How a federal funding freeze would impact Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) - Panic and confusion were caused after President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on certain federal funding on Tuesday.

Oklahoma is reliant on federal dollars; the original announcement capped a chaotic day for some in the Sooner State.

"Very hurried, sloppy, and not well thought out,” Dave Hamby with the Oklahoma Policy Institute said.

Hamby is specifically referencing the federal funding freeze that was originally ordered Tuesday. He and the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a nonpartisan examiner of state laws and policies, were among those scrambling to understand the recent blitz of executive orders in Washington and their financial impact on Oklahoma programs.

"Instituting an order like that is very similar to trying to turn around an ocean tanker,” Hamby said. "It does not end well when you try to make big things move very suddenly."

Governor Stitt Wednesday urged caution against overreaction to the opening days of the administration.

"Americans, I think for the most part agree and applaud with President Trump trying to get federal spending under control,” he said.

Oklahoma received over $14 billion in federal dollars in 2024. We are one of the states that gets back more federal dollars than we send to Washington. When Medicaid portals were frozen temporarily on Tuesday, representing roughly $8 billion in federal funding to Oklahoma, it got a lot of attention.

"Things that help folks who are pretty much at the bottom end of the economic scale to be able to try to have quality of life and be able to do things like eat a meal or fill a prescription, see a doctor,” Hamby said.

This is a link to a spreadsheet from the institute, documented in thousands, showing all the federal money given to Oklahoma and where it goes. It also includes other facts about Oklahoma and federal money.

It documents everything from $1 billion to education, over $2 billion to agriculture, $1 billion to transportation, and almost $9.5 billion for health and human services, which is where Medicaid is included. That money also doesn’t count the tribes, who are also continuing to watch the situation closely.

“Tribal nations raised the alarm that this has a very unique and detrimental effect to tribal nations and that they were not consulted in this process, as you would in a sovereign do sovereign relationship,” Hamby said.

Democratic lawmakers argued that President Trump can’t unilaterally stop spending money appropriated by Congress. Although it was rescinded Wednesday, the federal order originally stated Medicare, Social Security, student loans and SNAP benefits wouldn’t be affected. However, it was unclear how long it would last and the Associated Press said it was “a vaguely worded memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget, combined with incomplete answers from the White House throughout the day, left lawmakers, public officials and average Americans struggling to figure out what programs would be affected by the pause.”

"The chaos that we experienced yesterday is probably a bellwether for things that we will be seeing in the upcoming future,” Hamby said.

"I think there was just funds just going out the door from the federal budget that he wanted to get his arms around,” Stitt said.

Hamby told KFOR after learning the memo was rescinded that they’re telling people that “just because it’s rescinded doesn’t mean something like this - or similar - won’t happen again. But we would hope any future actions would be more thoughtfully carried out than the slapdash manner of this most recent order.”

A federal judge temporarily blocked the order until Monday afternoon because more arguments are to be heard Monday morning. The judge in that same AP article mentioned above said at the time that "it seems like the federal government currently doesn't actually know the full extent of the programs that are going to be subject to the pause."

The White House is claiming the Wednesday move by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rescinding a controversial order that froze a wide swath of federal financial assistance is not actually an end to curbing government spending.

“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect and will be rigorously implemented,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on social media platform X.