“We’re making sure the Appalachia workforce is prepared for jobs,” Wendy Wasserman, the communications director for the ARC, told me. In fact, Wasserman said, last year, Congress approved a budget of $146 million for the agency, its highest budget in decades, in order for it to focus on coal-impacted communities. Already, the ARC has invested $73 million on 89 projects in 236 counties—projects that include, Wasserman says, “teaching coal miners how to code, helping develop agricultural activity on former coal land, and training folks who would have been tracked into coal into solar installation or construction.”

A February 2015 evaluation of the agency’s work showed that in the past 50 years, the ARC’s $3.8 billion invested in non-highway related programs resulted in 312,000 jobs and $10.5 billion in additional earnings. Because of its work, the agency told the Lexington Herald Ledger, the number of high-poverty counties in Appalachia dropped from 295 in 1960 to 84 in 2017. The overall poverty rate also decreased since the ARC’s founding, from 30 percent to under 17 percent. “We’re doing what we said we would do since 1965,” Wasserman said, “which is invest in Appalachia’s potential.” Without federal funding, she said, the ARC literally would not exist.

Trump’s promise to revitalize the region economically became a centerpiece of his campaign during 2016, and Appalachia overwhelmingly backed Trump in the presidential election; 10 of the 13 states covered by the ARC went to him on November 8, 2016. His proposal to eliminate all funding for the commission—an agency specifically designed to stimulate economic growth in the region—seems to fly in the face of that promise.

“We’ve been around for 52 years,” Wasserman told me. “There’s a reason.”

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.