WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R- Wyoming, said President Donald Trump should follow through on his threat to fire federal workers in the heavily blue D.C. region if Democrats refuse to drop their demands for keeping the federal government open.
Trump’s threat took the form of a memo issued Wednesday by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), instructing agencies to plan for mass firings if the parties fail to broker a deal to avoid a shutdown before Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year.
The federal workforce is heavily concentrated in Washington, D.C., and the suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. The region as a whole is solidly blue, making Trump’s threat potent for Democratic officials and their constituents.
Because the shutdown battle is taking place in the Senate, that chamber’s members from Virginia and Maryland — all Democrats — are in an especially tough spot, some pundits say.
Unlike the GOP-led House, a supermajority in the Senate is needed to keep the government running. With 60 votes needed for a deal to avoid a shutdown and the GOP holding a 53-47 edge, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has been trying to use that leverage to get concessions.
The Democrats want to undo funding cuts, recently enacted into law, that the Senate passed under simple-majority vote rules. GOP leaders, though, are not negotiating.
Lummis: Seize Opportunity
"If Chuck Schumer insists on forcing a government shutdown, the administration should seize this opportunity to drastically cut the bloated federal bureaucracy and eliminate wasteful positions filled by D.C. bureaucrats who actively obstruct policies that benefit hardworking Americans,” Lummis told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
The cuts Schumer wants to reverse — mostly in health care — amount to about $1 trillion over 10 years, U.S. Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming said last week on the Senate floor. He called Schumer’s demands a “ransom.”
Dueling bills to keep the government funded went down to defeat in the Senate last week.
The GOP’s measure would have continued funding the government at current levels for seven weeks, beginning Oct. 1, to buy time for committee appropriators to craft a full-year package.
Democrats’ bill, with the health care spending hikes, would have kept funds flowing for four weeks while committees go to work.
Sean Spicer, MSNBC’s Aleem
The OMB memo did not say how many employees potentially would be fired, but the capital region has already been hit profoundly by workforce-slashing measures under Trump.
In past shutdowns, “non-essential” employees were furloughed and received back pay when they ended. But the OMB memo makes clear that permanent cuts are on the table now.
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary during Trump’s first term, called the threat of more firings a “brilliant” move.
“What they did was brilliant because Schumer thought that he had all the cards,” Spicer said Friday on The Morning Meeting online program. “He has no idea what he’s dealing with. And so he’s basically forcing Democrats like [U.S. Sens.] Mark Warner and Tim Kaine from Virginia… to recognize that that if they do this, they're giving the green light to fire a lot of their constituents who are federal employees, who are going to go nuts.”
Added Spicer: “This was a brilliant chess move in a game that normally is played at the checkers level... It put them on notice that if you don’t want to keep the government open, we’ll take advantage of it.”
Zeeshan Aleem, an opinion writer for left-leaning MSNBC, wrote Friday: “Trump has a much, much better hand than the Democrats, and the OMB’s move just made that even clearer.”
Georgetown University political scientist Michael Glassman, cited by Aleem, said the party trying to leverage a shutdown for concessions — in this case, the Democrats — always loses.
“In none of [the prior shutdowns] did the party trying to leverage the shutdown win the concessions they were seeking and, in each case, they also lost the public opinion battle,” Glassman said.
‘Mafia-Style Blackmail’
Kaine and Warner, the Virginia U.S. Senate Democrats Spicer referenced, issued a joint statement Thursday pushing back on the OMB memo.
“Instead of threatening government employees and the American public with even more mass layoffs and federal dysfunction, President Trump should come to the table and negotiate a funding bill that prevents health care premiums from skyrocketing for families and keeps the government operational,” the statement said.
Maryland’s U.S. Senate Democrats, Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks, each issued a statement.
“President Trump is engaged in mafia-style blackmail, with his threats ultimately harming the American people,” Van Hollen said, echoing Schumer by calling the threatened cuts “likely illegal” without explaining why.
Added Alsobrooks: “For Republicans to use this shutdown, a result of their own incompetence and inability to negotiate, to fire these patriots right before the holidays is downright shameful.”
Barrasso, asked for comment Friday, said through a spokeswoman: “Hardworking Americans get hurt the most in a government shutdown. This pain is avoidable. That’ll be up to the Democrats who want to shut it down. Republicans want to keep the government open.”
Sean Barry can be reached at sean@cowboystatedaily.com.
