The era of ‘business as usual,’ may have come to an end on our birthday—the nation’s birthday. The candles may have blown out on July 4th when President Trump, with a backdrop of Republican congressmembers, signed legislation he’d nicknamed his ‘big, beautiful bill.’
The legislation—900-plus pages in length—signaled a change in the way the country works, most especially for states and cities who are the overseers charged with keeping ‘the trains running on time.’
With the president’s signature, a surreal form of cursive that by now everyone knows, but few can precisely interpret, rechanneled the way federal money will be dispersed.
For states dependent on a set amount of federal money to fund schools, build and maintain roads and bridges, handle public health and, otherwise, maintain a degree of predictability in everyday life, the ‘big, beautiful bill’ was a wake-up call.
The legislation slashed anticipated money for a slew of things, from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), the program designed to lend a hand to low-income families for food assistance, to Medicare and Medicaid, decades-old programs that address senior health and low-income families.
Cuts to social service programs, including SNAP, WIC (Women, Infants and Children), and Medicare and Medicaid, may be devastating to millions of Americans who rely on them for basic survival. Combined cuts to these programs equal an estimated $1.75 trillion. Cities are now left wondering just how they’re going to adjust to this new and ‘stream-lined’ way of doing business.
Steve Nawrocki, Executive Director of Pueblo’s Senior Resource Development Agency, says passage of the new legislation has his organization—one already facing daunting fiscal challenges—scrambling to move into this new era of austerity.
“Last year we cut a half million dollars,” from its operating budget, Nawrocki said. Trump’s pet legislation, the BBB, means once again trimming programs, including Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers meals to low-income seniors who often are homebound or have no other means of getting out to do their own food shopping.
In the last few years, the former Pueblo City Council president said, Meals on Wheels had already been pared down. “We had seven days a week (delivery)…and three to four hundred stops.” Today that number, he said, is half.
But it’s not just delivering meals that makes the program a lifeline. “That delivery could be the only person they have contact with,” While drivers are told to keep a schedule, “we’ve always encouraged them to stop and speak. Sometimes people are desperate to speak to another person.”
Even before passage of the president’s July 4th legislative passage, a ton of American cities were facing their own fiscal challenges. In Pueblo, Mayor Heather Graham recently forewarned that the city was looking at a $25 million-dollar budgetary shortfall. She floated the idea of a one percent tax increase voters may decide in November.
While the shortfall is serious and needs to be addressed, Pueblo City Council’s Dennis Flores said, the BBB is a compounding factor. The loss of SNAP funds, cutbacks in Medicare and Medicaid and the need to deal with the day-to-day business of the city, which depends on federal grants to cover the costs of so many of these things, “You don’t really know the impact.”
But while the impact may be unknown, said Flores, there are some very real guesses that not only Pueblo, but cities across the country are already bracing themselves for.
Medicare and Medicaid “have been propping up hospitals for a long time,” said the retired insurance man. With announced funding cutbacks, “you will be seeing outlying hospitals shutting down.” With existing medical options disappearing in smaller communities, hub cities, like Pueblo, will be obvious landing places for people seeking medical attention. “We’ll be seeing an influx” at Pueblo hospitals, including emergency room visits “which are more expensive.”
Another tax being considered is one that has been on Pueblo’s books for 40 years. It is a half-cent sales tax that funds the Pueblo Economic Development Corporation’s efforts aimed at attracting and bringing new businesses to Pueblo.
Flores says he does not like the mayor’s proposal to hike the sales tax. But maintaining the half-cent sales tax, he said, has proved its worth in bringing economic growth to the city.
