WA's GOP leaders not worried by Trump’s federal changes

Top Republicans in the Washington state Legislature are taking a “wait and see” approach to the Trump administration.

For the first four weeks of Trump’s second term, several Republican leaders in Olympia largely stayed quiet on the president’s flurry of executive orders and actions to drastically scale back operations at several federal agencies. But some of those GOP leaders are weighing in this week, as funding cuts and federal layoffs mount.

The bottom line: They’re not that worried.

“We were all elected to state office to fix our state’s problems, and there’s other elected officials that were elected to federal office to solve the country’s problems,” House Minority Leader Drew Stokesbary (R-Auburn), told reporters Tuesday.

“I’m not going to get worked up into a huge panic over things I can’t control and things that might not be permanent, might not be intentional, and might just be part of the growing pains of a new administration settling into their new roles,” Stokesbary said.

Senate Republican Leader John Braun (R-Centralia) said he’s avoided weighing in on federal changes because of the lack of clarity about what is going on in D.C.

“What's happening is still a little blurry, candidly,” Braun said Tuesday. “I think it’s really hard to tell yet – with some specific exceptions – what the impact on our state is going to be.”

The Trump administration has worked quickly since retaking control of the White House to make good on the president’s campaign promises to overhaul federal agencies and fire workers seen as “disloyal” or “corrupt.” Reducing federal spending was a core theme of Trump’s re-election campaign.

Braun does have some specific concerns about health funding. He says he’s worried about the future of Medicaid and funding for the state’s 28 federally qualified health centers, which provide care for underserved communities – like low-income folks or those in rural areas. He added that it was a “big deal” when Medicaid funding was temporarily cut off after the Trump administration ordered a freeze on federal spending last month.

But Braun said the future of Medicaid is an issue he believes Congress will tackle in the coming months, and that he doesn’t expect Trump to make sweeping changes to the health program using executive powers alone. Some Republicans in D.C. are talking about making cuts to the program, which provides health insurance for more than 2 million Washingtonians.

And ultimately, Braun agrees with efforts to scrutinize government spending.

“I do think that an ambitious review of federal spending – just like an ambitious review of state spending – is worthwhile and helps us understand what we’re spending our money on and whether there’s broad public support for it,” Braun said.

Democrats, meanwhile, have raised a number of concerns about the Trump administration’s actions, especially on how federal cuts could worsen the state’s budget woes. Gov. Bob Ferguson, who has made bipartisanship a core theme of his first weeks in office, said last week he would work with Trump where their views align, but he added that the president is “making it tough.”