Editorial: The cuts are hitting home
By Michelle Rosenfeld, Annandale resident
If you live in Annandale, recent actions from the federal government aren’t some far-off political drama – they’re personal. Your neighbors are being laid off. Lifesaving research is being defunded. Families are being torn apart by mass deportations. These decisions affect our schools, our hospitals, our construction sites, our economy, and our daily lives.
Northern Virginia is a federal workforce hub. More than 175,000 federal workers live in this region, and thousands of them call Fairfax County home. When the government slashes agencies and lays off civil servants, it doesn’t just trim budgets. It uproots livelihoods. Local businesses suffer. Families go without income.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has already sounded the alarm, urging the state to bolster unemployment benefits in response to a wave of layoffs that could echo the economic tremors of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the government is gutting research funding at the Department of Veterans Affairs – a move that threatens breakthroughs in opioid treatment, cancer research, and suicide prevention. This isn’t just about data and funding lines; it’s about the real lives of veterans, the health of our communities, and the future of medicine. These are the kinds of programs that have improved, even saved, lives across Virginia and beyond.
And then there’s the looming threat of mass deportations. With more than 165,000 undocumented workers at risk of removal in Virginia alone, the economic damage would be staggering.
In industries like construction, where roughly one in three workers are undocumented, job sites would grind to a halt. Labor shortages would ripple across housing, infrastructure, and local business. Fairfax County adopted a Trust Policy to help immigrant families feel safe accessing services, but that doesn’t protect them from federal raids.
These are our neighbors, coworkers, and friends. Their absence would leave a painful void in our communities and in our economy.
If you’re angry, anxious, or just want to help – you can. You don’t have to organize a protest or write a policy paper. Just make a call.
Your elected officials keep tallies of the calls their offices receive. Staffers log the number of constituents who support or oppose an issue, and that data is passed directly to the representatives and senators who vote on these decisions.
One phone call is more impactful than dozens of social media posts. And it takes less than five minutes.
Save these numbers in your phone:
- Sen. Mark Warner: 202-224-2023
- Sen. Tim Kaine: 202-224-4024
- Rep. Don Beyer: 202-225-4376
- Rep. Gerry Connolly: 202-225-1492
Call and tell them what you think – about the layoffs, the research cuts, the deportations. Say your piece. Be heard. They work for you.
Annandale can’t afford to stay quiet.
8 responses to “Editorial: The cuts are hitting home”
Leave a Reply to Terry Covington Cancel reply
An important message and call to arms. Thank you.
Thank you for standing up and speaking out. We should all do it.
Unfortunately, every elected official for Fairfax listed above has zero ability to improve or impact what is happening because they are all democrats in the Minority in Congress. Not that they helped prevent this from occurring by changing the law when they were in power and the majority before (Gerry at least tried then). This is where we miss having someone like former Rep Tom Davis in our Northern VA delegation. Maybe it will make a difference after the next election but a lot can happen to all of us before then. What we can do is press out county Board of Supervisors to make difficult choices on what spending goes forward and the regulations to support instead of hindering small and medium businesses. Assuredly, the county is going to have less federal employees going forward as there will be fewer of them, there will be fewer contractors working on government work as that is cut, and there’s going to be a reduction in large companies too.
The editorial is about these poor government workers and poor illegal migrants workers and how it effects the people in one county of a giant country. How do you think the people in other states feel about paying for fed workers who haven’t been to the office for 3+ years until DT forced them back.?
There can’t be any dispute that our federal government is not efficient. There is no need for all these workers to live in one of the most expensive parts of the country. Teaching federal. – state and county politicians to be frugal with the taxpayers money would help the citizens. No government is going to bail out fairfax county for their waist of taxpayer money. The laid off workers should be skilled enough to find a new job where they will actually be required to list the 5 tasks they accomplished everyday in their job report.
Not going to the office doesn’t mean that people were not working.
Oh Jeff….come on…with these cuts I will now have to wait 5 hours on the phone instead of 4 when I try and call social security or the IRS and, my pet monkey and pet mice will no longer be eligible for their transgender surgery……..
about 80% of Federal workforce are outside the DC metro area. https://ourpublicservice.org/fed-figures/beyond-the-capital-the-federal-workforce-outside-the-d-c-area/
But around half of all jobs in this area rely on the federal government. That’s the other key stat to consider in addition to the 80% number.