Prompted by the Elon Musk-led cost-cutting spree, the Department of Energy has in the past month slashed 16% of its administrators who oversee the cleanup of the old Hanford nuclear-bomb-making factories.
A Hanford site manager predicted more carnage is coming: “I don’t think we are at the end.”
“Residents of Washington’s 4th Congressional District did not elect Newhouse to stand idly by as President Donald Trump dismantles the federal government,” an editorial fumed.
To which I wondered: Didn’t they?
The 4th Congressional District runs from Canada to Oregon in a strip in Central Washington. It’s the reddest sector of the state, having just voted for Trump by a landslide 21-point margin.
Trump explicitly campaigned on taking a chain saw to federal programs and the civil service. Before the election, he said Musk would be his “Secretary of Cost-Cutting,” and the two pledged to hack “at least $2 trillion” out of federal spending — about 30% of the total budget.
Where did the good residents of the 4th think that money was going to come from?
The 4th is famously the most government-dependent part of the state. It’s basically a company town, where the company is Uncle Sam.
Partly this is due to the $3 billion-per-year Hanford project. Partly it’s the system of federal dams and reclamation projects that provide farms with subsidized irrigation water. But it’s also the place in the state where residents rely most heavily on government assistance programs.
Example: 38% of the people in the 4th are enrolled in Medicaid, the low-income health program. This is by far the highest percentage in the state. By contrast, in Seattle’s 7th District it’s just 14%, according to the Washington State Health Care Authority.
Yet Republicans, led by Trump and including the 4th’s Newhouse, are pushing a budget downsizing that if adopted will lead to major cuts in Medicaid.
Or take education. Trump campaigned on shuttering the federal Department of Education completely. Which Washington district is most reliant on spending from that department? The 4th.
The anti-government politics of the 4th has been a paradox for decades. Fifteen years ago, its congressman was a leading national critic of the 2009 federal “stimulus” program that aimed to jump start America out of the Great Recession. Except out of all 435 congressional districts, which one got the most financial bang from that stimulus — more than $3,700 per person? You guessed it.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, has been doing what Newhouse has not — fighting like crazy against the worst of the above cuts that excessively target his district. But lately I’ve been thinking: Voters there keep asking for all this. So why not let them have it?
Same with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, who this past week pointed out, correctly, that Trump’s tariffs in his first term cost Eastern Washington farmers millions, and that the repeat will be worse. It’s “a nightmare for our farmers,” she said.
OK, but Trump pledged endlessly in the campaign to impose big tariffs, and farmers tended to back him anyway. So surely nothing is so predictable as this nightmare?
I keep reading these interviews of Trump voters who got fired, or whose family member got deported, or whose business is being whipsawed by tariffs. My knee-jerk reaction is the same as it is for the 4th District: What in the world did you expect?
by Danny Westneat, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Ted S. Warren/The Associated Press, 2022[ed. This seems to be the only plan Democrats have going forward - waiting for the realities of cuts to sink in (which should tell you something about their leadership as well). If you don't understand how a machine works, you won't know how to fix it when it's broke, or should expect it to run any better just by stripping out random parts.]
