US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for New Hampshire Jeanne Shaheen
(Washington, DC) – In case you missed it: Last night, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a senior member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, spoke on the Senate floor to condemn the Trump administration’s order to take away federal grants and loans that families, seniors and small businesses in all 50 states rely on for critical, often life-saving services. Shaheen illustrated the chaos caused by the extreme order by sharing the stories of many Granite Staters she has heard from this week. Click here to watch the Senator’s speech.
Key quotes from Senator Shaheen:
“This is a decision that does not lower costs, it does not create jobs, it does not enhance public safety or keep our communities safe. It’s a decision that actually will hurt people in my state of New Hampshire and too many across the country who rely on services that are now in jeopardy.”
“People in our states can’t get the housing that they’re counting on. If they can’t get their funding, that means more people are forced to live in their cars, on the streets. It means more people can’t get the help they need with substance use disorders or finding work. It means more people are stuck without permanent housing. And these are veterans, they’re families, they’re victims of domestic violence – they’re all placed at risk because of this order.”
“Another of my constituents, Kathleen, lives in housing for seniors. She has debilitating medical issues that make it hard for her to leave her home. She gets all of her food from a local food bank. She called my office because she’s worried that if this funding stops, she’ll be on the street, and she doesn’t know where her meals will come from. That’s what this order and these cuts are threatening.”
“Common sense calls for all of us to work on a bipartisan basis to help our constituents and put an end to the chaos that has been created by this administration in only its second week. I hope we can do that.”
Remarks as delivered can be found below:
Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to join my colleagues to express my deep concerns about the Trump Administration’s extreme decision to take away services that millions of families and small businesses rely on.
This is a decision that does not lower costs, that does not create jobs, that does not enhance public safety or keep our communities safe. It’s a decision that actually will hurt people in my state of New Hampshire and too many across the country who rely on services that are now in jeopardy.
On Monday night, more than 2,600 federal programs were ordered to cease activities with less than 24 hours’ notice. They were given little guidance on how this should be carried out, and in every state across the country, confusion and panic among too many people followed.
Since that order, I have heard from countless Granite Staters who are worried about what this means for them and their families–from healthcare providers to nonprofit organizations to so many who are doing essential, lifesaving work.
Many of these organizations are waiting on promised funding for projects that they have already completed, funding that they went through the process, that they were guaranteed they were going to get these awards, and now they are in jeopardy.
The Trump Administration claims it wants to lower costs for folks. Well, let me be clear: this unprecedented decision does nothing to bring down the price of food, the price of housing, the price of childcare, the price of medications, or other lifesaving needs that families have.
So what we saw this afternoon is that the Administration tried to walk back their order; they rescinded the memo. But sadly, uncertainty and confusion remains, because the White House says that they rescinded the memo but the freeze wasn’t rescinded. So like a lot of people in New Hampshire, I’m concerned, and I’m frustrated. In my state and across much of the country, there is an affordable housing crisis. Because of the Administration’s actions, housing organizations across New Hampshire are not able to use federal funds.
I heard from the Executive Director of the housing authority in the city of Rochester. They said they have 170 families who are at risk of being homeless if they can’t get their operating funding–and that is just one housing authority.
Despite what the Administration said about rental assistance not being affected, at no point yesterday did the Department of Housing and Urban Development say that this money would continue to be available. Housing funding that keeps all of these families and hundreds more across New Hampshire in their homes is at risk of being cut off.
Yesterday, we also heard from the mortgage bankers association. They were asking for clarity because they couldn’t be sure if they could help families complete the purchases of their homes.
The person we talked to said: “Americans are going to the closing table tomorrow and deserve to know that their loan will close on their home purchase. Without this clear assurance that the federal government will ensure new loans or pay claims under these programs, there will be severe harm to borrowers and disruption to the mortgage market.” Well, HUD gave that clarity for single-family mortgage insurance but not for multifamily properties, such as apartment buildings. That affects 20 percent of the multifamily housing construction across the country. Let me just say that again. It affects 20 percent of the multifamily housing construction that is happening right now. We are talking about 130,000 apartments nationally that are jeopardized by this administration’s actions.
Our housing shortage is much of why the most recent point-in-time count for homelessness found it up 18 percent across the country. We have far too many people in this country who don’t have a roof over their heads, and that is especially dangerous during these winter months.
Meanwhile, even though 2 weeks ago New Hampshire nonprofits and state and local governments were awarded more than $14 million to help shelter people and support them, today, they couldn’t access that money. That means they won’t have the funding they need for rent or to get reimbursed for supportive services.
And I want to be clear: even after a judge stayed the order, my constituents still cannot access their funding. The presiding officer is a former governor. He knows what that means. People in our states can’t get the housing that they are counting on. If they can’t get their funding, that means more people are forced to live in their cars, on the streets. It means more people can’t get the help they need with substance use disorders or in finding work. It means more people are stuck without permanent housing. These are veterans; they are families; they are victims of domestic violence. They are all placed at risk because of this order.
I heard from one constituent who has a mortgage from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has owned her home for 20 years now. She is almost at the point where she has paid off that mortgage, but without the mortgage assistance that she gets from the USDA, she is worried that she might lose her home entirely.
Another of my constituents, Kathleen, lives in housing for seniors. She has debilitating medical issues that make it hard for her to leave her home. She gets all of her food from a local food bank. She called my office because she is worried, if this funding stops, she will be on the street, and she doesn’t know where her meals are going to come from.
That’s what this order and these cuts are threatening–leaving seniors without a roof over their heads, not knowing where their next meal is going to come from.
It is not just in housing that people are concerned. The effects on communities are significant. The chaos of this order is hurting communities that have been promised funding for improvements they have made to their water infrastructure, to their energy use, and even to city parks.
We heard from the town of Conway, which is in the heart of the Mt. Washington valley in the white mountains. With help from the environmental protection agency, Conway has fixed an aging sewer pipe, their sewer main, to keep sewage from leaking into the groundwater.
New Hampshire is really good at working at the local, state, and federal level to address critical infrastructure. This week, Conway received word that, at least for now, they can’t get paid, thanks to this order from the Trump Administration. Conway has already done the work, they have already paid the contractors, and as of today, they are waiting for reimbursement of about $400,000 from the federal government. That is a big deal for a town in a rural area that has fewer than 10,000 people. It affects their tax base. If the federal government doesn’t come through with the money that has been promised, then taxpayers in Conway are going to have to make up that difference.
It is unacceptable for the administration to suggest that it won’t pay this bill, leaving families on the hook for unaffordable rate hikes.
I have also heard from one town administrator who is not yet sure how broad the scope of the administration’s order is and how it is going to affect their ongoing wastewater infrastructure project that is using a mix of federal and non-federal funds.
Their pump station relies on tarps to keep out the elements. The structure and equipment that keep the sewer system functioning face imminent failure. Without the federal funding–which, just to be clear again, has already been committed–there is no way this town can complete this project. That the whims of an unconfirmed budget director can create this degree of uncertainty is maddening.
I have heard from Kristen Murphy, who is with the town of Exeter. She is very concerned about the pause and the impact it will have on energy efficiency funding.
The energy efficiency community block grant program was poised to host a presentation in February for resident-owned manufactured housing on funding opportunities for energy efficiency. That is particularly important for those people who live in manufactured housing. And I did when my husband and I were in graduate school. We lived in what we called a mobile home; now it is manufactured housing. I know how challenging it is to keep them heated and warm and comfortable for the people who live there.
As Kristen pointed out, support for these manufactured housing communities is essential because a greater percentage of their annual income goes to home heating costs than it does for most people.
The Administration’s actions also threaten other projects in Exeter, like a landfill solar array that is currently under construction, improvements to critical stormwater infrastructure, and funding for a multigenerational community center.
There are a dozen other small towns in my state–from Gorham in the northern part of New Hampshire to Keene in the west over the Connecticut River Valley along Vermont—who have made improvements to their parks and community spaces through the land and water conservation fund. These towns have matched federal funding dollar for dollar to improve quality of life in their communities, and as of today, because of the uncertainty and the way this order is being interpreted, taxpayers are left holding the bag.
In the area of childcare and nutrition, the chaos and confusion from the White House over the past 2 days have created significant uncertainty for early education programs, and it risks further fueling the childcare crisis.
Again, like housing, we have a childcare crisis in New Hampshire. The cost of childcare for the average family, if they have a toddler and an infant, is over $30,000 a year.
Now, fortunately, the timing of this uncertainty has not disrupted services in New Hampshire so far, but I am hearing stories of programs in other states that had to temporarily stop serving families because they were not able to access the funds they needed.
It is unclear what the impacts of these shifting policies will be on child care and development block grants, which working families rely on to be able to afford care for their children while parents are at work.
My office has heard from the Childcare Network Collaborative in New Hampshire with significant concerns that childcare providers may be prevented from accessing community development block grant funding that they have already been awarded. These funds are intended for the purchase of a building that will prevent huge rent increases for childcare providers and help fuel an expansion of childcare in the rural parts of northern New Hampshire.
Childcare programs are also concerned about the potential impacts on other federal programs that the families they serve rely on. For example, while the Administration eventually said yesterday that SNAP payments wouldn’t be affected, programs are finding it hard to reassure families about whether they will actually get their monthly payments on time given the disruptions that we have already seen to programs that were not supposed to be affected according to the Administration’s own words. So more chaos and uncertainty.
That is why so many of my constituents are telling me they simply do not trust what they are hearing from the White House.
Families relying on programs like SNAP for food and WIC for women, infants, and children to keep from going hungry already struggle to make their benefits last until the beginning of the next month. Any payment delays, even if it is just a few days, will cause needless suffering for hungry children. It is cruel to be putting struggling families through this unnecessary anxiety. When it comes to law and order, the president often speaks about his commitment to law and order. In 2020, he criticized democrats who supposedly wanted to “defund” and “abolish” the police. Yet here we are with the president stopping federal funds from going to police and law enforcement agencies. Make no mistake, this stoppage could place lives and livelihoods in jeopardy.
I heard from Strafford County Sheriff Kathyrn Mone about how the cutoff of funds will affect them. I live in Strafford County, so I know the sheriff there very well. Strafford County was awarded a $715,000 COPS technology grant to buy much needed modern and interoperable portable and mobile radios for first responders. The U.S. Department of Justice notified the county on Monday that they are going to withhold these funds, forcing the county to place a hold on the order of new, updated radios. Now, this may not sound like a big deal to some, but this equipment helps Strafford County first responders protect Granite Staters. If first responders can’t communicate effectively, by definition, they can’t respond to emergencies and crimes.
When I was governor, we had a horrible shooting in northern New Hampshire. Two state troopers, a judge, and a newspaper editor were killed. As they were trying to get the perpetrator, our state police couldn’t talk to local police, they couldn’t talk to the Vermont law enforcement, they couldn’t talk to the Canadians, and they couldn’t talk to Maine–all of whom were involved in trying to catch the perpetrator–because they didn’t have the communication, the radios they needed to keep people safe.
In the same vein, the town of Newington on the Seacoast was awarded $80,000 to replace 20-year-old radios and technology that can’t communicate with modern equipment. The town was on the verge of submitting its invoices to be reimbursed for buying this crucial public safety equipment when the trump administration stopped the flow of federal funds.
If they are in an emergency, like a natural disaster or a mass shooter, Newington’s police and fire departments would not be able to communicate on their current radio equipment to coordinate an effective response with federal, state, and local partners. This lack of coordination among first responders could result in Newington’s police or fire department not arriving in time to fight a fire or to rescue people in need of help. The lack of modern radio communications could result in people not getting medical care quickly enough.
Again, this is much needed equipment that allows officers to communicate quickly and effectively to not only protect the people they serve but to protect each other.
Thanks to President Trump, Newington is being forced to pause its upgrade of 20-year-old equipment.
It should also be noted that the White House payment freeze means that the businesses who sold Newington the radios and associated equipment are not going to get paid in a timely fashion.
So let’s call it what it is: stopping funds to law enforcement and first responders puts lives and businesses in jeopardy.
It also affects defense contractors. New Hampshire has a strong defense industrial base. We have a lot of companies that do great work to protect our men and women who are serving. The federal funding freeze is hitting those small businesses and manufacturers that rely on defense contracts to pay their workforce, which is critical to maintaining our national security.
For example, the New Hampshire APEX accelerators program relies on grants from the Department of Defense to help small businesses navigate federal contracting. In New Hampshire, government contracts and subcontracts totaled $4 billion last year.
Now, that is not just some number that helps fuel our economy. For people from big states, maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot of money in your economy, but in New Hampshire’s economy, that is a lot of money, and it is an investment in our national defense. It is a manufacturing worker’s ability to support their family. So let’s not lose sight of what and who we are talking about here.
The freeze blocks funding under the Defense Production Act, which expands the defense industrial base under national security emergencies. Right now, we have a lot of businesses in New Hampshire that are receiving funding under the defense production act to support their operations. These grants strengthen military readiness and capacity.
In the area of health, this pause will also cause real harm to healthcare providers and patients across our state. Everyone from our largest hospitals down to individual patients is reaching out to my office. They are confused, and they are scared.
The most immediate consequences will be felt by safety net providers like community health centers. They are vital to caring for our most vulnerable populations. Their patients are often uninsured for healthcare. Sometimes they are homeless. Some of them suffer from substance use disorders or mental illness. They rely on their community health centers just to get through the day.
As much as 50 percent of community health center funding comes from federal grants, and their operating margins are slim.
Lamprey Health Care in Newmarket, in the southern part of New Hampshire, tried and failed to draw down federal funds yesterday. They have another scheduled drawdown for early next week. This means that Lamprey has a limited number of days before the Trump Administration’s order limits the services they can provide to the community.
Amoskeag Health–another one of our community health centers–provides services in Manchester, our largest city. It would also suffer from a funding pause. Thirty-five percent of their funding comes from federal grants, and they only have 19 days of cash on hand, which would cover just 1 week of payroll. They are scheduled to get funding on Monday, and that is now in the lurch.
Federal funding to train the healthcare workforce is also being threatened. New Hampshire struggles to retain and recruit healthcare providers, and federal funding is critical to ensuring we have enough providers in rural and underserved areas.
Last week, Elliot Hospital–one of the largest hospitals in the largest city, in Manchester–received notice that $3 million in funding for its nursing expansion grant program was put on hold. There are currently 80 potential students enrolled in this program. The program is designed to address the acute nursing workforce shortage by attracting local applicants in the greater Manchester community. The funding freeze now puts that effort in jeopardy. And Coos County Family Health, the northernmost county in New Hampshire, up along the Canadian border, is another community health center where access to healthcare can be extremely limited. Patients frequently have to drive hours to get access to some of the most basic services.
Coos County Family Health received a planning grant through the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA, to establish a rural medical residency program. Just this week, they received their accreditation, which is so exciting. They were so excited. And now the process begins to recruit and retain future doctors. The sole purpose of this program is to train health providers in Coos County, an area that struggles to attract talent. When we train these doctors in rural areas, they are more likely to stay after residency and become core members of the community. Any other week, this would be great news: more doctors to treat patients in need. But, today, their future funding through HRSA is at risk, thanks to the uncertainty created by these executive orders.
Training doctors to treat sick or injured patients shouldn’t be a controversial issue, but according to this administration, it is.
Coos County Family Health also uses federal funding to support the victims of domestic violence that come into their practice. Specialized staff offer the victims counseling and support services–things like access to shelter. The staff connects victims with law enforcement and even offers prevention programs in local schools. Without federal funding, they will be forced to lay off these staff members.
I don’t know, does the Administration think that domestic violence survivors are unworthy of our support? Does this administration believe that causing chaos is more important than protecting our most vulnerable? Maybe this is what President Trump meant when he said he wanted disrupters. I don’t believe this is what the public wanted.
Mental health programs are also at risk. New Hampshire’s suicide rate is higher than the national average, and we need every available resource to help address this issue.
Northern Human Services and the National Alliance on Mental Illness use funding from the Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention Grant to provide afterschool support to youth experiencing suicidal ideation or those who have recently attempted suicide. We are literally talking about taking away services from children who are thinking about committing suicide. I heard from the folks at NAMI, the New Hampshire Alliance on Mental Illness. They almost in tears when they talked about what was going to happen if they couldn’t serve these kids who need help.
And there is also navigating recovery, offering around-the-clock substance use disorder services in the city of Laconia. They are a small nonprofit, and they make use of every dollar they get by offering 24/7 support for individuals that have just overdosed, and that includes literally going into the hospital to be with the patient as they recover. They offer wrap-around services like connecting individuals to housing, job opportunities, and childcare so they can find stability as they go through recovery.
53 percent of Navigating recovery’s funding comes from federal sources, including the State Opioid Response Grant Program. I have worked for years to get dollars to the state under that SOR program, including last year when New Hampshire was awarded nearly $30 million.
And I have to say, in the first term of the Trump Administration, President Trump was very supportive of these dollars. We worked with his administration to get additional funding to address the fact that New Hampshire was one of the hardest hit states. So I don’t know why, suddenly, they are willing to put that funding at risk by this freeze, because it has done more to prevent fatal overdoses and support recovery services than any other federal program. Navigating recovery uses those dollars on the ground. Without it, they would only have weeks before they start laying off staff and stop offering services.
Despite what this administration claims, it is the individuals who will pay the price of this uncertainty and chaos. This spending freeze is yet another example of the Administration ignoring how their policies affect individuals’ peace of mind, the livelihoods and the health of Americans at risk.
And then we are seeing broader attacks by the Office of Management and Budget on federal employees. The Trump Administration didn’t stop at ripping funding away from vulnerable Americans this week. While much of the public’s focus has been held by that order, they have continued their relentless attack on federal employees.
Over 2 million civil servants working in thousands of essential fields–from healthcare to law enforcement to national security–who keep our country running, are under attack. And listen, I think we need to be more efficient and more effective, and we may have people who are not doing their jobs the way we want them to, but what this order has done is created confusion over the spending freeze–the hiring freeze instituted by the President’s executive order.
The Administration claims this is temporary, but thousands of Americans who had job offers on the table saw those offers revoked–even those who were ready to fill some of our most urgent vacancies, like at the VA. Even though the Department of Veterans Affairs said it would not apply this hiring freeze to many VA positions dedicated to providing veterans’ healthcare and benefits, many crucial programs that veterans depend on will not be able to hire staff to serve our veterans.
For example, the VA will not be hiring caseworkers who help veterans get into permanent housing and related support. They won’t be able to hire the personnel that literally keep the lights on and buildings running, such as fire protection, housekeeping, plumbing, boiler plant operation, laundry services, and other essential roles.
And we should remember that, year after year, the VA has had challenges in addressing these critical gaps. Last year, the VA reported almost 3,000 severe occupational staffing shortages. But that didn’t stop this administration from pulling every pending job offer the day they took office. And while some have been reinstated, others are still in limbo. In just one example, VA employees at a facility focused on research and care for veterans with late-stage cancer were told their jobs were under review and they may be terminated altogether. Now, I know everybody in this chamber believes that we have made a commitment to those who have served this country in uniform, and we don’t want to fail our veterans when they return home and enter civilian life. So how does this firing of people who take care of them help us fulfill that commitment?
And then, if we want to talk about jobs that keep Americans safe, let’s talk about keeping planes from falling out of the sky or colliding on runways. I worked closely with the National Air Traffic Control Union and the FAA’s collaborative resource working group to adopt a new staffing model in last year’s FAA reauthorization bill.
We have a significant number of air traffic controllers in New Hampshire. They do a great job of keeping people in the flying public safe as they enter North America, all the way down to New York, in some of the most congested airspaces in the country. Now, the FAA made good progress in hiring last year as a result. They are still more than 3,500 controllers, however, short of their staffing target, and the controllers we do have work 6-day weeks, 10-hour days on a good week. They are exhausted; they are overworked; and they face severe mental health challenges as a result.
The FAA estimated that 10 percent of the federal air traffic controller workforce would depart last year as a result of these conditions. And despite this, these air traffic controllers still haven’t been told conclusively whether or not air traffic controllers are exempt from the hiring freeze.
Now, if preventing us from filling shortages and taking care of some of our most vulnerable wasn’t enough, OMB is actively trying to get rid of the civil servants we do have. This week, millions of federal employees received emails offering to pay their salaries for the rest of the fiscal year in exchange for resigning now–and that included every single air traffic controller in the country.
Now, you might be asking yourselves why, when we are short more than 3,500 air traffic controllers, did we offer to pay the ones we have not to work? Well, like the hiring freeze, this order is an irresponsible, reckless, nontargeted effort that could have devastating consequences for critical positions.
What’s more, they are trying to convince us that this will save money, making it clear that even if we lose thousands of employees with no plans to replace them, we will be better off.
Well, that is bad news for tourism in New Hampshire, for those who work closely with U.S. Forest service personnel and depend on sound management of the White Mountain National Forest, and it is bad news for people who value clean air and clean water.
This message was also sent to more than 780,000 civilian employees who work for the department of defense. In New Hampshire, we have almost 8,000 civilians who work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard that we share with the state of Maine. There are four public shipyards in the United States. Our employees in Portsmouth have the best on-time, on-budget record of any of the public shipyards. These employees contribute to the maintenance of our nuclear submarines, an essential tenet of our national security and a crucial capability to deter major conflict. Any impact to their workforce will strain a shipbuilding industrial base that is already saturated with demand to meet the requirements of our navy.
The bottom line: if the shipyard can’t get boats to the fleet on time, our nation is less safe.
The freeze on federal assistance also affects critical programs that support men and women in uniform, including DOD’s financial assistance and grant programs that support servicemembers and their families.
This administration has said repeatedly that it wants to “restore the warrior ethos” at the Pentagon. I don’t know about you, but slashing our defense workforce doesn’t help me sleep any better at night. I don’t think that restores the warrior ethos.
So in conclusion–I see my other colleagues here, and I know they are waiting to speak–the actions this week have only created confusion, chaos, and stress. That is the best-case scenario, if it ends right now. But if not, if the Trump Administration and Elon Musk get their way and cut these programs, working Americans will be the ones to suffer the most.
The need for housing, sewers, and childcare doesn’t go away when this administration says they don’t want to pay the bills. These costs just get pushed down to towns and end up coming out of people’s paychecks. It ends up being paid on the backs of our local taxpayers.
Now, again, the Administration tried to walk this back by rescinding Monday’s memo, but then they added confusion by claiming that the underlying funding freeze was still in place. And they are unable to answer basic questions about who and what will be affected.
Maybe it is just me and the hundreds of Granite Staters whom I have heard from, but if you are going to stop all the critical funding that helps seniors, children, and families across this country, you need a better answer than we’re hearing from this White House.
Instead, what we heard during the white house briefing–when asked one of these basic questions, Americans were told: we’ll check on that and get back to you.
So to Granite Staters who have called my office in distress, wondering what this far-reaching, unprecedented move means for their lives and their livelihoods: don’t worry. The White House is going to get back to you.
That’s outrageous–and this, despite not one but two federal judges who have ordered the White House to stop holding these funds. The Administration has made it clear that they intend to move forward with vague, irresponsible executive orders that jeopardize billions in infrastructure, energy, healthcare, workforce, and educational investments.
Hard-working families, businesses, and nonprofits have been calling my office asking for clarity, and this administration hasn’t been willing to provide any.
Common sense calls for all of us to work on a bipartisan basis to help our constituents to put an end to the chaos and uncertainty that has been created by this administration in only its second week.
I hope we can do that.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
On Monday, the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced a sweeping executive order pausing almost all forms of federal assistance to states, nonprofits, non-governmental organizations and more. Senator Shaheen immediately condemned the move and emphasized the impact it will have on communities. The full list that agencies were directed to review encompasses over 2,600 assistance programs, including Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP), Women, Infants and Children (WIC), community health centers, the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), transportation and highway funding, energy assistance programs, water infrastructure funding, State Opioid Targeted Response grants, GI Bill, veteran compensation for service connected disabilities, Section 8 vouchers, school breakfast and lunch, Title I education grants, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Head Start.
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