Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on the first day of the legislative session, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Utah leaders don’t yet know the full impact of the Trump administration’s memo issued Monday announcing a temporary freeze on federal funds, but they’re bracing for what could be sweeping — or more limited — impacts as more information comes to light.
“It’s a shock,” one of Utah’s top Republicans, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, told reporters in a media availability at the Utah Capitol Tuesday afternoon — but he said wants to wait and see what it will entail.
“I don’t know what the outcomes will be. We’ll evaluate it and see whether it’s good or not after we figure out what it does, but right now it’s an interesting approach and we’re surely trying to react to it,” Adams said.
Pressed on if he supports President Donald Trump’s decision to act in this way, Adams replied, “I think I’ll wait until I see out the outcome, OK?”
Trump administration memo announces abrupt freeze on broad swath of federal payments
He said it with a chuckle, prompting a round of low laughs from other members of Utah’s Senate Republican leadership that gathered in Adams’ office on Tuesday for their daily availability with reporters.
Hours later Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze from taking effect Tuesday evening, now pausing it until Monday, the Associated Press reported.
Adams said that while “time will tell” on whether the Trump administration’s evaluations of federal funding produces a positive or negative outcome, he said it may be necessary given the federal government’s budget deficit.
“I don’t know that it’s preferable, but we have a federal government that has a deficit that’s unmanageable. They tend to spend, spend, spend. So maybe this is a shock, a wake-up call that we all need to look at,” Adams said. “I don’t think it hurts to look under the hood to see what we’re spending money on and whether it’s the right thing.”
While the initial two-page memo from the federal Office of Management and Budget prompted mass confusion and concerns that the freeze could impact important social services including Medicaid benefits, a spokesman for Gov. Spencer Cox told Utah News Dispatch in a prepared statement state officials are being told that certain federal benefits to individuals won’t be affected by the freeze.
“We are in close communication with the White House and our multi-state associations and appreciate the clarity the White House provided this morning in the White House press briefing and the additional guidance released from OMB,” Cox’s spokesman said. “That guidance clarifies that federal benefits to individuals, including Medicaid, SNAP, and others, won’t be impacted.”
He added Utah state officials will “continue to learn more about what federal funding streams will be impacted.”
Cox’s spokesman also shared a copy of another memo from the Office of Management and Budget that stated “any program not implicated” by the flurry of executive orders Trump signed in the early days of his term that began earlier this month “is not subject to the pause.”
“No, the pause does not apply across-the-board,” that memo says. “It is expressly limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by the President’s Executive Orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest.”
The memo also says the freeze doesn’t apply to benefits that are given directly to Americans, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or student loans.
“No, any program that provides direct benefits to Americans is explicitly excluded from the pause and exempted from this review process,” the memo says. “In addition to Social Security and Medicare, already explicitly excluded in the guidance, mandatory programs like Medicaid and SNAP will continue without pause.”
How could the freeze or any federal cuts impact Utah’s budget?
For the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, Utah’s budget is projected to include more than $7.7 billion in federal funds, making up roughly 28% of the state’s $28.12 billion in estimated revenue sources. Utah lawmakers are currently in the middle of a budgeting process that usually isn’t finalized until the final weeks of their general session, which is now in its second week and scheduled to end March 7.
It’s currently unclear exactly how the Trump administration’s temporary freeze or any subsequent actions may impact Utah’s budget. But Adams and other Senate Republican leaders said Utah is in a strong financial position with rainy day funds and other budget strategies that allow for flexibility if lawmakers must confront any cuts.
Adams, however, said he’d be doubtful of a freeze or a cut that would impact all $7.7 billion of Utah’s expected federal funds.
“I don’t think you’ll see a $7 billion cut. Maybe you will, but I don’t think that’s realistic,” the Senate president said.
Still, Adams acknowledged Utah’s budget is “riddled” with federal funding, “so it can’t help but have some effect.” He also added he heard some funding for Utah’s FrontRunner could be impacted, but that’s yet to be determined.
“I’m not sure what the effect’s going to be, it’s early,” Adams said. “But I think we’ll probably be evaluating it. Maybe we’re ready. Maybe we’re not. But I think it’s not bad to review some of the programs.”
From Democrats’ perspective, the federal freeze has caused unnecessary alarm and confusion.
“The public is afraid and panicking,” Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, said. She said some Utahns aren’t sure whether the freeze will impact social service funding their family may rely on to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, though, Escamilla said Utah leaders won’t know more details until Feb. 10, when agencies are expected to disclose which programs will be impacted.
“It’s a bad way of doing public policy,” Escamilla said, to put people “at that panic level.”
Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, who is also vice chairman of the state’s leading budgetary body, the Executive Appropriations Committee, cautioned against overreacting.
“It’s a little too premature to try to start working budgets around what we heard this morning,” Sandall said. “I think we’re going to continue to plan as if the federal funds are going to be here, as we’ve done in the past. If we get closer to it, and we understand certain funds will be released and others won’t … at that point we’d make adjustments.”
Sandall acknowledged, however, that if the freeze or any cuts do impact social service funding, “those will be hard decisions, quite honestly. … Those are emotional decisions.”
Adams added Utah has “walked through challenges before,” pointing back to 2020 when state leaders cut the state’s budget amid uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic loomed. “And somehow the state survived that year,” he said.
“We can walk through this together,” he said.
Senate Budget Chair Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, told reporters Utah lawmakers will continue to go through their budgeting process over the next several weeks. Depending on the impacts, though, he hinted Utah Legislature could face the possibility of having to convene for a special session after the 2025 general session ends.
“I just want all of you to think back on all of the fun we have in special sessions,” Stevenson told reporters. “Because this may take that long to mature.”
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