President
The impasse could soon be the defining fight of the shutdown, one testing Trump’s efforts to reshape government against existing legal restraints on ousting federal workers. Its sets up a battle both legal and political that will pit the Trump administration against employee unions and is provoking pushback from both sides of the aisle.
Trump’s Office of Management and Budget told agencies in recent days to lay off federal workers during a government shutdown. But shutdowns don’t legally or traditionally require layoffs. And a group of unions representing federal workers, including the American Federation of Government Employees, have already asked a federal court to block them, saying the action violates federal law.
The White House believes it has broad authority to make the cuts.
“Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his Cabinet — and the Office of Management and Budget is working with agencies across the board — to identify where cuts can be made, and we believe that layoffs are imminent,” White House Presss Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday. “They are unfortunately a consequence of this government shutdown.”
Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that the layoffs are necessary because “the federal government is not receiving any cash right now.” But shutdowns don’t reflect a lack of revenue or liquidity. Instead, they reflect a lapse in the authority to spend money.
OMB’s move is backed by most GOP congressional leaders but is raising concerns from some Republicans lawmakers who fear blowback from mass firings of workers in their districts.
Read More: Trump GOP’s Gleeful Shutdown Pivot Undercuts Earlier Messaging
So far, the layoff threat has failed to force congressional Democrats to accept a deal to reopen the government. They continue to push for concessions on health-care policy, especially to extend pandemic-era Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire after Dec. 31. Instead, the warning of workforce reductions has only heightened the animosity between congressional Democrats and Trump’s budget director,
Unions Fight
Rushab Sanghvi, general counsel for AFGE, in an interview, said using the layoff threat as part of political negotiations falls short of legal requirements that a “reduction in force” — or RIFs — be based on “reasoned decision making.”
“There is nothing more arbitrary or less reasoned for the actual decision than using this as a negotiating tool,” Sanghvi said. “It’s a game. And you shouldn’t be treating federal employees as a game.”
Previous shutdowns haven’t involved layoffs. Instead, the laws governing shutdowns require that most federal employees stop work, while “excepted” employees continue in roles that immediately protect life and property.
The unions argue that OMB’s layoff directive misunderstands federal law. The memo to agencies, first reported by Politico, says federal programs affected by a shutdown “are no longer statutorily required to be carried out.”
But that’s a dubious argument. Shutdowns happen because funding has lapsed, not because the laws that authorized the programs expired.
The unions representing federal workers argue that layoffs are a major undertaking, sometimes requiring reorganization plans and new locations of agency offices. And that work,can’t legally happen during a shutdown.
“How are you going to undertake these RIFS that require paperwork, that require HR processes? Their response is, ‘We’re going to say the people who are conducting RIFs are excepted personnel.’ But that doesn’t make sense,” Sanghvi said. “How is that saving life or property or for safety reasons?”
Adding to Uncertainty
The layoff plan adds to an already unpredictable shutdown. The economic damage from a shutdown depends heavily on how long it goes. Even though federal workers get paid at the end of the shutdown, a long stretch without paychecks can ding the economy.
“It would likely need to go on for a few weeks to have a significant impact on large swaths of people,” said Shai Akabas, vice president of economic policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center. There could be “an immediate impact on certain contractors” and other narrower effects, he added.
Federal law requires that all government employees who aren’t paid during a shutdown must receive back pay when the shutdown ends, the union complaint notes.
It’s impossible to consider economic the impact of layoffs as strictly part of a shutdown, Akabas said. The Trump administration has already laid off thousands of workers, sparking legal fights and broader questions about the federal workforce.
“It’s hard to know the scale of what we might expect in the coming days relative to what’s happened previously, ” Akabas said.
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