WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — The Trump administration on Wednesday ordered all federal departments and agencies to submit reorganization plans outlining how they would implement large-scale layoffs before March 13.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and Office of Personnel Management Acting Director Charles Ezell wrote in a seven-page memo the reason for the expected layoffs is that the “federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt.”
“At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public,” they wrote. “Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hard-working American citizens.”
The reorganization plans should include a “significant reduction in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by eliminating positions that are not required, a reduced real property footprint,” and lower spending levels for each department or agency.
Possible relocations from D.C.
The memo says the planning and the laying off of federal workers will happen in at least two phases, with the first step calling on departments and agencies to submit their reduction in force and reorganization plans to OMB and OPM before March 13.
That proposal is supposed to include each “agency’s suggested plan for congressional engagement to gather input and agreement on major restructuring efforts and the movement of fundings between accounts, as applicable, including compliance with any congressional notification requirements.”
Agencies are also supposed to send OMB and OPM a “timetable and plan for implementing each part of its Phase 1” reorganization proposal.
The second deadline comes on April 14, when agencies must submit “a positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations going forward.” Those plans are slated to go into effect before Sept. 30.
That proposal is supposed to include any proposed relocations from the Washington, D.C., area to “less-costly parts of the country.”
Departments and agencies that “provide direct services to citizens (such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ health care)” are supposed to ensure that their phase 2 reorganization plans “will have a positive effect on the delivery of such services” according to the memo.
Trump sees ‘bloated and fat’ country
President Donald Trump said during a Cabinet meeting held shortly after the memo was released that he fully supports firing federal workers en masse.
“This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run,” Trump said.
Elon Musk, a billionaire who supported Trump extensively during his most recent campaign for the Oval Office, spoke at length during the Cabinet meeting ahead of any of the actual Cabinet secretaries or nominees in attendance.
Musk said that an email sent from OPM to more than 2 million federal employees late last week asking them to list five accomplishments was intended more as a “pulse check” than a performance review.
Musk indicated there would be another email at some point, but didn’t clarify when or what exactly it would ask federal workers to do.
“We wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well,” Musk said. “But if the job is not essential, or they’re not doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the public payroll.”
Firings, lawsuits
The Trump administration’s decision to fire probationary federal employees, some of whom had to be rehired after officials realized they performed essential tasks like nuclear security, has led to concerns by some GOP lawmakers.
There are also numerous lawsuits against actions the Trump administration has taken to reduce the federal workforce or cancel spending already approved by Congress. Several of the cases have led to court rulings halting implementation of the proposals.
Musk, who is technically a special government employee and not a Senate-confirmed Cabinet member, is named in many of the lawsuits.
