To understand how a state heavily dependent on Washington might be affected by President Trump’s far-reaching domestic policy law, consider New Mexico.
The state is among the biggest per capita recipients of federal money, taking in $3 for every dollar it sends in taxes. About 39 percent of its residents are on Medicaid — one of the highest rates in the country — and 23 percent receive food assistance. Nearly a third of the state, 24.7 million acres, is public land.
The Trump administration has made it clear that it regards such extensive subsidies as untenable. The plan to shift more costs to state and local governments means that states like New Mexico will be forced to find more money, or plan for what could be significant reductions in services. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the state’s congressional delegation, all Democrats, warn that their state, one of the country’s poorest, will be hard-pressed to make up the shortfall.
“You couldn’t design a budget-reconciliation package that would be worse for the state of New Mexico,” Senator Martin Heinrich said at a health care forum.
But after years of robust federal spending in the state, some Republican legislators, who are in the minority in both chambers, are predicting that the new domestic policy bill will help root out waste and provide some tax relief.
“Just take a deep breath,” said State Representative Mark Duncan, a Republican who sits on a new legislative subcommittee on federal funding. “This is not going to happen tomorrow, for the most part.”
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The post In One of the Country’s Poorest States, Crippling Budget Cuts Loom appeared first on New York Times.
