Editor’s note: This statement was released in response to President Donald Trump’s orders to freeze federal funding:

Federal funds make up more than one-third of Ohio’s general revenue fund. Many state agency budgets that pay for programs that everyday Ohioans rely on are based on federal grants to the states. 

For example, the TANF block grant is responsible for funding state programs like kinship care and publicly funded childcare. School meals are largely federally funded. Grants support programs that improve teacher quality and ones that help people recover from opioid addiction. The budget for Ohio’s Department of Children and Youth includes nearly $3 billion in federal funding, just over 67 percent of their budget. Federal funding touches every part of state government, from programs that support cancer patients to unemployment compensation.

This disruption could not have come at a worse time for Ohioans. (…) This freeze injects an unprecedented level of uncertainty into the already complex process and jeopardizes programs everyday Ohioans depend on — not in some abstract future, but today.

Ohio lawmakers and the Ohio congressional delegation must act immediately to ensure the state budget and the federal funding that is critical to so many Ohioans’ health, safety, education, and security is protected from executive overreach and internally contradictory executive directives. The stakes are too high for Ohioans.

—Hannah Halbert is executive director of Policy Matters Ohio