Last week, the Trump administration submitted its budget to Congress for the 2018 Fiscal Year. The budget included slashing several programs, many of which will affect community projects.
In response, the AIA has issued a statement:
"This budget includes many cuts that will have severe long-term ramifications for our communities and economy. It does away with programs that foster a cleaner environment and strong neighborhoods and it eliminates programs with a proven track record of job creation in the design and construction industry.
"We are concerned about a proposed 31 percent cut in the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Within EPA alone, 50 programs and 3,200 positions would be eliminated. Future federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, which provides grants to architecture programs and conferences sponsored by the AIA, is also being cut.
"The Federal government plays a vital role in promoting community development, performing research into sustainable and high-performing building technologies and techniques, and helping states and cities address congestion and sprawl through innovative grant programs. Drastic cuts to these initiatives impair the work that architecture firms do in our communities.
"We are ready to protect investments that affect the work we do on behalf of our clients. In fact, almost 800 design and construction businesses Thursday sent a letter coordinated by the AIA to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, calling for the continuation of important programs. And we will echo these calls across all agencies for all of the programs vital to our work.
"Federal budgets always require making tough choices, and wasteful or ineffective programs should be ended. But this budget's short-term cuts to programs that work will end up costing us much more in the long-term.
"As the budget process continues, we urge the Administration to seek our guidance as leading experts in design and construction, before cutting the budget in ways that will hurt our communities."
5 Comments
but but robert ivy fully supports you donald!
AIA statement.....derp!
The AIA got caught doing what they've been doing for a while: being DC construction industry lobbyists instead of advocates for architecture. Get out of D.C.!
It's still unclear from both letters how architects would be affected by the budget cuts. All I got was there would be less money available for AIA conferences, the Energy Star program would disappear (more of a consumer program anyway), and the TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory would disappear (whatever that is). If the AIA is going to get involved with political lobbying, they need to make a more compelling case than this.
Scott Pruitt received those 800 letters and promptly drove them to the landfill one by one.
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