Trump’s shutdown trap?

Has President Trump suckered Democrats and the Deep State into a trap that will enable a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy? In only five more days of the already “longest government shutdown in history” (25 days and counting, as of today), a heretofore obscure threshold will be reached, enabling permanent layoffs of bureaucrats furloughed 30 days or more.

Don’t believe me that federal bureaucrats can be laid off? Well, in bureaucratese, a layoff is called a RIF – a Reduction in Force – and of course, it comes with a slew of civil service protections. But, if the guidelines are followed, bureaucrats can be laid off – as in no more job. It is all explained by Michael Roberts here (updated after the beginning of the partial shutdown):

A reduction in force is a thoughtful and systematic elimination of positions. For all practical purposes, a government RIF is the same thing as a layoff. …

Organizations must stick to predetermined criteria when sorting out what happens to each employee. They must communicate with employees how and why decisions are made. …

In deciding who stays and who goes, federal agencies must take four factors into account:

1. Tenure
2. Veteran status
3. Total federal civilian and military service
4. Performance

Agencies cannot use RIF procedures to fire bad employees.

Update: See also: OMB issues guidance on Reduction in Force layoffs due to partial shutdown

A lot of procedures must be followed, and merit (“performance”) is the last consideration, but based on the criteria above, employees already furloughed can be laid off (“RIFed”) once they have been furloughed for 30 days or 22 work days:

When agencies furlough employees for more than 30 calendar days or 22 discontinuous work days, they must use RIF procedures.

An employee can be terminated or moved into an available position[.]

This seems to be what was referenced in this remarkable essay written by an “unidentified senior Trump official” published in the Daily Caller, which vouches for the authenticity of the author and explains that it is protecting him from adverse career consequences should the name become known. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

The purported senior official makes the case that devotion to “process” eats up most of the time of federal bureaucrats and is also used by enemies of President Trump’s initiatives to stymie the legitimate orders issued by his senior officials:

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position – some do this in the same position for more than a decade.

They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands – administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.

Then the senior official notes what I have just called the “trap”:

Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

Those officials who waste time and stymie the president’s initiatives now are not present because they are not categorized as “essential.”

Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. …

President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them.

Keep in mind that saboteurs cannot be individually identified and RIFed, but they can be included in the layoffs if they meet the criteria above in terms of seniority and service, and they must be given 60 days’ notice. But once they are gone, they are no longer free to obstruct using the “process” as their friend, because they are gone.

You can expect lawsuits on every conceivable point, and I suspect that the definition of “furlough” will be one matter of dispute.

If this was the plan all along, it would explain why President Trump goaded Chuck and Nancy in his televised meeting with them last year, boasting that he would claim credit for the shutdown. How could they resist a prolonged shutdown when he made it so easy to blame him?

President Trump has proven that he is a “disruptor” who changes the framework of thinking on major issues by refusing to accept the “givens” – the assumptions of how things always have been done and therefore always must be done.

So who is the “senior official”? I don’t know, but I think Stephen Miller is the sort of bold thinker who might volunteer to telegraph the strategy just five days before the deadline. Give Chuck and Nancy something to think about and probably reject as unthinkable. Then they can’t complain that they weren’t warned once the trap is sprung.

Such a mass RIF would be the Trump version of Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers when they went on an illegal strike in 1981. That was completely unexpected by his enemies, vehemently criticized, and successful.

Among other benefits, it taught the leaders of the USSR that Ronald Reagan was a man whose threats cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric. If you think that Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Angela Merkel, and any other foreign leaders would not draw the same conclusion from a massive RIF, then you are kidding yourself.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (cropped).

My theory may be completely wrong, but I pray that it is not.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman

Monica Showalter adds: Slate of all places has a useful chart on which agencies have the most RIFs on the line. Surprise, surprise: It’s where the bureaucrats most in need of layoffs happen to roost. Update: This is from 2013, but the proportions of furloughed “non-essential” staff likely are similar.

OMB issues guidance on Reduction in Force layoffs due

to partial shutdown

A new statement from the Office of Management and Budget provides cold comfort for federal bureaucrats worried that furloughs during the partial shutdown could become permanent layoffs, as long as Democrats refuse to give in and fund the border barrier.

There will be no immediate layoffs (what the federal government calls reductions in force – or  RIFs) if and when the current partial shutdown passes the 30-day mark in four more days.  As I explained yesterday in ”Trump’s shutdown trap?,” federal law requires RIFs when federal employees are furloughed more than 30 days.

But after the matter was raised and widely discussed, the OMB issued a statement that indicates that it would require an actual reorganization plan that would make furloughed positions permanently identified as unnecessary, in order for the furloughs to be RIFed.  Nicole Ogrysko writes in the Federal News Network:

Agencies won’t need to consider targeted layoffs, otherwise known as reductions-in-force (RIFs), if the current partial government shutdown continues for another few days.

While federal statute typically instructs agencies to RIF targeted groups of employees who have been placed on furlough status for 30 days or more, the regulations don’t apply to emergency furlough situations, the Office of Management and Budget confirmed Tuesday. …

There are two kinds of furloughs.  ”Administrative furloughs” are planned events by an agency “designed to absorb reductions necessitated by downsizing, reduced funding, lack of work or any budget situation other than a lapse in appropriations,” according to the Office of Personnel Management.

“Shutdown furloughs,” also called “emergency furloughs,” occur during lapses in appropriations.

OPM’s 2015 guidance on shutdown furloughs also clarifies the matter.

“Reductions in force furlough regulations and SES competitive furlough requirements are not applicable to emergency shutdown furloughs because the ultimate duration of an emergency shutdown furlough is unknown at the outset and is dependent entirely on congressional action, rather than agency action,” OPM guidance reads.  ”The RIF furlough regulations and SES competitive furlough requirements, on the other hand, contemplate planned, foreseeable, money-saving furloughs that, at the outset, are planned to exceed 30 days.”

This emphatically does not rule out the shutdown trap hypothesis that I presented.  It will take some time for reorganization plans to be prepared, but once they are revealed after the 30-day deadline is reached, the “shutdown furloughs” become “administrative furloughs,” and the RIF layoffs are possible.

As the anonymous senior Trump administration official whom I quoted yesterday noted, in the absence of bureaucrats with time on their hands and no inclination to help the Trump agenda, a lot is getting accomplished.  As that process continues, after the 30-day mark is reached, it will be possible to create a downsizing plan, identifying units that could easily get by with a fraction of their current staff, or even be reorganized out of existence.

The head of the OMB, Mick Mulvaney, currently does not have a lot of spare time, serving as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and as interim White House Chief of Staff (a 24/7 job in its own right).  But if he is on board (and why wouldn’t he be?), he could well designate a team to prepare quick plans for downsizing, now that the various agencies have seen how little they need so many of the furloughed bureaucrats.  That would make the furloughs qualify for RIFs.

Of course, there would be a dispute on when the clock starts ticking on the 30 days – with the original  ”shutdown furlough” or from the date of the hypothetical downsizing plan I mention.  If the latter – a delayed start of the clock ticking – then the pressure on the Democrats to cave in and end the shutdown would amp up.  Imagine if Schumer and Pelosi started hearing from federal bureaucrats waiting to be RIFed if another 30 days go by.  Would they be willing to say to them that it’s more important to have no border barriers than for their jobs to be preserved?  They would have a time bomb of layoffs of government employees, a huge Democrat constituency, affecting many individual members of the House with large numbers of federal employee constituents.  I can imagine quite a few House Democrats bolting from Pelosi if she persists in the shutdown, refusing to talk or compromise.

If this plan is followed and a downsizing proposal is officially revealed, Trump either gets an end to the shutdown or gets to downsize the federal bureaucracy.