Photo: Tom Brenner/The New York Times/Redux
With a government shutdown set to begin at midnight on Friday, all eyes are on the U.S. Senate right now. But it’s important to understand that the federal government is being progressively shut down by the Trump administration through means other than denying appropriations. Thursday is a big deadline for federal agencies, which will determine how bad the next wave of cuts will bite, as USA Today reports:
Thursday is the deadline for federal agencies and departments to give the Trump administration their plans for large-scale layoffs, and the details about how many people will be fired are expected to come out throughout and coming weeks …
It remains unclear how many of the roughly 2 million federal employees spread across the country could lose their jobs under the new layoff plans, called a “reduction in force” or RIF. The memo ordering agencies to produce the reduction in force plans called for “a significant reduction.” Agencies can whittle personnel through layoffs, attrition, removal of underperforming employees, or renegotiation of collective bargaining agreements.
An early estimate when Trump initiated the RIF process last month was that up to 700,000 federal employees could lose their jobs. It’s no accident that this is the number of employees that would likely be furloughed if there was a government shutdown; determining who is not an “essential employee” (a very technical term that has nothing to do with the quality of work someone does) is one of the key criteria agencies are being told to use in identifying RIF victims. So in a way, the RIF is operates like a government shutdown in terms of the services lost, though worse in one way: In the past, furloughed employees received back pay once a shutdown ended.
One significant aspect of the RIF process is that it’s a joint project of Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget (which earlier sought to impose a funding freeze on much of the federal government) and the Office of Personal Management. OPM has served as Elon Musk’s beachhead in the federal government and has been the staging area for most DOGE cuts. While DOGE’s formal involvement in the RIF process is unclear, some of the deep cuts it has already imposed on agencies appear to be a sort of doubling down on RIF. As Politico explains, the RIFs will roll out in two stages:
The strategies due Thursday will identify agency offices that provide “direct service to citizens,” explain which parts of agencies are required by law and explain whether “the agency or any of its subcomponents should be eliminated or consolidated,” according to guidance provided to agency bosses.
Agency leaders were also directed to describe the tools they intend to use to “achieve efficiencies,” including through expected staff reductions in coming years.
In the “Phase 2” plans due by April 14, agency bosses were directed to expand on their plans for overhauling their operations. That plan is set to include any proposals to relocate agency offices from Washington to other parts of the country, targets for “subsequent large-scale RIFs,” and agencies’ plans to renegotiate provisions of collective bargaining agreements deemed to “inhibit government efficiency and cost-savings.”
Is this legal? That’s debatable. In the past, much smaller RIFs have occasionally been deployed to bring agency staffing into line with congressionally determined policy changes or specific efficiency measures. In the most famous recent RIF, during the Clinton administration, the process was approved by Congress and coordinated with public employee unions; it was rolled out over years, not weeks, and only after a sustained analysis flowing from a National Performance Review. Its size and speed was nothing like what Team Trump is undertaking. There will be litigation, for sure, when the RIF really get rolling and people lose jobs. But it’s part of what now looks to be a multipronged effort to hammer the federal government: If one avenue is blocked, another is opened.
Perhaps coincidentally, on the same day as the RIF deadline, Fox News reported that Vought’s long-cherished dream of simply impounding (i.e., refusing to spend) congressional appropriated spending is close to being realized:
The White House has already started mapping out how to make good on its promise to slash federal spending in preparation for a six-month government funding bill to pass through Congress.
Two people familiar with the conversations told Fox News Digital that President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought are working on a strategy for impounding federal funds that Congress is expected to allocate this week, before the partial government shutdown deadline on March 14.
Trump and his allies have made no secret of their belief that the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is unconstitutionally constraining the powers of the president. But the new development is a significant step toward a likely legal showdown as Democrats warn they will respond if Trump tries to bypass Congress on federal spending.
This power grab will definitely be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has upheld congressional limits on impoundment in the past.
But in any event, think about this: Team Trump isn’t even waiting for the funds to be appropriated by Congress before plotting to cancel them. It certainly makes congressional Republicans look like disingenuous stooges in voting for a spending bill written in disappearing ink, and it reinforces the impression that no matter what Congress does or doesn’t do, the government is in a state of perpetual shutdown.
