President Obama's proposal to freeze discretionary government spending for five years, while potentially welcome news elsewhere in the country, could blast a hole in the Washington-area economy where less federal spending is likely to mean job losses, service cutbacks and fewer government contracts. "Putting a dollar figure on it would be impossible to estimate, but it's not trivial," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Fairfax.
Voters in November's midterm elections made clear they want Uncle Sam to tighten his belt, and Obama and congressional Republicans are wrangling only over how to cut and not whether to cut. However deep they cut, thousands of local residents are likely to feel in the workplace the additional pressures wrought by a spending freeze or cuts.
"A freeze absolutely would reduce the size of the federal work force, and unless that can be absorbed by attrition, it'll impact employment," Connolly said.
Montgomery County Council President Valerie Ervin reacted to news of the freeze with two words: "Wow. Wow," she said. "That's going to be huge for the state. And if it's huge for the state, the cuts come down to us."
A freeze or deep cuts could be particularly painful as federal stimulus that funded so many local projects dry up.
"The pain that's coming is in some ways worse than had we not had the money before," she said.
Uma Ahluwalia, Montgomery County's director of health and human services, said it's too soon to tell how deeply a federal freeze will be felt at the local level.
"Most of our federal funding comes through the state, so eventually we'll probably feel the impact, but it won't be right away," Ahluwalia said.
Despite the worry, the news is not all bad for the region, Connolly said.
"If we have a freeze that exempts homeland security, national security, defense and entitlements, that's a big carve-out," he said. "And a lot of what we do in Northern Virginia is related to that carve-out."
