Two of Western Pennsylvania’s most influential politicians raised alarm Monday about ongoing federal budget negotiations, warning that if President Donald Trump’s proposal is approved by Congress, the Pittsburgh area could lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars.
County Finance Director Tim Cox said he identified more than $120 million in potential cuts to the county alone, in the areas of homeless assistance, HIV and STD prevention, infrastructure and housing development, lead reduction, substance abuse and mental health care.
“It would be catastrophic to our operations here,” Cox said.
“Our commitment here is to fight back against those cuts,” said Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, appearing at a Monday roundtable event with her fellow progressive Democrat Summer Lee, the congressional representative for Pittsburgh and some of its suburbs.
Lee has often criticized the Trump administration in her post on the House Committee on Oversight and last week voted with almost every other Democrat against a Republican-supported measure to keep the government open into November as negotiations continue.
“Trump’s wishlist for the fiscal year 2026 budget is at play right now,” said Lee, of Swissvale. “Right now we’re in limbo and we may be barrelling toward a shutdown.”
The federal fiscal year ends Sept. 30. The government would shut down if Congress does not act by then; it is currently debating measures to extend funding into November to keep the government open and continue negotiating.
Trump released a proposal for the next federal budget this spring, calling for a decrease of more than 20% to domestic spending and an increase in defense spending. The plan would completely eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program, which annually deals tens of millions of dollars to the Pittsburgh region for infrastructure and housing projects in areas of high poverty. Other proposed cuts include public health programs, fire department equipment grants, scientific research and public broadcasting funds.
The White House has said its spending plan “holds the line on total spending while providing unprecedented increases for defense and border security,” claiming that it is “reducing or eliminating programs found to be woke and weaponized against ordinary working Americans, wasteful, or best left to the states and localities to provide.”
Lee and Innamorato hosted a group of public and nonprofit officials Monday to explain how federal cuts would impact the Pittsburgh region.
Health care in limbo
At the center of the federal funding debate is whether to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which were created in 2021 and are set to expire at the end of September. The enhanced credits extend lower healthcare costs to people earning more than four times the federal poverty rate, or about $62,000 for a one-person household.
Chachi Angelo, the director of external affairs for Pennsylvania’s ACA marketplace, said he expects the expiration of the enhanced tax credits to lead to cost increases of 82% for the average enrollee in Pennsylvania. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that the expiration would result in millions of people nationwide losing their health insurance.
“What we’re hearing from enrollees is that for their monthly budgets they’re already saying they can’t afford any more,” Angelo said. “We anticipate a significant decrease in enrollment.”
Democrats in Congress are pressing for the subsidies to be extended as part of a measure to keep the government open past Sept. 30. House Republicans approved a bill to keep the government open into November without extending the subsidies, but that measure failed to get the needed 60 votes in the Senate.
Angelo said most enrollees had not used the state marketplace before the enhanced tax credits existed.
“Most of our enrollees are going to be absolutely blindsided,” he said, adding that small business owners and gig workers could be among the most affected.
Unaccompanied minors
Jordan Golin, president and CEO of Jewish Family and Community Services, said “everything has been destabilized” with how his organization works to provide unaccompanied minor immigrants with legal representation.
He said a funding cut in the spring, followed by restoration and continued reevaluation every three months, has made it hard to plan for future representation of dozens of children currently housed in the Pittsburgh area.
If the funding is cut, Golin said, “We’re stuck with a dilemma. We have a moral, ethical and professional obligation to maintain the attorney-client relationships.” But the group would have no money with which to do so, he said.
Electric vehicle grant unplugged
Brittany Prischak, the director of the county’s Department of Sustainability, said the county secured a grant last year for $4 million from the federal government, matched by $2 million from Duquesne Light, to build 150 electric vehicle charging stations throughout the county. The stations would be built largely in residential communities that are often passed over in favor of areas near highways. That grant has been rescinded by the Trump administration, she said.
More pressure on food aid
Colleen Young, director of government affairs for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, said the nonprofit is bracing for 28,000 people in its 11-county service area to lose federal food assistance benefits as a result of new rules applied to the SNAP program as part of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“We’ve begun accessing our strategic reserves to meet increased demand and to cover the funding from the state budget which is still delayed,” Young said. “We also don’t know if the increases we requested will be met this year.”
Community development grants could vanish
Trump’s budget proposal seeks the total elimination of the Community Development Block Grant [CDBG] program, which annually sends tens of millions of dollars into the Pittsburgh region for infrastructure upgrades, affordable housing development and other projects that municipalities are hard-pressed to fund themselves.
Lee said the appropriations committees in both chambers of Congress have rejected Trump’s plan to totally eliminate the program, but its fate is up in the air until the federal budget is finalized.
“Without increased allocations or at least this allocation, those projects will become critical quality of life issues for communities across the county,” said Lauren Connelly, the director of the county’s economic development department.
She said the county’s $13 million CDBG allocation last year funded projects in 29 municipalities, including water and sewer upgrades in 16 municipalities. She said $3 million was awarded to affordable housing development projects.
Charlie Wolfson is the Pittsburgh Public Source’s local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
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