Congress set to partner with Trump on dealing with federal employees
"What a whirlwind of activity. And that was just week one. Let's see what's next," said WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller.
Federal employees have been wondering what the forthcoming Trump administration will mean to them. It’s easy to forget that Congress has something to say about that, too. President-elect Trump will have a House and Senate both in Republican hands, an infrequent so-called trifecta. WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller explains what to expect on the Hill on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin You really say that last week was the week that was with the parade of events either headed to the Hill or happening on the Hill.
Mitchell Miller Right. What a whirlwind of activity. And that was just week one. Let’s see what’s next. Congress, as you know, is really buzzing about what this new Trump administration will mean for federal workers. And many congressional Republicans believe that with the complete control of Congress, this is their chance to start slashing the budgets and personnel from federal agencies. The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer (Ky.), says he welcomes the ideas of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which, as you know, is actually not a government agency but an advisory organization led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to try to make major cuts in federal spending. Ramaswamy has said that by requiring federal workers to come into the office five days a week, he believes that would cause a lot of feds to quit. And he’s even suggested that percentage could be as high as 25%. A lot of people are skeptical about that. I asked Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) about this and he said he’s always open to considering ideas for reform, for changes to federal agencies. But he also points out that just because this organization has been set up doesn’t mean it has the power to implement its recommendations.
Tim Kaine No unilaterally appointed group of self-proclaimed experts is going to be able themselves decide to shed the government of federal employees. Congress has got the power of the purse. Many of these agencies are set up by statute.
Mitchell Miller Kaine points to the Department of Education, which conservatives have said for years they want to get rid of, charging It’s just a big bureaucracy. And Kaine says if they want to do that, they need to go through the legislative process. As you mentioned, Congress is here, right? Bring up a bill, see if it moves forward and where it goes. And also, this Department of Government Efficiency has more than a year to collect its recommendations. And we both know the history of Washington is replete with these blue ribbon panels and recommendations for cutting spending to the extent that they’re adopted at all, they’re usually pretty piecemeal. So I’ll be interested to see what actually happens with that.
Tom Temin Yeah, and there used to be members of Capitol Hill that would regularly publish booklets, actually printed magazines of all the wasteful programs, the Proxmire type of Golden Fleece stuff. That’s kind of disappeared lately.
Mitchell Miller Right. And I think that’s what they’re going to try to bring back kind of that ‘here’s the pigs at the trough’ kind of image and try to have a bunch of — they say they’re going to basically have a ranking of some of what they consider the worst projects or the biggest wastes of money. So we’ll have to see what they actually come up with.
Tom Temin Studies of the sex life of the African Viper or something like that. And what about telework? I mean, that has not emerged yet. But you mentioned Ramaswamy said, ‘well, lack of telework could force people to quit.’ But is there a policy forthcoming that you’ve seen anywhere yet?
Mitchell Miller I have not. I just heard a lot of talk about it. And there are people, we’ve talked about Joni Ernst (R), the Iowa senator over the last couple of years, has really made a push with legislation to try to get accountability from agencies. But as far as what the Trump administration is actually going to call for or require, other than making a lot of statements about the fact that if government workers are going to be working, they need to be in the office. In their view, they haven’t really said what they think the parameters should be, whether it should be one day of telework, a week or whatever it might be. And as you know, there’s been a recent study that actually indicated that there may be more productivity by people that do telework. And you can certainly expect that a lot of the lawmakers from here in the Washington area, including [Rep.] Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and others, will point to that fact and say that there is a value to actually having workers be able to work remotely. And so we’ll have to see what happens. But they really haven’t come up with anything specific yet. So we’ll have to see.
Tom Temin We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. And meanwhile, there is a slew of appointments coming to the Senate. So that’s going to take up a lot of Senate cycle time. But that would be voted on in the new session, not in the expiring session, correct?
Mitchell Miller Right. So there will be a lot of speculation about what will happen with all these cabinet nominees that the President-elect has come up with. And I think one of the most interesting things is, without getting into the specifics of each of these nominees, is how this will actually affect the system. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), the new incoming Senate majority leader, replacing longtime Republican leader Mitch McConnell, really is going to have his work cut out for him. He has basically said that everything is on the table. He wants to go through regular order. He wants these nominees to come up before the traditional hearings, go through that and see if these committees recommend the nominees. But as we both know, President-elect Trump has different ideas. He wants to move things faster. And what’s going to be really interesting to see is at what point are the Republicans in the Senate going to say, okay, we’re going to go along with the President-elect and we’re going to go with these recess appointments, which, as you’re aware, haven’t really been used. The last time they were used was under President Barack Obama. He used it a little over 30 times and it was really used a lot. And many people, of course, thought it was abused under Bill Clinton and George W Bush. But what’s interesting is to see whether or not John Thune, what is his point where he’s going to say, okay, the President really wants this person through. I’m going to go ahead and we’ll have a ten day recess here and allow this person to get through. There will be howls of complaints from the Democratic side and they will try to throw sand in the gears to try to slow that down. But the Democrats, because of the fact that there is this political trifecta, they really don’t have any power here. So it will be really an interesting constitutional and congressional moment to see whether or not we get to that point and then whether or not the President-elect even goes further and there is the potential for him to actually dissolve Congress for a period of at least ten days if he really wanted to get somebody through. And we’d have to see whether there would be legal challenges — I’m sure there would be — to see whether that happens. So a lot of big issues coming up in the coming year.
Tom Temin And in the meantime, there is a lame duck session, which has some work to do because there is a continuing resolution that expires in December. What does it look like this week that’s going to happen there?
Mitchell Miller Right. I think this week we’re going to start to see things settle down a little bit. I mean, we’re still going to get more nominees and a lot of interesting things happening in connection with that. But the traditional legislative things that have to be done during the lame duck have to be addressed. That includes the NDAA, the big defense bill, the farm bill. And then, of course, there’s a lot of talk about FEMA running out of money with the recent hurricanes and the Small Business Administration loans running out. So they’re going to be taking those kind of issues up on Tuesday. Actually, speaking of FEMA, the director, Deanne Criswell, is being called before a subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure panel. This is a little bit of a hangover from the political season because Republicans are upset that there was a FEMA employee who allegedly said that some of the FEMA workers should not go to the homes of people who had Trump signs in front and that person was let go. FEMA, of course, says this is an outlier. But more broadly, Criswell will be testifying about what kind of funding FEMA needs. And there’s going to be a lot of attention related to that. And then, of course, the big question is what’s going to happen with the actual budget? And it looks like right now we’re going to go to a kind of traditional mode where eventually this all gets bunched up toward the December 20th deadline. And we’ll have to see what kind of short term spending plan that they come up with. Republicans are really pushing hard, not surprisingly, to have it pushed ahead well into the new year after President-elect Trump is actually in office so that they can get their priorities through. But we’re going to have the usual drama over the next several weeks to find out exactly how this plays out.
Tom Temin And has anyone calculated when the next debt ceiling deadline comes?
Mitchell Miller That’s going to be another huge one, right? I don’t know that actually off the top of my head, when the actual deadline for that is. But that always becomes a huge issue, as you know, over the years.
Tom Temin And meanwhile, is the Capitol thoroughly buttoned down for…?
Mitchell Miller It is. And there’s a lot of obviously a lot of activity after Congress was really not here during the campaign season. So well over six weeks, no one was here. But in the meantime, they were putting up a lot of the scaffolding and getting up fencing related to the inauguration. And you can just see there is more of a secure apparatus around the Capitol right now. And the Capitol Police, by the way, have changed how they deal with things. For example, if lawmakers have a news conference outside, there were times when there really wasn’t any officer or officers out there. Now they actually put up the bike racks and kind of limit the access and make sure that there is some protection around that. And of course, we’ll see that all kind of ramp up as we move toward January 6th. Of course, very different January 6th than it was in 2021. But still, you can definitely sense this, the heightened security around the U.S. Capitol. But it is also nice to see all the lawmakers back and all the people visiting the Capitol once again.
Tom Temin Well, maybe they’ll hoist a hot toddy to one another, at least in that coming season before they get down to the real battles.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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