Thanks to Cindy Cunningham for this excellent summary of yesterday’s meeting in Alexandria. of the VA House Emergency Committee on Impacts of Federal Workforce and Funding Reductions. Also, see below for video.
The bottom line: what Trump, Musk, “DOGE,” etc. are doing is disastrous on multiple fronts, including to the Virginia economy. As Cindy Cunningham summarizes:
“Civilian federal job losses are already approaching 10%. This is expected to reduce Virginia’s 2025 GDP by $7.4 billion, causing a loss of $250 million in tax revenue to Virginia’s budget. This is JUST the losses due to civilian federal jobs, not military cuts nor contracts.”
And as Fairfax County Board Chair Jeff McKay starkly puts it:
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Yesterday I attended a meeting of the VA House Emergency Committee on Federal Resources. A few things we learned:
* Civilian federal job losses are already approaching 10%. This is expected to reduce Virginia’s 2025 GDP by $7.4 billion, causing a loss of $250 million in tax revenue to Virginia’s budget. This is JUST the losses due to civilian federal jobs, not military cuts nor contracts.
* Despite Youngkin and Sears’ claims that this is no big deal, and that there are plenty of jobs for these workers to take in Virginia, the federal workforce has unique skills, education, and experience, and are commensurately paid more than the non-federal workforce.
* Fairfax Chair Jeff McKay pointed out that this is a more significant loss to Northern Virginia than COVID, which hit everywhere the same but where there was lots of federal assistance to localities.
* Additional costs that Virginia will face include health care (as workers lose their insurance), child care (many were in federal programs), mental health care (imagine being told the work you’ve dedicated decades to is worthless), plus all the services the federal government formerly was able to provide, like water testing, communicable disease data tracking, food safety, etc.
If you would like to give written testimony, tell your personal story, ask the legislature for something the state government can provide to help you in these difficult times, you can leave it here.
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