Our View: Making Virginia grate again

For the state where the United States was born and the roots of the American Revolution were planted (see editor’s note below), it’s an ironic fact that Virginia is heavily dependent on the largesse of the federal government.

The state’s so-called “Golden Crescent” — the prosperous corridor running roughly along interstates 95 and 64 from Northern Virginia to Hampton Roads — courses with the lifeblood of government spending. It starts just outside the Beltway with a hotbed of NoVa-based federal contractors. Five of the world’s six largest defense contractors have their U.S. headquarters there, making the region the state’s economic engine. For fiscal years 2022 and 2023, Virginia ranked No. 1 and 2 among states for defense spending, with federal contractors bringing in a combined $131.2 billion in defense dollars for both years.

Sandwiched in between Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads is the Richmond region, powered in a big way by state government and Virginia Commonwealth University, both of which also are dependent on a fair amount of federal funding.

And southward, bookending the Golden Crescent is Hampton Roads, home to Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, and Huntington Ingalls Industries, the nation’s largest military shipbuilder and the state’s largest industrial employer. It also hosts Jefferson Lab, a federal research facility, and NASA’s Langley Research Center, an aerospace facility so venerable that Orville Wright was a co-founder and the Project Mercury astronauts began their training there.

So, it should come as no surprise that President Donald Trump’s fishing-with-dynamite approach to federal budget management is causing no small amount of teeth grinding and sleepless nights in the Old Dominion.

Under the aegis of Trump’s second administration, billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been on a mission to make deep cuts in the federal bureaucracy as fast as possible.

Largely living in Northern Virginia, more than 140,000 Virginians are federal workers. And as of mid-February, less than a month into the president’s new term, Trump and Musk had moved to oust some 200,000 of the nation’s workforce of 2.3 million civilian federal employees, while issuing return-to-office mandates across all agencies.

There’s also the question of whether the Trump administration will honor previous commitments made by the Biden administration and Congress to provide federal funding to support major economic development projects in Virginia from the $1.3 billion Microporous battery separator plant in Pittsylvania County to Micron’s $2.17 billion semiconductor plant expansion in Manassas.

Virginia officials are rightfully proud of landing huge economic development deals like these that take much work on the front end and have the potential to create thousands of good-paying jobs, with plenty of ripple effects for the state economy.

They are also duly proud of Virginia’s hard-won record as the current champion and six-time No. 1-ranked state in CNBC’s prestigious Top States for Business annual rankings.

And while we are admittedly a state stuffed with federal dollars, most Virginians would probably acknowledge that the U.S. government would stand to benefit from a bit of liposuction. But it’s awfully hard to feel confident about our state’s economic health at a moment when our doctor is wielding a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.

Editor’s note: Jamestowne was the first permanent English settlement in the New World and a bustling trade port with America’s first elected legislature by the time the Pilgrims got around to stubbing their toes on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The home state and birthplace of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Virginia is where Patrick Henry declared “Give me liberty or give me death” and where Cornwallis surrendered in Yorktown, ending the Revolutionary War. Fight me.