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Maryland could see another $430 million in targeted cuts as part of President Donald Trump’s so-called “skinny” budget proposal, Senate President Bill Ferguson said Tuesday.
Ferguson, meeting with reporters, said a new analysis of the federal spending proposal includes hundreds of millions in reductions to low-income housing and energy assistance programs. This is on top of expected cuts to Medicaid.
Trump’s proposed reductions are in addition to what Ferguson and others worry will be seismic changes to Medicaid spending and cost-sharing with the state. The ongoing uncertainty about continued federal budget and employee cuts has done little to ease the concerns about how Maryland will be affected.
“I would say the health care system cuts are the ones that are the most concerning,” Ferguson said. “The $430 million will be very painful, but we can weather that storm in the short term, and that doesn’t necessarily push us immediately into a special session.
“I would say what happens to get to the bigger health care cuts is where that’s going to be the big lever … the decision point for us to come back, I think, because it will have such a disruptive impact on our entire health care system,” he said.
The Senate leader also tried to ease concerns that lawmakers will need to return later this year to address the impact of additional deep federal cuts.
“There’s a lot of factors here, of things that could drive a decision to come back,” Ferguson said. “And so right now, I would say it’s more unlikely than likely, but it … is not off the table anyway.”
Ferguson cited a new review of Trump’s budget proposal by the Department of Legislative Services. It said that included in the new round of proposed cuts is:
- $148 million in funding for Section 8 housing programs.
- $94 million from energy and heating assistance programs for low-income families.
- $61 million from a revolving loan program for clean water and drinking water.
Ferguson later added that cuts to the AmeriCorps program troubled him.
Ferguson described the firings as “a destruction of American values that are volunteerism and service that are core to the American spirit. And I think cuts to AmeriCorps are just a symbol of everything that is wrong moving forward.”
Roughly 250 people in the program in Maryland were fired.
“We’re working on what we can do about that,” Ferguson said.
The Senate leader is holding a news conference in Baltimore Thursday related to the AmeriCorps firings.
Gov. Wes Moore (D) and legislative leaders have been bracing for a wave of additional federal budget cuts by the Trump administration.
First, the House and Senate passed a compromise budget package that included $1.6 billion in new taxes and fees. They also shored up the budget with cuts and cost shifts to local governments of about $2 billion.
House Republicans Monday called on Moore to veto four bills that raise fees, a request that drew a sharp retort from Ferguson.
“The beauty of not being in charge is that you don’t have any accountability for actually governing,” Ferguson said.
Republicans in the House and Senate comprise about 30% of their respective chambers.
“None of us wanted to do any of the taxes or fees. Right? Nobody wants to make those choices,” Ferguson said. “But we have responsibilities to maintain our commitments, to invest in Maryland, to make sure that we are protecting the most vulnerable amongst us. And so, I imagine our good friends on the other side are going to make light of some of the tough choices that were made.
“I get it, it’s politics, and people want attention. It’s a frustrating time for everyone,” he said. “But I think given the circumstances, we made the most balanced and fair decisions to balance the budget in the ways that don’t have an outsized negative impact on specific individuals and allow us to protect the most vulnerable.”
Ferguson attempted to foreclose the idea of more tax increases next year.
“I don’t foresee that as even a remote possibility,” Ferguson said. “I think the challenge with coming back is that, if it is necessary, it’s because we’re making even harder decisions about what more to cut.”
The budget moves this year erased a projected $3 billion fiscal 2026 budget gap. Lawmaker said they also shrank a similar projected deficit for fiscal 2027 from about $3 billion to an estimated $300 million.
Those projections do not consider other cuts that Trump could impose.
The legislature created a joint committee to monitor real and proposed cuts and how they might affect Maryland. That panel will meet “in the near future,” Ferguson said.
“We want to make sure that we have enough substance and real clarity, as much clarity as can be obtained before we post one of those hearings,” Ferguson said. “We don’t want to just meet for the purposes of meeting. We want to make sure that it’s kind of giving us a better insight into where things stand.”
The committee will also likely guide Ferguson and House Speaker Adrienne Jones on any decision to bring the 188-member legislature back to Annapolis before January 2026.
“So, I think we’ll have a better idea of what a special session looks like when we start to pull those joint hearings together,” Ferguson said. “It’s really tough to say until the until Congress moves on a budget. So, we have ideas, but we don’t know the answer.”
Earlier this year, Moody’s — one of three key bond rating agencies — said Maryland faces the most risk among states from those looming cuts and firings.
As many as 109,000 Maryland residents could be thrown off Medicaid, according to one recent estimate.
Ferguson said Tuesday that reductions needed to pay for Trump’s tax cut proposal would require significant cuts to Medicaid. Ferguson said changing how those costs are shared to a 50-50 split with the federal government could require the state to come up with an additional $1 billion “or release 300,000 people from their secured health insurance, so they would be uninsured.”
