Warner warns that DC region has 'target on it' as Trump returns

By Michael Martz

In Richmond Times Dispatch

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner warned business leaders in Northern Virginia and the rest of the Washington metropolitan area Wednesday that the region has “a target on it” as former President Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House.

The new administration is intent on slashing federal government spending by as much as $2 trillion and moving operations out of the region.

In a speech to the Capital Region Transformation Forum here, Warner, a Virginia Democrat, urged business leaders to emphasize the “efficiency and expertise” of keeping government operations in the region as they seek additional federal funding for the Metro public transit system, which is vital to the economy of Northern Virginia and the state.

“We should not presume that anything is given in terms of federal funding,” he said. “We’re going to have to fight tooth and nail for it.”

The forum, organized by the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Greater Washington Partnership, heard a similar message from the administration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin. It is looking for greater cost savings and efficiency from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or WMATA, as it prepares to ask Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia for an additional $600 million for operating and capital investments with a projected end of its borrowing capacity in three years.

Virginia already is paying up to $700 million for WMATA this year, Secretary of Transportation Shep Miller said. “The concept of another couple hundred million, $300 million is not going to sit well with our administration.”

“Nobody’s against WMATA or doesn’t believe in transit,” Miller said. “We just need it to be more efficient and cost effective than it is.”

Transit officials expect demands on Metro rail and bus service to grow after Trump is inaugurated for a second term in January, four years after losing the presidency at the height of a COVID-19 pandemic that crippled the transit system as government and business workers worked remotely.

“I suspect even more people will be back in the office at the end of January,” WMATA General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke said.

The message was the same from Warner, a former telecommunications executive and governor now in his third Senate term.

“Whether we’re in the public sector or the private sector, we need to get our workers back in the office,” he said.

Warner also called on business and government leaders to work harder to demonstrate regional cooperation, with 14 different transit organizations. “We need to show regulatory reform,” he said.

His biggest concern is the new Department of Government Efficiency that Trump plans to create with billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, leading it, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the former president’s unsuccessful rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.

Musk has vowed to cut up to $2 trillion in federal spending and completely reorganize government operations. Trump’s campaign platform promised to move up to 100,000 federal employees out of a region that depends on them economically, while turning many career civil servants into political appointees.

“We need to recognize that this region’s got a target on it with the new administration,” Warner said.

“I think the first nine months of the new administration is going to be our moment of challenge,” he said. “We see the president-elect moving very quickly on new appointments.”

On transportation, Warner said regional leaders need to make the case that the Metro transit system is a vital security interest in the nation’s capital and push for reauthorization of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.

The “bipartisan infrastructure bill,” as it is known, is providing $729 million for construction of a new rail bridge across the Potomac River that will enable Virginia to greatly expand passenger train service between Washington and Richmond, Hampton Roads and Southwest Virginia, as well as into North Carolina.

Warner said the region’s central message to the new administration has to focus on the efficiency of keeping federal government operations here instead of dismantling them or moving them to remote parts of the country.

“It is not, in any business standpoint, an efficient redistribution of how to operate what is critical to the future of what is not only our region, but our country,” he said.