Dem
47
GOP
53
Right now, lots of people are cheering Elon Musk for decimating the big bad government. Within a few months, they will begin to see the effects. The fire season in Arizona will begin soon. In the past, the U.S. Forest Service has sent workers to this key swing state in advance to be ready when the blazes start. This year, that won't happen due to personnel cuts at the USFS. If a wildfire gets out of control, it will be up to the Democrats to scream: "It got out of control because Elon Musk fired all those supposedly useless, inefficient Forest Service firefighters."
Operation Musk has also fired 780 people in the National Park Service. This will result in canceled tours, closed visitor centers, and trails that are not maintained. People love the National Parks. It will be up to the Democrats to hold a press conference at some closed visitor center to explain exactly who thinks having visitor centers in the National Parks is a waste that deserves to be eliminated by some 22-year-old Muskrat hitting the DEL key on a laptop in D.C.
Cuts at the General Services Administration could affect millions of Americans who use Login.gov for access to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If it has glitches, Democrats should yell from the rooftops whose fault that is. If people then call and no one answers, same thing.
Another mass firing occurred at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, although it has been partially reversed. If there is a safety incident with a nuclear weapon, part of dealing with it should involve pinning the blame on the right team.
Some of the firings are counterproductive to the administration's goals. Up to 800 staff at the Bureau of Land Management are being let go. This office is in charge of drill, baby, drill on federal land. To do that, they need land-use planners, realty specialists, environmental scientists, engineers, and more. If the people aren't there, energy production on federal land won't increase.
In some cases, cost-cutting measures are hitting red states hard. The largest employer in Alabama is the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It has received over a billion dollars from the National Institutes of Health in recent years. That is on the chopping block. Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) is all in favor of cutting out wasteful spending on unimportant things like research on health care—as long as the cuts don't hit Alabama—and she is starting to squeal.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who grilled Robert Kennedy Jr. during his hearing and then voted for him twice, has been informed that NIH allocated $228 million in funding to Louisiana in F.Y. 2023 and now realizes that it is in danger. He said: "Of course, I want research done for the sake of my people in Louisiana." Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), a Trump loyalist, is unhappy with cuts that will affect the largest research park in the country, North Carolina's Research Triangle, which contains three top research universities. In other words, Republican senators are big fans of cutting the budget and firing people—except when the effects can be felt in their own states. They would prefer all the cuts to be in California.
The on-again, off-again funding freeze is affecting farmers. Aaron Pape, a Wisconsin farmer who raises livestock, signed a $240,000 contract to help him improve the watering system on his 300-acre farm. He spent the money and is expecting the federal reimbursement in the contract. Now that the money is frozen, he may not be able to make his next farm payment and may lose the farm.
Other farmers also signed contracts to get some of the billions of dollars in Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. Many of them will also be in trouble if the money is delayed by court battles. The sudden death of USAID has hit farmers hard who sold their grain to it. All of a sudden, they have no market, while millions of dollars worth of grain is sitting at U.S. ports. Many rural areas are dependent on federal contracts and farm subsidies and their abrupt stop could leave them reeling. Of course, whether this changes their opinion of Donald Trump remains to be seen. (V)