Trump threatens to fire ‘a lot’ of Federal workers as shutdown kicks off

Donald Trump signalled he could try to maximise the pain of a government shutdown, threatening to leverage the closure to fire “a lot” of civil servants and slash a range of Federal programs and benefits that he doesn’t approve of.

The US Government shut down midnight on Wednesday, local time (2pm AEST), amid a bitter spending deadlock between the US President and Democrats in Congress that will disrupt Federal services and leave many Federal workers furloughed.

The latest round of ultimatums, which came hours before government funding expired, underscored the extent of the political dysfunction in Washington. It quickly prompted a set of unions representing federal employees to file a lawsuit seeking to block the administration from conducting mass layoffs during the shutdown.

“We’re doing well as a country, so the last thing we want to do is shut it down, but a lot of good can come down from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want,” Mr Trump said.

For families, businesses and the broader US economy, the consequences of the shutdown which started today could be vast, upending everything from some food safety inspections to the ability to visit national parks. But the hardships could prove especially acute for millions of federal employees and active military service members, whose lives are often upended during a government closure.

Roughly 750,000 civilian federal workers will be furloughed each day beginning on Wednesday, local time, the start of the new fiscal year, according to congressional estimates. Other workers, from military personnel to airport baggage claims inspectors, must continue to report for duty because they hold vital roles, but they will not receive a paycheck until funding is restored.

On Tuesday, the White House sought to raise the stakes of a shutdown even further, after Mr Trump doubled down on a threat to fire civilian federal employees if funding lapses. In doing so, the President suggested he could also leverage the fiscal stalemate in other ways and “do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them,” referring to Democrats.

Hours later, a set of unions representing federal employees sued the Trump administration on grounds that mass layoffs during a shutdown would be unlawful. The lawsuit, brought by unions including the American Federation of Government Employees, asked a federal court in California to invalidate a White House memo issued last week that initiated the layoff process, formally known as a reduction in force.

“Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal — it’s immoral and unconscionable,” said Everett Kelley, the national president of AFGE, which says it represents more than 800,000 government workers.

In their court filing, unions on Tuesday also pointed to more recent guidance from the Trump administration, which exempted some officials from furlough so that they could work during a shutdown and carry out the layoff plans. The lawyers said the arrangement was “contrary to federal law,” as they urged the court to strike down “the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn” in the funding fight.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The threats left many government workers bracing for yet another painful blow under Trump, who has waged a highly disruptive campaign to reduce the size of the federal government. It was not immediately clear how agencies would implement the White House directive that had set in motion the plan for mass layoffs. Many agencies have already shed workers and, in some cases, have had to hire them back.

Another round of widespread cuts could further deplete the ranks of the Federal Government, which is already expected to have about 300,000 fewer workers on its payroll in December compared with January, officials have said. These existing cuts to the workforce include retirements under the government’s incentive program as well as layoffs, some of which have been challenged in court by union officials.

Democrats have repeatedly attacked the White House in recent days for seeking to use federal workers as bargaining chips in a bid to pressure them into supporting a short-term funding deal that would keep federal spending mostly at current levels into November. Party leaders have refused to accept that approach, which Republicans adopted in the House earlier in September, because the stopgap does not extend a set of expiring subsidies that help millions of people pay for health insurance.

“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since Day One — not to govern, but to scare,” Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said in a statement last week. “This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government.”

But Democrats’ refusal to accept that deal only has emboldened Trump. At one point, Trump told reporters Tuesday that his top budget aide, Russell Vought, could “trim the budget to a level that you couldn’t do any other way.” And he obliquely referenced “benefits” as one possible focus, as he accused Democrats of “taking a risk by having a shutdown.”

“When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs,” Trump said later in the day, in comments that appeared to conflate the necessity of furloughs in a shutdown with his prior threat of layoffs. “So we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected, and they’re Democrats.”