Republican governors have always had their own form of safety net. No matter how hard they’ve tried to muck up their state (see Brownback, Sam) there’s always the federal government to keep citizens from realizing the sheer ineffectiveness or active harm brought on by their policy. So Republicans like Kentucky’s Matt Bevin can nod along to constituents who want to keep the government away from their Medicare.
But now Donald Trump is threatening to do the worst thing any Republican governor can imagine—run the federal government according to the principles they pretend to believe.
As Mr. Trump and his advisers press for bone-deep cuts to the federal budget, Republican governors have rapidly emerged as an influential bloc of opposition. They have complained to the White House about reductions they see as harmful or arbitrary, and they plan to pressure members of Congress from their states to oppose them.
Don’t worry, guvs. Just because every tenet of Republican economics has left your states sucking on massive deficits amidst crumbling infrastructure and failing schools, doesn’t mean it won’t work this time. Sure it will. The trickle is coming. All you have to do is really believe that the same miracles you’ve been predicting for years will come through in the clinch.
A budget briefing circulated last week by the National Governors Association, a nonpartisan group, identified a long list of Trump-backed cuts to programs that support states. They include the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a $3 billion project in the Department of Health and Human Services that helps people pay for heating and air conditioning, and the Community Development Block Grant program, a $3 billion initiative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development that funds local projects from affordable housing to Meals on Wheels.
Donald Trump is ready to put the voters of your state literally in danger of freezing or starving to prove out the ideas you’ve been espousing. That doesn’t make you nervous, does it?
Republicans have long argued for a more limited federal role in matters of economic engineering and social welfare, preferring to collect less tax revenue at the national level and hand over responsibility for a range of programs to state and local governments. But in practice, state leaders in both parties often balk at taking on such burdens.
Remember, guvs, cruel to be kind is the Republican way. Unless Donald Trump utterly wrecks the federal government, you might continue to be dependent on competent programs and blue state dollars that keep your constituents from seeing how your policies are really going.
So far, the administration has no apparent strategy to placate uneasy Republican governors.
Suck it up now, don’t be snowflakes.