Internal White House document details plans to fire employees across US agencies

Washington Post – no paywall – “Federal officials are preparing for agencies to cut between 8 and 50 percent of their employees as part of a Trump administration push to shrink the federal government, according to an internal White House document obtained by The Washington Post that contains closely held draft plans for reshaping the 2.3-million-person bureaucracy. The details are compiled from plans that President Donald Trump ordered agencies to submit, according to two people familiar with the document who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about it. The numbers, which have not been released to the public, show what could be next for the efforts that Trump says will make government more accountable but that have also upended agency functions and triggered restraining orders from the courts. The document covers 22 agencies and doesn’t have information in some categories. Several people familiar with the document stressed that planning remains fluid and that the numbers do not necessarily reflect what agencies will ultimately cut. But it indicates that broad staff cuts are likely to have a significant impact on the scope of the government’s work. For example, the document lists the Department of Housing and Urban Development as cutting half of its roughly 8,300-person staff, while the Interior Department would shed nearly 1 in 4 of the workers it had when Trump took office and the IRS would cut nearly 1 in 3.

It’s no secret the Trump Administration is dedicated to downsizing the federal bureaucracy and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. This document is a pre-deliberative draft and does not accurately reflect final reduction in force plans,” White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in an email. “When President Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries are ready to announce reduction in force plans, they will make those announcements to their respective workforces at the appropriate time.” In other words, for agencies such as the Department of the Treasury, the firings [these are not ‘layoffs’] are on the way.