Roll Call - Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s new partial government shutdown guidance implies the executive branch will use a hatchet in some areas and go easy elsewhere — with Democratic priorities likely first on the chopping block.
A February memo to agencies from Vought and the Office of Personnel Management on how to plan mass layoffs said the process would be based on past shutdown procedures as a “starting point.”
That prior guidance said reductions-in-force, or RIFs, wouldn’t affect military and other uniformed personnel or positions “necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities.”
It also exempted “agencies or components that provide direct services to citizens,” naming Social Security, Medicare and veterans health care as examples, unless it’s determined that RIFs in those areas “will have a positive effect on the delivery of such services.”
The president tipped off his potential shutdown strategy on Sept. 19, the day competing partisan stopgap funding bills were rejected in the Senate.
“I think you could very well end up with a . . . closed country for a period of time. And we’ll take care of the military. We’ll take care of Social Security. We’ll take care of the things that we have to take care of,” Trump said. “A lot of the things that Democrats fight for, which in many cases aren’t very good, things will not be able to be paid.”
In addition to cuts, the Trump administration has also demonstrated a capacity for keeping certain programs going in a way that bends, or even breaks, the Civil War-era law that prevents the executive branch from spending money it doesn’t have appropriations for.
During the 2018-2019 shutdown, the longest in history at 35 days, the Government Accountability Office found multiple Antideficiency Act violations by the first Trump administration.
In one case, the Interior Department tapped a deferred maintenance account for longer-term projects to fund trash collection and restroom sanitation at national parks that were kept open. In another, the Agriculture Department made a round of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments that were not authorized given the funding lapse.
Trump’s comment about not paying for “the things that Democrats fight for” raises more far-reaching questions about how a new shutdown would be implemented.
As Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told reporters this week: “I’d be much more worried if I were a blue state.”
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