Rural Resources and the federal spending freeze
Update from Wednesday, January 29, 2025
As of Wednesday morning, the Trump administration has rescinded the memo announcing the federal spending freeze from earlier this week. While this is good news, it appears that the administration still plans to review programs funded through federal agencies to assess their compliance with President Trump’s executive orders. Rural Resources’ federal funding should be available as usual while the review process takes place.
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Yesterday evening, news broke about a federal spending freeze enacted by the Trump administration, which is slated to go into effect today, January 28, at 5:00 pm EST (2:00 PST). While much is still unknown and we’re working to get clarifying information, we want our clients and community members to be aware of the situation and how it could impact Rural Resources and our services.
According to a memo from the White House budget office, the spending freeze would pause grant, loan, and federal financial assistance programs inconsistent with President Trump’s Executive Orders. Much of Rural Resources’ funding comes from grants administered by federal and state agencies, and many state agencies receive their funding from their federal counterparts in Washington, D.C.
A Q&A document shared today from the budget office clarified that:
“Any program that provides direct benefits to Americans is explicitly excluded from the pause…in addition to Social Security and Medicare, mandatory programs like Medicaid and SNAP will continue without pause. Funds for…Head Start, rental assistance, and other similar programs will not be paused.”
While this is good news for the programs that are explicitly named, it’s still unclear what criteria the administration will use to determine which programs are excluded from the pause and if other Rural Resources programs will be implicated. It’s also unclear how long the pause will last and how inevitable legal challenges could sway this decision, or how long that process would take.
Minimizing impact to Rural Resources operations, our employees, and our clients is our top concern, and we’re sorting out the details as quickly as we can get the information. Members of our leadership team are at the National Community Action Partnership conference this week and we are receiving timely information from them on how the freeze might impact community action agencies like ourselves. We’re also working internally to draw down as much funding as we possibly can from federal and state agencies in order to continue our operations and services.
This is an unsettling moment for our employees, not to mention our thousands of clients across Eastern Washington who benefit from our services like meal deliveries, housing support, energy assistance and weatherization, domestic violence intervention, and more. Even a short pause in funding could cause significant harm to families, seniors, children, and other vulnerable households in our communities.
Today, we ask our community members and clients to take action and contact your representatives and senators in Congress. Ask them to push back on this spending freeze and share how your community will be impacted. Tell your story of how you received assistance from your local community action agency, and please send your stories to communications@ruralresources.org as well so we can share them. Your voice matters, and we ask you to raise it in order to ensure we can continue providing essential services and resources to our rural areas.
- To find your representatives’ contact information, visit house.gov.
- To email Senator Maria Cantwell, visit her website here.
- To email Senator Patty Murray, visit her website here.
And as always, any donation you can make to support our work is deeply appreciated. Thank you.
Bryan Raines
CEO, Rural Resources Community Action
Thank you for letting us know that you’re trying to stay on top of this devastating and illegal action.
Thank you for updating and attempting to navigate this illegal action. As a senior this is very concerning.
thanks for the update and suggestion for action and advocacy
I have emailed both Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. Senator Patty Murray has said, “It’s two weeks in, and it is already painfully clear that this is the most corrupt administration in history, and it’s putting our economy, government and most at-risk communities in serious Jeopardy….Trump has given Elon Musk access to our government’s highly-sensitive central payment system — and he’s vowing to use it to cut off funding people are counting on. What will Musk target next? Cancer research? Food banks? Housing assistance? Veteran’s benefits? This is not ok.”
I have written both Murray and Cantwell and advised them to get directly involved and work alongside Musk and his crew to identify which programs to cut and which to keep. Singing silly protest songs and screaming filthy language only makes them look juvenile and foolish. If You’re not part of the solution, you are the problem.