You can guess what’s dominating the congressional agenda this week
"Democratic lawmakers ... made it clear they're going to push back against several of the executive orders affecting federal employees," said Mitchell Miller.
The explosive Trump administration has lobbed some shells that have Congress abuzz. Maryland and Virginia delegations are on alert over the new federal policy/career classification formerly known as Schedule F. WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with details.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin Let’s start with well, it was called Schedule F. Officially, it has a new name, same thing. But that has got those members with lots of federal employees in their districts a little bit up in arms.
Mitchell Miller Absolutely. This is one of those things that came about, as you know, in that whirlwind of events last week. And Democratic lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland have made it clear they’re going to push back against several of the executive orders affecting federal employees. One after another, members of the Maryland congressional delegation last week came forward to speak on behalf of federal workers. One of them was Congressman Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), who has reintroduced legislation to try to protect what was Schedule F from the whims of presidential executive orders.
Kweisi Mfume This is really not a partisan issue. It’s about men and women trying to earn a living for their families and to have an arbitrary situation where anybody can determine you don’t work here anymore, you don’t work there. Unchanged, Schedule F, I think, is an affront to all of us.
Mitchell Miller Now with Republicans in the majority, Mfume acknowledged he has work to do to try to get support for his bill. But he and other lawmakers stressed that what was Schedule F just doesn’t affect federal employees here in the Washington area, but across the country. And he hopes that could eventually get some bipartisan support. By the way, also during a confirmation hearing last week for the [Office of Management and Budget] director position, Russell Vought, Virginia Sens. Mark Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D) pressed him on his plans to cut federal workers. Sen. Kaine at one point quoted him as saying, “We want to traumatize federal employees.” He said that arguing that Vought essentially wants to take programs that help everyday people who are struggling and cut them because they are, in his words, woke and weaponized. So a lot of members of Congress from the Washington area really pushing back, as I mentioned, on some of these executive orders.
Tom Temin Right. But it sounds like they feel that schedule F or that new classification – “policy career” – is going to happen anyway. They just want protection for people that get put into it sounds like.
Mitchell Miller Right. They’re getting behind some of the legal efforts that you know about from federal unions and activist groups that are working on behalf of federal employees, saying whatever they can do to help to support those legal efforts to try to protect federal jobs, they’ll get behind them.
Tom Temin All right. And then, of course, for all federal employees, regardless of their grade, is the return to office. And the administration was asking for agencies to redo their telework policies by the end of last week. And Congress is watching that one pretty closely also.
Mitchell Miller Yeah, that’s a really interesting one because there’s more of a nuanced view. And in connection with that, obviously, most of the Washington area lawmakers are doing everything they can, they say, to make sure that collective bargaining agreements and things that allow people to work from home or to telework, that they stay in place and they’re just not summarily wiped away. But some of the lawmakers have indicated that they believe that there should be some more of a return to the office. I was speaking with Virginia Senator Warner, with some other reporters last week, and he said he does think there should be more efforts to get federal workers back into the office. And, of course, as we’ve talked about over the past year and beyond, the D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has made it clear that she wants people to head back into the office so they get more bodies downtown so they can generate more economic activity. And then there’s, of course, just the Republicans in general who have just been pushing for a long time to get people back into office. And this is really the culmination of all their efforts legislatively.
Tom Temin And people forget that there was a memorandum from the Biden Office of Management and Budget to get people back to work. It was about 40 pages. Nobody understood it, but they were also not all that successful in changing telework.
Mitchell Miller Right. And I think that was some of the frustration that lawmakers that wanted people to get back, that it was just kind of a nudge, they felt, in the words of some of them, that they didn’t really feel like it was actually doing much, that there was a lot of confusion about what agencies actually had to do. Some of them did more, some of them did less. Obviously, this is kind of a bulldozer approach, if you will, that this is really going to happen.
Tom Temin We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. And the [Department of Government Efficiency] has not really roared, but it hasn’t really scratched up much earth yet.
Mitchell Miller No, it’s not really roaring. There’s been a lot of roaring earlier on. Obviously, Elon Musk had very loudly said that they were going to cut at least $2 trillion. And there was a lot of talk about all the cuts that were going to come. But the Department of Government Efficiency still seeking to cut federal jobs. Obviously, it’s already lost some of its own key people. Of course, Vivek Ramaswamy, who had led DOGE with Elon Musk is no longer taking part. And then we got word last week that the legal counsel, William McGinley, who’s very influential in this, he decided to leave and is apparently going to the private sector. So even though there’s been a lot of fireworks related to this, it is off to kind of a slow start. Now, of course, President Trump signed the executive order saying DOGE will replace what’s called the U.S. Digital Service that was originally set up by President Barack Obama to give federal agencies guidance on information technology. So it seems like what Musk wants to do is take over that and try to get it in a more technical level, whereas Vivek Ramaswamy wanted to go at it from a more policy level. And the two butted heads and decided to go separate ways.
Tom Temin I’m not sure either one of them understands what U.S. Digital Service actually did, but it did last throughout the first Trump administration doing its thing, which is to help agencies with programing new digital services like the name implies.
Mitchell Miller Yeah. And in fact, they actually basically took the name and now call it DOGE because of the original name.
Tom Temin Wow. And then the other big brouhaha, I guess, toward the end of the week, late on Friday was the gambit, too, from President Trump to maybe do away with [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], fund that money through the states and their apparatus for emergency response.
Mitchell Miller Yeah, as you know, that caused a huge stir. He just essentially kind of said, well, maybe FEMA should go away. And that got a lot of attention. This, of course, was when he was in North Carolina and then went on to California in connection with natural disasters. What’s interesting about that is some former FEMA members have said that states could do more preemptively, perhaps to deal with major natural disasters. But when you’re talking about California and in the tens of billions of dollars and some of these natural disasters that surge over $100 billion, I think a lot of people are going to be hard pressed to see if a state could actually come up with that kind of money. There’s just no way, if you have a, for example, Category 4 hurricane sweep across several states, that the states on their own are going to be able to come up with that money. So it’s going to be interesting to see where this discussion leads.
Tom Temin Well, people also forget, too, that just about every 15 years, FEMA has a not scandal so much as just something goes badly wrong. And FEMA’s there or not there. And there is FEMA reform. I mean, this is kind of a rhythm to this.
Mitchell Miller Yeah, you’re right. Exactly. And that’s why I think that some of the FEMA people that have spoken and they were saying that, “we’ve been trying to get states to do more. And we do agree that the federal government can’t always just sweep in and do everything.” As you pointed out, sometimes, you know, as we saw with Hurricane Katrina, things don’t happen the way that they’re supposed to with FEMA. So I think it’s just going to generate more of this discussion that we’re seeing really within all of these federal agencies that President Trump has certainly stirred up again.
Tom Temin And where is James Lee Witt when you need him? May he rest in peace.
Mitchell Miller That’s right.
Tom Temin And of course, against all of this is the kind of quaint notion that a federal budget might be effectuated before March 14th.
Mitchell Miller That’s right. Let’s not forget, there is a federal budget that actually does need to be passed. And by the way, it’s just in over six weeks that they have to avert the government shutdown deadline of March 14th. Now, they did, speaking of quaint, get together with these so-called Four Corners appropriators last week and start this process again, essentially to try to get a top line so that they can figure out exactly what they’re going to do. And then you throw in all these other very complicating factors, such as the federal aid and disaster aid for California primarily, as well as the talk about raising the debt limit. There’s a lot of discussion about whether all of this can be thrown into something together. Democrats have already pushed back on Republicans trying to include raising the debt limit in connection with that. So we are certainly going to have, if last week wasn’t busy enough, we are going to have a very, very busy next couple of months coming up as we bang up on that deadline.
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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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