For the past year, Donald Trump has promised that he will “put our miners back to work” and pull coal country out a decades-long decline. Appalachian voters clearly believed him—they showed up for rally after rally, and on Election day nearly 95 percent of Appalachian counties went red for Trump.
It was never a secret that Trump's promises would be hard to keep, but it's still stunning that his first budget actively attacked the region. Along with a laundry list of other programs slated for elimination, Trump proposed nixing the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), which was created to spur economic development in the 420 counties that make up Appalachia. Since it was founded in 1962, ARC has helped cut Appalachian poverty in half, and has brought more than 300,000 jobs to the region. In the past year alone, its grants have created or retained 23,760 jobs, and provided training or education to nearly 50,000 students and workers.
While Trump is billing himself as coal country's savior, he is gutting the agency that's doing the saving.
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