A memo leaked from the White House Office of Management and Budget has sent non profits across the region into chaos. As questions arose, few answers were given by the federal government through much of Tuesday.
Linda Huntspon with the Community Action Agency of St. Louis County called this memo shocking while Dwayne Butler the CEO of the People's Health Centers said they are waiting for clarity with little idea of what happens next.
Huntspon says the people they serve are who will suffer if they lose funding for their programs.
"It's families, it's veterans, it's the local cashier at the grocery store, it's the people in the community."
Dwayne Butler the CEO of the People's Health Centers says a nationwide grant freeze would hurt people of all kinds.
"It's gonna hit people spanning the whole economic spectrum, geographic spectrum, race, gender, everything. Everyone can be affected by these, these decisions."
Some of the grants set to be paused include programs where the salary for those operating them is included in the funding. People's Health Centers CEO Michael Butler says while the employees who run their grant programs might be safe, a two week pause could result in employees of other non profits might miss a paycheck this Friday.
"Friday is payday for many other community health centers, and there may be many community health center that won't be able to make payroll if we're unable to draw down grant funds."
Linda Huntspon with the Community Action Agency of St. Louis County says if employees can't get paid, services can't be provided.
"We certainly can't provide service if you don't have the people... we can't ask our staff to work for free, they have families as well."
A result of this chaos, the Medicaid reimbursement web portal stopped functioning Tuesday, either after being deliberately being shut down by the federal government or crashing from too many organizations attempting to draw down funds all at once according Butler.
"The portal to pull the grant funds down has been basically offline for most of the day. We don't know if that's because of [web] traffic or if that's because it's been automatically shut down."
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump Administration's attempt to freeze federal grants and loans.
