WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House asked federal agencies on Wednesday to prepare plans for mass firings during a possible government shutdown next week, marking a sharp departure from the temporary furloughs of workers typically seen during past shutdowns.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent the memo to federal agencies and asked them to identify programs, projects and activities where discretionary funding will lapse on October 1 if the U.S. Congress does not pass legislation to keep the federal government open.
“Programs that did not benefit from an infusion of mandatory appropriations will bear the brunt of a shutdown,” the OMB said in the memo, which the White House provided.
It was not clear whether the White House was trying to take advantage of a possible shutdown to advance President Donald Trump’s push to slash the federal workforce, or whether it was a negotiating tactic to force Democrats to agree to pass the Republicans’ funding legislation.
“This is an attempt at intimidation,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement late Wednesday. “Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since Day One – not to govern, but to scare.”
He predicted any firings will be overturned in court, as others have been.
Agencies were told to submit their proposed reduction-in-force plans to the OMB and to issue notices to employees.
The OMB memo was earlier reported by Politico.
Trump on Tuesday scrapped a meeting with top congressional Democratic leaders to discuss government funding, raising the risk of a partial government shutdown next week. Republicans and Democrats have blamed each other for the impasse.
Upon taking office in January, Trump launched a campaign to downsize the 2.4 million-member federal civilian workforce, which he says is bloated and inefficient.
Roughly 300,000 federal civilian workers will have left their jobs by the end of 2025, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters in August.
About 154,000 of those employees accepted a buyout and are slated to drop off the U.S. government’s payroll on September 30, the last day of the federal government’s fiscal year. That date is also the deadline for Trump and Congress to reach an agreement on federal spending to avert a shutdown.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Ismail Shakil and Courtney Rozen; Editing by Jasper Ward, Ross Colvin, Christian Schmollinger and Chizu Nomiyama)
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