.7 million into 662 projects and programs in Appalachia. That funding has been matched by more than $257.4 million and will attract an additional $443.3 million in private investments, the agency says. The funding typically goes to “distressed” communities with low per capita incomes and high unemployment.
Many grants have been small and have gone to rural areas to help pay for much-needed infrastructure projects, such as extending sewage or utility lines or building water treatment plants.
For those communities, the federal funding is often the only way those projects can be done, said Terry Bobrowski, executive director of the East Tennessee Development District.
In East Tennessee, “we’re a little perplexed that an infrastructure program was zeroed out” of Trump’s budget, Bobrowski said. “It’s a very important program for the local governments in the counties that are in the ARC area, and it has been for the past 52 years. It has made a big difference here.”