White House budget office threatens mass firings if government shuts down

By Adam Cancryn, Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — The White House budget office is telling federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings in the event of a government shutdown, with instructions to target programs they are not legally required to continue.

The directive, outlined in an Office of Management and Budget memo to agencies and obtained by CNN, represents a sharp break from the government’s handling of past shutdown scenarios — and an escalation by the Trump administration amid a standoff with congressional Democrats over federal funding.

In the memo, OMB directs agencies to identify programs whose funds will lapse if Congress fails to meet the September 30 funding deadline and that have no alternative source of funding. Those programs should then be targeted for sweeping reductions in force that could permanently eliminate jobs that are deemed “not consistent” with President Donald Trump’s priorities.

“We remain hopeful that Democrats in Congress will not trigger a shutdown and the steps outlined above will not be necessary,” OMB wrote in the memo.

An OMB spokesperson declined to comment. Politico first reported the details of the memo.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the memo “an attempt at intimidation.”

“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one—not to govern, but to scare,” Schumer said in a statement Wednesday evening. “This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”

The threat of mass job losses across the government is likely to further intensify the partisan funding showdown over the next week, where Democrats have demanded a series of concessions in exchange for keeping the government open into November. Most notably, Democrats are insisting on an extension of the enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act coverage, which are set to lapse at year’s end.

The White House and congressional Republicans have so far refused, insisting on a so-called “clean” extension. Trump earlier this week canceled a planned meeting with Democratic leaders to discuss the funding impasse, issuing a blanket rejection of their demands.

The OMB memo on Wednesday doubled down on that stance, calling Democrats’ position “insane” and noting that it would continue to fund “core Trump Administration priorities” in the event of a shutdown.

The planning for mass firings in other areas of government, the office added, would proceed unless Democrats take up the administration’s position and pass a clean funding extension.

Gutting the federal workforce

The memo is the latest – and perhaps furthest reaching – effort by the Trump administration to overhaul and shrink the size of the federal workforce. In February, Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to draw up plans for a large-scale reduction in force. The results were mixed, with some agencies letting go sizeable portions of their staffs, others walking back at least part of their layoffs and still others asking some employees who departed to return to their jobs. .

The current effort was foreshadowed in another memo that OMB and the Office of Personnel Management sent to agencies in late February concerning the executive order. The memo directed department leaders to identify by March 13 “all agency components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or regulation who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations.”

In another unusual move, OMB has yet to post agencies’ shutdown contingency plans on its website, even though the federal government’s funding will lapse in less than a week unless Congress acts. In its memo, OMB wrote that it had received updated lapse plans from “many, but not all” agencies to date. The plans detail which functions and employees are deemed essential during a shutdown and will continue despite the impasse. Those workers remain on the job, though many are not paid until Congress agrees to appropriate funding.

Every government shutdown is different, but key services – including Social Security payments, law enforcement, air traffic control and border patrol – continue uninterrupted. Previous shutdowns have closed national parks and museums; stalled food inspections; canceled immigration hearings; and delayed some federal lending to homebuyers and small businesses, among other impacts.

In March, the last time a federal government shutdown loomed before being averted, more than 1.4 million employees were deemed essential and would have had to report to work, according to Rachel Snyderman, managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. About 750,000 of them would have continued to be paid since their salaries were funded through other sources.

Another nearly 900,000 workers would have been furloughed without pay. (Snyderman noted that the estimates did not include the layoffs and departures that occurred in the early weeks of the Trump administration.)

A spokesperson for the National Treasury Employees Union, the second largest federal workers’ union, said it has no knowledge of the memo, while the American Federation of Government Employees did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Left-leaning advocates decried the idea of using a shutdown to gut the federal workforce.

“Setting aside the question of legality, this would be an action of enormous self-harm inflicted on the nation, needlessly ridding the country of talent and expertise,” said Bobby Kogan, a former OMB official in the Biden administration and senior director of federal budget policy for the Center for American Progress. “It’s also extortive. ‘Give us what we want in a funding fight, or we’ll hurt the country.’”

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